Now what?
Specifically for the rotation, but you can extend that question to a number of current events, if you'd like
Man, I don’t know.
After a full season when the Giants hit dinger after dinger, the bats went cold and they lost. They scored 6 runs over their final 4 games of the year; their left-handed outfielders (Wade, Duggar, Yastrzemski, Dickerson) went a combined 1-for-30; their bullpen gave up 10 runs in 17.2 innings for a 5.09 ERA; they stopped hitting with runners in scoring position and also mostly stopped hitting home runs.
And Wilmer Flores struck out swinging on a ball he didn’t swing at. Seems kinda important.
But that’s over. Parts of it were good, more parts were bad, and the Giants went home later than most, but earlier than they’d prefer. It’s sad; this was such a magical year, and while as a baseball fan you know that this is how most magical years end — shout out to 1997! — it still leaves a bad taste in your mouth. Even the Mets being a hilarious disaster, a constant source of joy for everyone in the baseball world, is cold comfort.
Okay, maybe not THAT cold. But not super comforting either.
It’s no use crying about Kris Bryant striking out on a 5-0 count, though. The important question to ask is what do the Giants do now?
Well, technically that’s also no use because I have no authority to make Giants-related personnel decisions and also the Giants certainly have more information about both their players and any prospective free agents or trade targets than I do, but what’s the use of following sports if you’re not going to opine like an infallible genius when you’re probably actually four steps behind the league? There is none! So let’s do that.
Farhan Zaidi held his end-of the season press conference yesterday (along with Gabe Kapler, though all the reporting has been about what Farhan said), and the main takeaways were this: Buster Posey is going to be on the team next year, presumably after they pick up his option; the rotation is the number 1 priority this offseason; they’ve been talking with Brandon Belt’s representatives and are trying to come to a deal; and Kris Bryant will have lots of suitors in free agency, so it’s going to be difficult to re-sign him.
He also said that the Giants are going to try to keep this team together. In Andrew Baggarly’s piece, he quotes Farhan as saying that while the players might have interest from other teams or might want to play in different parts of the country, “We’ll want to keep as much of this group together as we can.”
Far be it from me to call Farhan a liar, but on the other hand, I think he’s lying?
I understand that 107 is an awfully large number of games for a baseball team to win in a single season, and so the players involved must be talented. On the other hand, I also understand that if you’re running a sports team, stasis just allows the rest of the lead to gain on you. If the Giants shell out a bunch of money to keep most of the same team around, they’re more likely to regress than to maintain their performance, and certainly aren’t likely to have a breakout on top of the breakouts they had this year.
Let’s specifically talk about the rotation, the biggest area of need for the Giants (Logan Webb is the only starter under contract for next year). Even if the Giants believe in Kevin Gausman going forward, he’s not going to be better in 2022 than he was in 2021. The same, with aplomb, goes for Anthony DeSclafani and Alex Wood, who both had very obvious flaws in their games. DeSclafani faded hard in the second half, and Wood faded hard after the first time through the order. Was it fatigue that will go away in 2022 or were their flaws exposed? It seems like a bad idea to bet on fatigue that will somehow get solved, and to do it multiple times.
No, the Giants are likely going to fill out their rotation like they did this year. They’ll re-sign someone — probably Gausman, maybe Wood, I would not expect DeSclafani for reasons I am extremely close to getting into — from 2021, and go hunting for bargains in free agency or via trade.
For example, coming into the 2021 season, the Giants anticipated the crackdown on sticky stuff that the league implemented in June, and signed DeSclafani because he was such a low spin rate pitcher that he was less likely to be affected by said crackdown. It worked! DeSclafani had an excellent year, after being undervalued on the market. The Giants got a good pitcher at a low cost, and there was much joy in Mudville.
DeSclafani will not be undervalued in the same way this offseason, so he’s probably not going to be at the nexus of upside and low cost that the team is looking for. Now, again, I don’t have the information the team has; maybe he was screwing around with a forkball in the bullpen and they think he’s just one Spring Training away from that being the best pitch in the league. But otherwise, it’s hard to see someone who the league started to figure out being Plan A.
Also, the Giants will have money to spend. They will still look for bargains, but if they really, desperately feel that Marcus Stroman (for example) has several really good years ahead of him, they can pay the 4 year, $80 million contract (or so) that it will take to land him. If, on the other hand, they think that Mike Foltynewicz has something in the tank and they can unlock it, they’ll look to sign him to a $2 million (or so) deal.
From the outside, there’s no way to tell if the Giants think they can fix Foltynewicz or Zach Davies or Jordan Lyles. But I would expect a couple of those guys to slot into the rotation, along with Logan Webb, maybe Gausman, and a bigger name like Stroman or Robbie Ray.
And remember, those one-year-deal-rebuild-value guys aren’t all going to work. The Farhan Giants have had great success with them, with the 2021 rotation exceeding expectations, and Gausman and Drew Smyly in 2020 both doing well too. But the team also signed Drew Pomeranz in 2019 and he wasn’t great as a starter. Maybe one of the guys they sign for next year can’t make it work and they look to Sean Hjelle or Tyler Beede (don’t worry, in this scenario he’s good) to be the fifth starter.
That’s not even getting into the possibilities if the Giants are willing to include Joey Bart in a trade package. Suffice to say, though, there are around 400 billion1 possible permutations for the 2022 Giants rotation. Even inside the organization, they have no idea which of them they’ll end up going with, and with the upcoming negotiations over the collective bargaining agreement, maybe we’ll feel lucky to have any rotation at all next year. From the outside, it’s impossible to tell what will happen. If you wanted firmer answers, I also wish I had them.
Anyway, I didn’t think about Gabe Morales for the entire time I wrote this, so I’m chalking that up as a win.
Calculation may be exaggerated for comic effect