Andrew Baggarly reports that the Giants are unlikely to spend much this offseason, news that won’t go down well with fans. There’s still a way for the eternal optimists to stay positive, though.
Maybe Buster Posey and the current regime are practicing the “underpromise, overdeliver” style of public relations. The Giants were a punchline for years because they were runners-up for Bryce Harper, Giancarlo Stanton, Shohei Ohtani (twice) and Aaron Judge.
It would have been less embarrassing for them to sit those chases out entirely. When they finally traded for Rafael Devers, it wasn’t after months of will-they-won’t-they. All of a sudden, Devers was on the danged Giants. Poof.
Maybe this front office values “poof” more than ephemeral offseason buzz, and they’ll work behind the scenes, tight-lipped, to make something happen. Or maybe the ownership group has a lot of their money tied up in a real estate venture that was counting on pre-pandemic projections of interest in commercial real estate. Maybe this is making extremely rich people nervous about becoming slightly less extremely rich, and this will directly affect the Giants’ payroll.
We’ll never know which theory is closer to reality. We can only guess. A real coin flip, here. But I’m inclined to take the Giants at their word that they’re not going to spend freely this offseason.
This changes their free-agent calculus tremendously. Forget about luxuries like Bo Bichette or top-o’-the-market pitchers like Tatsuya Imai. They’re shopping at the kinds of grocery stores that have giant $3 bags of cereal called, like, “MONSTER PUFFS”. They might even get one of those bags themselves. Are those marshmallows or bone spurs? No time to find out, just throw the bag into the cart.
Left-hander Patrick Corbin probably isn’t the Giants’ main free-agent target, but let’s use him as a stand-in for the class of free-agent starter that Giants fans should apparently get familiar with. Before defining that kind of starting pitcher, though, we should remember the prime directive of the Giants’ pitching pursuit this offseason, which is this:
They can’t screw it up.
They’re unlikely to have a lot of quality depth behind the starting pitchers they acquire. They’ll have depth, certainly, and it’s always possible that some of the depth pitchers with higher ceilings, like Keaton Winn and Carson Whisenhunt, will emerge as reliable major leaguers. But there’s a difference between having bodies and having bodies who can prevent runs in 2026. I’m not convinced the Giants have the latter on their 40-man roster already. They’ll need starts from the starting pitchers they acquire. Starts and innings.
Dylan Cease’s deal with the Blue Jays demonstrates how expensive durability will be this offseason. (Sean M. Haffey / Getty Images)
Except starts and innings are expensive. Dylan Cease has had an ERA over 4.50 in two out of his last three seasons, but he’s made at least 32 starts in every season since 2021. The quality wasn’t always there, but the quantity was. That, combined with his Cy Young-caliber stuff, got him seven years and $210 million. The Giants won’t come close to signing anyone like that.
It’s not unthinkable that Corbin will actually be one of the Giants’ targets, then. He checks a box, considering that he’s made a full season’s worth of starts in every season since 2017. While a great number of his starts will end up being the box from “Se7en,” he’ll certainly check the heck out of it. If 30-something starts on a budget are what the Giants want more than anything else, they’ll definitely explore the idea.
You probably made a wrinkled-up sour face while reading the Corbin section that you probably didn’t make during the Cease paragraph, even though they technically have the same strength. That’s because one pitcher comes with enough upside to start the All-Star Game, and another comes with enough upside to be worth about 1.0 WAR, if you’re lucky.
This is what the Giants’ self-imposed austerity is going to mean, though. They’re announcing that they aren’t willing to pay healthy, established pitchers with any measure of upside. Those suckers are expensive. That leaves them two options: pitchers who are inexpensive because they’re old and/or can’t stay on the field, or pitchers who are inexpensive because they don’t have any upside.
