Giants need to bring back key players to recreate magic
Some time has passed. Hopefully, some perspective has seeped in, too.
The San Francisco Giants’ 2021 season was incredible, record-setting, and totally unforeseen.
And while it ended in heartbreak and controversy, it was a season to remember in only good ways.
But now comes the tricky part of success: How do you do it again?
The best the Giants’ braintrust, led by the president of baseball operations, Farhan Zaidi, can do is stick to the plan that’s been in place since he took over.
But 107 wins in season two under manager Gabe Kapler were never part of the plan.
So the better question might be: How do you reverse engineer magic?
To start, you probably don’t mess with the formula that brought success this season.
Heading into the 2021 season, the expectation was that the old guard would be playing their final year in San Francisco and they were set to be replaced by free agent pickups and the Giants’ impressive coterie of prospects.
The entire reason Zaidi was hired was because the old regime kept running back the same players who had success, only to see them, and the team, falter.
But here I am, suggesting that Zaidi take a page from his predecessors
Brian Sabean and Bobby Evans.
“It adds an extra layer of motivation because you know these guys all get along so well and bring out the best of each other,” Zaidi said Monday. “We really have this whole is greater than the sum of the parts dynamic.”
While that’s true, the parts are pretty important. Brandon Belt, Kris Bryant, Donovan Solano, and every starting pitcher who is not Logan Webb are free agents. Buster Posey has a club option for 2022.
Keep those players and augment and San Francisco can do bigger and better things.
Not 107-wins big — that was likely once in a lifetime
— but winning a playoff series (or two, or three) big.
Remember, while the Giants are trying to replicate the organizational structure and success of the Dodgers, the organization’s team-building ethos is Oakland A’s Moneyball, this time with actual money to spend.
And this is the inevitable downside of playing Moneyball. Yes, the roster flexibility that comes from being lightweight in salary can bring wins, but also puts a tremendous amount of balls in the air at the end of the season. Even for the best front offices, some of those balls will fall.
So who is going to stay and who is going to go for the Giants?
Posey was, as Zaidi said Monday, the best catcher in baseball this season. He’s taking time to think about his future — remember, he opted out of the 2020 season, forgoing $8.7 million — but if he wants to return, the Giants will pick up his $22 million club option with glee.
And while the Giants are keen to re-sign Belt, and the first baseman has expressed a desire to stick around San Francisco, things aren’t straightforward there. Will the Giants extend a qualifying offer — worth an estimated $18.4 million for the 2022 season — or try to extend Belt, who is statistically one of the best hitters in baseball but, ultimately, a platoon player (less than 20 percent of his plate appearances in 2021 came against a lefthanded
pitcher)?
And if the Giants extend that qualifying offer, will Belt take it or try to land a longer-term deal elsewhere?
The Giants should have a big pile of money to spend this offseason — the playoffs were fruitful — but keeping the core together will take a serious chunk of that cash.
The Giants also know that there is no hot-shot starting pitching prospect on the precipice of the big leagues, so San Francisco needs to sign five, six, perhaps seven (if they’re feeling greedy and flush) starting pitchers to fill out their rotation and have the sort of depth necessary to compete for a title.
There’s simply no replacing Kevin Gausman in the Giants’ rotation.
Not without spending the kind of money on a starting pitcher that always ends in disappointment. San Francisco must prioritize him, too. That’s another big chunk — three years of $20 million-plus — gone right there.
And what should the Giants do with Bryant, their splashy trade deadline acquisition?
He likes it in San Francisco and the Giants obviously like him, but will another team prove to be a homewrecker in free agency? How high are the Giants willing to go for a player who is versatile but ultimately a defensive liability pretty much everywhere he plays?
There are smaller names
in play, too, and as Giants fans know, those players are just as important to this past season’s winning machine.
If Zaidi and general manager Scott Harris can handle all of that — if the Giants keep all of these players at market rate (or perhaps even a bit less) does San Francisco have enough money in the war chest to add another elite-level player, whether that be a Marcus Semien or Starling Marte?
That’s what it’s likely going to take to play for a title next year. As advanced as the Giants are, they’re not the only ones playing the Moneyballwith-money game.
These are good problems to have. The Giants are exceptionally wellequipped to handle them.
But rarely does a bigmarket team with this much success have this much to do in an offseason. Add in a possible strike or lockout at the end of the season and the situation only becomes messier.
Zaidi wants to finish Squid Game on Netflix, and I’d recommend getting it in as soon as possible.
This offseason is going to be all sorts of tricky for him and his staff. And while it’s not life-anddeath like the show he’s about to binge, there will be moments where, I can assure you, it might seem like it.
This is the burden of success. Let’s see how the Giants carry it.