The deals Farhan didn't make

Or, how the President of Baseball Operations job is like jazz

It was November of 2019, and Farhan Zaidi had a choice to make.

The season had plainly not gone well — the Giants went 77-85, and were, in what was becoming an annual tradition, absolutely humiliated by the Dodgers at home in the final series of the year — but there were some bright spots. Mike Yastrzemski looked like a keeper. Donovan Solano showed a strong bat. Alex Dickerson carried the offense when he was able to take the field healthy. The team had found some youngish position players who could be around for a little while. On that front, there was hope.

On the pitching front, there was none. The young guys who the team had hoped would step up in the rotation — Dereck Rodriguez, Tyler Beede, Shaun Anderson, Andrew Suarez — had all flamed out pretty convincingly. Even Logan Webb, fresh-faced rookie that he was, had a 5.22 ERA in 39.2 innings. The upper minors were pretty bare. The team had DFA’d Jeff Samardzija, by any measure the second best starter on the team, on the last day of the season because they wanted the roster spot, which in retrospect was incredibly dickish but kind of funny.

And Madison Bumgarner was a free agent.

Bumgarner, as you’ll recall, had had a somewhat above average Giants career. He’d fallen off a bit since 2016, but finished the 2019 season healthy, having thrown more than 200 above average innings. He was not quite the pitcher that he had been a few years earlier, but his decline had been relatively gentle, and it was entirely reasonable to think that he’d be an effective pitcher for at least the first few years of the 5-year deal he sought before falling off due to either injury or performance.

The Giants weren’t interested. Farhan Zaidi, specifically, wasn’t interested, not really negotiating with Bumgarner’s representatives, and then offering only a token 4-year deal after he’d already received his 5-year offer from Arizona. Farhan chose not to really engage with Bumgarner, who went off to the desert, proved his old boss right, and that was that.

It was December of 2022, and Farhan Zaidi had a choice to make.

Carlos Rodón had…uh, you know what? Let’s skip all that this time, because you probably remember this part pretty well. To sum up: Carlos Rodón had been really, really good in 2022 — per Fangraphs, the second best pitcher in baseball — and the Giants had some interest in re-signing him, but not at anywhere close to the 6 years he got from the Yankees, so off he went to the Yankees.

So far, it has not gone well, if only because it has not gone at all. The last credible rumors I saw indicated that he could make his Yankees debut in July; other rumors, shot down by Rodón’s wife on Twitter, indicated that he’d be out for the year. Either way, he is said to have a chronic back issue, which is something that he and his team will have to worry about through 2028.

Obviously, the verdict is far from in on Rodón’s deal, but thus far, Farhan has again been vindicated. Really, his whole philosophy looks good. Ever since he was with the Dodgers, he has very consistently avoided giving out long-term deals to pitchers. Really, he’s avoided long-term deals at all, unless they’re for superstars. The Dodgers acquired Mookie Betts after Farhan left, but Betts was the logical endpoint of the strategy, where they could get someone with Hall of Fame potential and keep him around forever. The Giants tried that with Carlos Correa, and would have gotten away for it too, if it wasn’t for that meddling ankle.

Really, this pattern also goes back to the A’s, but it’s impossible for an outsider to tell the difference between an executive choosing to be cheap and the owner forcing him to be cheap.

And you can’t argue with results. The Dodgers were a perennial superteam before Betts and Freddie Freeman, and have only gotten stronger with them. The Giants, for all the flaws they’ve had over the last couple years, certainly wouldn’t be in a better position in 2023 with Bumgarner and Rodón on the books. So Farhan did it right. He looked at the available options, realized they wouldn’t help him, and steered clear, preventing unnecessary expenditures with no downside.

There was no downside, right?

Well…maybe not.

Because there’s one more, isn’t there?

It was November of 2021, and Farhan Zaidi had a choice to make. The Giants had a budding ace in Logan Webb, but during their 107-win season, he had been joined atop the rotation by Kevin Gausman, who (per Fangraphs) was a top-10 pitcher in baseball. Gausman had enjoyed his time in San Francisco, but the team was wary. He’d been pretty bad in 2019, only pitching well when moved to the bullpen, and hadn’t been anything special before that with the Orioles. The man had never pitched 200 innings in a season, and they were going to…what? Just break the bank for him?

So they declined. The Blue Jays swooped in, offering 5 years and $110 million, and off Kevin Gausman went to Canada. Too rich for our blood, the Giants said, instead re-signing Alex Wood and Anthony DeSclafani, signing Alex Cobb, and eventually inking Carlos Rodón after the lockout ended.

Cobb and Rodón joined Webb to make an excellent top 3 in the rotation. Wood lost some effectiveness from the previous year and DeSclafani lost all his effectiveness from the previous year as the Giants stumbled to a .500 season.

Kevin Gausman, per Fangraphs, was the 5th best pitcher in baseball in 2022.

Kevin Gausman, per Fangraphs, is the 8th best pitcher in baseball so far in 2023.

The Giants never even made an offer.

Sure, you can make excuses and I might have even made those excuses in this newsletter a year and a half ago, but the reason the Giants didn’t make that offer — any offer — is that they were philosophically opposed to giving a Kevin Gausman-like pitcher a 5-year deal in free agency. They gave one to Logan Webb recently because he’s younger and cheaper and that’s different, but someone with Gausman’s non-superstar pedigree? That’s a hard pass.

And Gausman is the downside of the strategy. He’s the one who’ll make you say, whoops, that was a miss. Because the Giants could have really used Kevin Gausman last year when they had few effective starters and a miserable bullpen, and they could really use him this year in place of Sean Manaea and/or Ross Stripling, and they let him go for nothing.

It seems galling, but on the other hand, look at the success rate. Two out of three is pretty good. But on the other other hand, isn’t that what the scouting department is for? Isn’t that what the number crunchers should be looking at? Isn’t there someone whose job it is to figure out if a player will continue to be good?

Because it seems like over the last 5 years, the guy with that job has printed out the word NO in 96-point font, and all he does is point at it whenever anyone comes into his office. And he’s usually right! But is he actually doing any analysis, or just playing the odds? The answer will be no for most guys, so just say it for everyone and you’ll make a good call far more often than a bad one.

But it’s hard to find a Kevin Gausman. The Giants did it! They already did it, and then they got rid of him. Then they found a Carlos Rodón, and he was great for the year he was around, but that couldn’t last, and they also found an Alex Cobb, which is very promising and currently panning out quite well.

But they could have had those guys and Gausman. They could have had all the benefits of Kevin Gausman, while only giving up about $10 million more than Sean Manaea is making this year, while getting much more than $10 million more production out of him than they are from Manaea. There comes a point when you get what you pay for, and the Giants chose not to pay for Gausman, and now they’re facing the consequences.

On the whole, Farhan Zaidi’s philosophy has helped the Giants avoid bad contracts. But with Gausman, it also made them avoid a good one. Is it worth it? It’s probably too easy to say no when I’m not the one writing the checks. But it’s also probably too easy for the Giants to say yes, when they are.