They’ll choose the latter. They can’t afford to take a chance on the Kevin Gausman or Carlos Rodón of this year’s class, whomever you think that might be, because they can’t afford the missed starts that might come with a signing like that. The Tigers paid Alex Cobb $15 million without getting a single major-league inning out of him last season. They made the postseason anyway because they had the rotation depth to survive a failed experiment.
The 2026 Giants will not have that same depth. If they signed a reliable innings eater like Framber Valdez, or someone like Imai, who would be projected for a full season of starts, they could take a chance on someone like that. They won’t spend that kind of money, though, which means the organizational focus will have to be innings on a dime. They’ll need to fill two spots with that mindset, whether in free agency or through a trade.
If they’re concerned with cash-in, cash-out matters, however, that would exclude them from exploring options like Yusei Kikuchi, who is still owed a reasonable $42.5 million for the next two seasons. He’ll be a target for teams that are worried about the length of a free-agent contract. The Giants are more worried about the money they’re spending in 2026. There are younger, cheaper pitchers who have what the Giants need, and they’re called “franchise cornerstones.” Bryce Eldridge and a case of Mel Ott-autographed baseballs wouldn’t be enough to get them.
So keep tabs on Corbin. And here are some other names you might want to get acquainted with:
Justin Verlander
He wouldn’t have to learn a new wifi password or pack up where he’s been living for the last nine months, and he would represent something of a best-case scenario for the Giants. He’s not getting Cease money because he’ll be 43 next year, but he might offer Cease-level effectiveness at a fraction of the cost. He did last season.
Michael Lorenzen
His strikeout rates went up last season, getting closer to the league average. His problem was with home runs allowed, and, boy, do I have the ballpark for him. He could also be the Giants’ third- or fourth-best hitter by the summer, depending on the team’s health.
Lorenzen isn’t particularly good, but he can still help a team avoid being awful, if that makes sense.
Nick Martinez
It’s hard to express just how Giants-coded Martinez is. How has he not been on the Giants already? Maybe he was. It wouldn’t be surprising to see them (re-?) sign him, especially since his ability to pitch out of the bullpen would give the team more options in the event of a happy surprise with pitchers like Winn or Whisenhunt.
Are you starting to get excited yet? Well, get used to it. These will be the kinds of pitchers the Giants will target if their offseason strategy resembles the one described in Baggarly’s article.
Miles Mikolas
Haters will point out that he’s had a 4.98 ERA over the last three seasons (98 starts), but what they’re not understanding is that’s much better than the 5.13 ERA the Giants would be projected to get from their internal options. You start adding up those .15 runs that you’re saving and, uh, you know. Paydirt. Look out, Dodgers.
Zack Littell
Littell has had one of the stranger career paths in recent memory. It’s not like the Rays were playing 7-dimensional Parcheesi when they acquired him, as if they already knew that his future was in the rotation. It just sorta happened, and he’s been a reliable font of quality starts for three seasons now.
Like some of the others on this list, Littell would be a lot more exciting if he didn’t allow so many home runs, which is something the Giants can help with. I don’t know if he left the organization on bad terms, or if there’s anyone still around who even remembers what those bad terms might have been. I’d assume that sort of thing is a non-factor, and that he’ll be an organizational target under this new offseason framework.
Wait until the team announces the deal before you purchase the jersey, please.
There are other possibilities who merited a full capsule, like Michael Soroka and Zach Eflin, but there’s no sense listing every last one of these possibilities. The point is to know that they’re out there, and they’ll likely get several million from teams to be almost OK. One of them will probably be the Giants.
And who knows? Maybe the 2026 Giants will score so many runs with a full season of Devers and a settled Willy Adames, they’ll do just fine shopping in this aisle.
Maybe Keaton Winn split-fingers his way into the All-Star Game. Maybe I’ll stick with my New Year’s resolution this time and get in shape. Maybe I’ll finish that novel. Maybe.
We’ll have to wait and see. Until then, if you take the Giants at their word, don’t expect an exciting offseason. The Giants will be reasonable, which is a synonym for boring. Adjust your expectations accordingly.