“Patience is a virtue” is an old saying that can get pretty annoying when it applies to your favorite baseball team during the winter meetings. While a bunch of other teams are making trades and adding big free agents, your team is sitting on the sidelines, hands folded in its lap, just waiting things out. Annoying.
Such has been the life of a San Francisco Giants fan over the past decade or so, although this year’s offseason has been just a bit different. The Giants made a splash when they signed Jeff Samardzija to a five-year, $90 million contract to help stabilize their rotation. But they’ve been quiet since, endlessly linked to most of the major remaining free agents with no hint of a signing coming. Samardzija aside, their plan remains the same.
By all indications, the Giants were heavily involved in the bidding for Zack Greinke; in fact, most everyone thought it would come down to them and the Dodgers for his services. Greinke would’ve solved the Giants most pressing issue (adding another dominant starter to slot behind Madison Bumgarner) while also significantly weakening their biggest rival. Greinke would’ve come with a huge financial commitment, one that would’ve likely prevented the Giants from making any more moves this winter. When he stunned everyone and signed with Arizona, the Giants shifted their focus.
They acted quickly to sign Samardzija, who’s coming off of the worst year of his career but is someone the Giants think can strive under their coaching staff and in their ballpark. He comes at a much lower price than Grienke, which should allow them to spread their money around and fill more holes on the roster. And while there are big pieces on the market that would do just that, the Giants sticking true to their M.O.: they’re being patient while letting the market come to them.
There’s a hole in left field, and just about every major free agent outfielder has been linked to San Francisco: Jason Heyward, Yoenis Cespedes, Justin Upton, etc. And while they don’t necessarily need to add a big bat, it’s tempting to think about what the Giants’ already powerful lineup may look like with any of those guys in the middle of it. They could also use another starting pitcher, and have been linked to the likes of Mike Leake and Wei-Yin Chen recently. Either of them would help upgrade the current state of the rotation.
The Giants, though, aren’t ones to just hand out big contracts and hope for the best. They’ve been relatively quiet in free agency ever since the Barry Zito contract, and that likely made them gun shy about handing out gigantic money deals, too. So it’s wise to take things with a grain of salt when they’re linked to some of the bigger free agents out there; they’ve already been dismissed as a Heyward suitor, for instance. If there’s such a thing as a “Giants way,” handing out long-term deals for big money to free agents who aren’t their own certainly wouldn’t be a part of it.
So what might the Giants do the rest of the winter? While it’s unlikely they’ll make a play for one of the bigger bats on the market, it can’t be ruled out completely. They’re flush with cash, the free agent market next winter is much weaker than this one, and the Giants know they’ll be contenders again next year with the team they have coming back. They may find it more palatable to pay a little more for a bat rather than overpay for pitchers the caliber of Leake and Chen, and it’s possible they trade from their stockpile of impressive (yet often overlooked) arms in the farm system to land another starter. It has to be tempting for them to imagine someone like Upton or Cespedes batting in the middle of their already stacked lineup.
The Giants definitely won’t make moves for the sake of keeping up with their division rivals, though. They don’t tend to worry about what their competition is doing, instead focusing on what makes the most sense for their own club. That’s why they won’t rush to overpay marginal free agents that offer small upgrades to keep up with the Arizonas of the world. They have a plan, they usually stick to it, and it’s hard to argue with their results.
Asking for patience can be annoying, but oftentimes it’s the smartest move a team can make. The Giants are living proof of that: they’ll make the moves they have to make, but they’ll be on their own time and on their own schedule. Whether it’s a big bat to anchor the middle of the lineup or a series of small moves to give them more depth, the Giants will do what they think is best. You’ll just have to wait for it.
