SAN FRANCISCO — A decade ago, the newest Giant was a small part of one of the more interesting trades in recent baseball history.
The New York Mets and Milwaukee Brewers thought they had a deal centered around outfielder Carlos Gomez at the deadline in 2015, and it was so far along that word got to Wilmer Flores, then a young Mets infielder who shed tears as he tried to get through a game with rumors swirling. When that trade fell apart, Gomez was sent to Houston in a deal that brought future All-Star closer Josh Hader and three others to Milwaukee.
Giants general manager Zack Minasian was in the middle of it all. He ran pro scouting for the Brewers at the time, and as they scrambled to get a second Gomez deal done, Minasian wrote the name “Adrian Houser” on a white board, just in case. At the time, the right-hander was struggling in Double-A.
“He was the player that we were able to get thrown in at the end, and he’s turned it into a nice career,” Minasian said on a Zoom call with beat writers Friday.
The Giants are hopeful that the best is yet to come.
They finalized a two-year deal with Houser on Friday that includes a club option for 2028, filling a hole in their rotation. This was the busiest week of their offseason, with Houser being joined by right-hander Jason Foley, who signed a one-year deal as he rehabs from shoulder surgery. Minasian said the Giants targeted both pitchers early in the offseason.
“They are pitchers we think can be impactful,” he said.
Houser will be in the rotation from the start of the year, but there will be a wait for Foley, who missed all of last season. The Giants dug deep into his medical files and talked to his physical therapist and came away feeling comfortable that he could be an option in June or July, giving them a former closer for some high-leverage innings.
Houser and Foley fill holes on the roster, but more help is needed. Minasian said they will continue to search the free agent and trade markets for additional starters and right-handed relievers, but on the latter front, it continues to sound like the preference is to avoid big-ticket items. Most are off the market by this point, anyway, so in addition to Foley, they completed a minor league deal this week with hard-throwing right-hander Gregory Santos.
When it comes to the rotation, the Giants continue to feel good about their young starting depth, but they also were saying the same things last year and saw how that turned out.
“If we can’t develop a couple of those, several of those, shame on us. I believe in our developing system and our pitching group,” Minasian said. “But also there’s something to be said for these pitchers being allowed to go through this natural maturation. If you look at Logan Webb combined in 2019 and 2020, I think it was 20 starts of a plus-five ERA and now we have a true ace of the staff.
“You understand some pitchers have to go through that and I think from that aspect building the depth and getting another starter would be great, but, is it a total necessity? I don’t think it’s a failure if we don’t get another starter, but we’ll continue to look.”
While the reliever market has been picked clean, there are still several high-end starters on the market, including Framber Valdez, Tatsuya Imai and Ranger Suarez. The Giants have thus far committed only about $15 million to their 2026 payroll through offseason moves, and there’s plenty of space left under the first tax line if they want to go big at some point.
They have been more heavily connected to second basemen in recent days, and Minasian said they will continue to explore options, but Casey Schmitt is the favorite to start on Opening Day right now.
The holiday week is generally a quiet one around MLB, but Giants officials do not plan to be far from their cell phones. The roster still needs plenty of work, but they were happy to add to the rotation this week with Houser, a player they were in on at the trade deadline before becoming sellers.
“We really believed in the mechanical changes that (Houser) made. He talked about getting more into his backside and it freeing up his arm path and that led to a two mph velocity increase,” Minasian said. “I think he commanded the ball better, he spun the ball better. He was able to maybe widen his mix of useable pitches. He’s a very athletic pitcher to begin with and I think when things finally got synced up for him last year that’s when we really saw him take off.”
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