The Giants have made no secret of their desire to add at least one starter. They’re not planning to make a run at Tarik Skubal and seem to be out on Trevor Rogers, who’s attached to draft compensation via the qualifying offer. San Francisco has been loosely linked to Freddy Peralta and to NPB righty Kaima Taira, though there’s a decent chance they look more to the middle tiers of the market.
Logan Webb and Landen Roupp are the only two starters locked into the season-opening rotation. President of baseball operations Buster Posey has implicitly suggested that next season might be something of a bridge year with most of their top prospect talent in the lower minors. However, USA Today’s Bob Nightengale writes that they’re continuing to rebuff teams who call about Webb.
That’s not surprising, as the Giants publicly shot down speculation about trading their ace early in deadline season. Webb is signed for two more seasons. There’s a reasonable argument for listening on him if the Giants aren’t going to make an all-in push next year, but the organization clearly doesn’t want to embark on a full rebuild either. If they were going to listen on Webb, it’d have made more sense to do it over the summer when they were en route to a 97-loss season.
That leaves three spots up for grabs. Adrian Houser seems to have the leg up on one of those. Posey told Alex Pavlovic on the Giants Talk podcast that he “views Houser in the rotation,” though that came with a caveat the team was likely to deploy the opener more frequently. That’s not going to be unique to Houser, but he’ll be a frequent candidate as the team tries to navigate his deficiencies against left-handed hitters.
Houser’s sinker-heavy arsenal has been more effective against right-handed batters throughout his career. That was particularly true this year, as lefties teed off at a .282/.367/.516 clip with 12 homers in 284 plate appearances. Right-handed hitters mustered only a .222/.234/.318 mark across 186 trips. Houser would ideally be in a swing or pure relief role, but the Giants are paying him $13.5MM for the second season of his surprise $22MM contract. They also simply don’t have many alternatives in the starting staff with Hayden Birdsong, Blade Tidwell, Carson Whisenhunt and Trevor McDonald all set to miss part or all of the season recovering from Tommy John surgeries.
San Francisco is sure to bring in at least one starter and could leave an open competition among the likes of Anthony Molina, Matt Wilkinson, Yunior Marte and Cesar Perdomo for a spot. They’re also going to need to do a lot of work in the bullpen. That’s true at the back end, where Posey said they’re in the closing market. It also applies to the middle relief group — especially if they’re going to more aggressively play matchups to try to compensate for the lack of rotation depth.
Alex Pavlovic of NBC Sports Area and Shayna Rubin of The San Francisco Chronicle each wrote this week that the Giants are likely to bring in a left-handed reliever. They traded Erik Miller at the deadline and moved on from both Matt Gage and Reiver Sanmartin at season’s end. Sam Hentges is their only returning lefty reliever; he walked almost 15% of opponents in his first year back from shoulder surgery.
It’s a reasonably deep class of lefties on the free agent market. The Giants are highly unlikely to give up draft capital for Adrian Morejon and might be priced out on Alex Vesia and Gregory Soto. They could still look to old friend Steven Okert, Sean Newcomb, Brock Burke or A.J. Minter as borderline two-year deal candidates. José Alvarado and A.J. Puk are reclamation upside fliers, while Tim Hill and Hoby Milner are available as low-slot matchup specialists. Jon Heyman of The New York Post reported this week that the Giants were among the teams with interest in Hill, who led MLB with a 69% ground-ball rate for the Yankees this year.
While pitching is the front office’s focus, it’s possible they make a move behind the plate as well. Posey told Pavlovic on Giants Talk that bringing in a veteran catcher is “something we have to look at.” They traded Patrick Bailey in May and relied on three rookies — Daniel Susac, Drew Cavanaugh and Jesus Rodriguez — for a good chunk of the summer. Susac and Rodriguez each missed the final seven weeks of the season to injury, leading to Cavanaugh getting the bulk of the playing time down the stretch. They brought in journeyman Andrew Knizner as a stopgap backup but dropped him from the 40-man roster a couple weeks ago.
“We’re very excited about Susac, Cavanuagh and J-Rod, even (Adrián Sugastey) in Triple-A,” Posey told Pavlovic. “But they’re all young. It’s something we’ve talked about as a group. … It’s helpful for a young catcher to have a guy that’s done it for a while.” Veteran backup types available in free agency include Austin Hedges, James McCann, Christian Vázquez and Kyle Higashioka.
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