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Welcome! It’s officially MLB Free Agency, now the worst time of the year. Baseball has always been an aggressively nihilistic beast, with teams “controlling the rights” to their “property” — “the player” — and always, always looking for ways to game the wildly advantageous and profitable revenue split system to their benefit.
The nerds have reprogrammed us to accept the new status quo of no action but inaction for the next few months, and the Giants, now being on the forefront of analytics, industry-wide, figure to be no different. The current organization is also, as you know, one of the worst pro sports franchises in the galaxy, and don’t figure to be any more competitive than an Single-A team for the next 3-5 years, if ever. Remember: a rebuild is not guaranteed to succeed and what’s genius and cutting edge today can very easily become overnight the 2017 Giants. That means we shouldn’t expect any splashy free agent signings or even a series of mid-range or “team-friendly” deals that can help the Giants in 2020.
It’ll be a lot like last year, most likely, where the team focuses on adding at the margins just to get through the 162-game season. The added wrinkle, of course, is that this year, there’s no farewell tour for Bruce Bochy and Madison Bumgarner and, therefore, absolutely no reason to even give the vague appearance of attempting to compete.
We’re set for a battle of wits between the front office and the game itself. We know the front office is going to lose the battle, to the tune of 80-90 games, but the plan is to win the war — at some unknown point in the future. But this year? It’s going to be really boring, and completely worth your valuable time right now preparing to never get your hopes up or have any interest in any of the following free agents who would surely make the Giants even slightly better heading into 2020.
Scott Boras Division
Oh, the Giants will probably be linked to a couple of these guys, but there can be no doubt that the team has become Boras Corp.’s personal stalking horse. They’re wealthy enough to potentially offer sweet deals, but bad enough that a better team could easily get a Boras client for more than the initial offer, if not less than what the Giants put up.
Larry Baer’s craven need for billboards will surely factor into the Giants’ interest, and as we saw in the Bryce Harper sweepstakes, Farhan Zaidi is willing to play along to craft a deal, but this crop of clients aren’t in a situation where they actually need the Giants. Sure, they’re looking to get one last big payday, but they’re also just young enough or talented enough to be desired by many other more successful teams that are in situations better than the Giants, short-term.
Gerrit Cole
Anthony Rendon
Nicholas Castellanos
Stephen Strasburg
Oh, did you think there was going to be analyses? No. Just a list of names. You get to walk the showroom, but you know the Giants can’t afford to sit in any of these models.
The Giants Are An Unbearably Awful Franchise, And Figure To Be For Many, Many, Many, Many, Many Years Division
These are players who don’t want to spend their last 2-3 years of useful baseball life and earning potential with a moribund franchise and a learn-as-he-goes manager. These are players who might even be willing to take slightly less money just to avoid the Giants. A reminder that some of them will have qualifying offers attached (that’s the *) to them, and this list assumes that all will be declined so that the player becomes a free agent. That’s not going to be the case, of course, but we’re just making a quick and dirty list here, people.
Madison Bumgarner*
Hyun-Jin Ryu
Zack Wheeler
Dallas Keuchel
Will Harris
Sergio Romo
Will Smith*
Yasmani Grandal
Travis d’Arnaud
Jose Abreu*
Eric Sogard
Jonathan Schoop
Josh Donaldson*
Mike Moustakas
Elvis Andrus*
Didi Gregorious
Brett Gardner
Marcell Ozuna*
Starling Marte
Jarrod Dyson
Kole Calhoun
Adam Eaton (team option)
Cole Hamels
Sean Doolittle (team option)
Tommy Hunter
Josh Tomlin
Steve Cishek
They’ll Cost More Than The Giants Would Want To Spend Division
For the most part, you can look at this as players who would seek major league deals and could probably get them. But the Giants probably don’t want to give out too many major league deals, especially to players who aren’t better than league average or over 30. And they certainly don’t want to compete for anyone’s services, not when the team itself won’t be competitive anytime soon.
Eric Thames
Martin Perez
Wilmer Flores
Howie Kendrick
Drew Pomeranz
Julio Teheran
Jake Odorizzi*
Fernando Abad
Cory Gearrin
Brad Brach
Cameron Maybin
Joe Smith
Sergio Romo
Genuinely Bad / Close to Retirement Division
Russell Martin
Adam Wainwright
Gio Gonzalez
Rich Hill
Felix Hernandez
Edinson Volquez
Marco Estrada
Edwin Jackson
Derek Holland
Trevor Cahill
Ervin Santana
Matt Harvey
Wade LeBlanc*
Matt Wieters
Brian McCann
Chris Iannetta
Jonathan Lucroy
Nick Hundley
David Freese
Ryan Zimmerman
Matt Adams*
Logan Morrison
Mark Reynolds
Steve Pearce
Lucas Duda
Yonder Alonso
Ben Zobrist
Gordon Beckham
Yangervis Solarte
Scooter Gennett
Josh Harrison
Chris Owings
Eduardo Nunez
Jung Ho Kang
Martin Prado
Alex Gordon*
Gerardo Parra
Peter Bourjos
Carlos Gonzalez
Matt Kemp
Curtis Granderson
Billy Hamilton*Carlos Gomez
Leonys Martin
Juan Lagares*
Austin Jackson
Adam Jones
Melky Cabrera
Jon Jay
Clayton Richard
Jason Vargas*
Brian Duensing
Addison Reed
Bud Norris
Josh Fields
Brandon Morrow*
Adam Warren*
Cody Allen
Anthony Swarzak
Jared Hughes*
Jonny Venters
Zach Duke
Wily Peralta
Trevor Rosenthal
Seunghwan Oh
Pat Neshek
Shawn Kelley*
Luke Gregorson
Darren O’Day
Jason Kipnis
Fernando Rodney
Yoshihisa Hirano
Derek Dietrich
Tony Sipp
Jeremy Jeffress
David Hernandez