San Francisco Giants Free Agency Primer

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Major League Baseball’s free agency period started, and the Giants are expecting to be pretty big players in the market this hot stove period. They’ll definitely have some holes to fill. Let’s take a look, position by position.

Position                Catcher
Free Agents       Bleak
Team Status       Set
Free Agency       Highly Unlikely

The Giants’ most popular (and dreamiest) player is their catcher, which is exceedingly rare. Buster Posey isn’t set to become a free agent for another two presidential campaign cycles. He’ll be locked up until 2023, and for 2016, he’ll take the lions’ share of catching duty. He won’t work there full-time, since his backup, Andrew Susac is showing extreme competence on Posey’s DH or 1B days. Susac isn’t going to be a free agent until 2021, so unless he gets traded (unlikely), he and Posey will be sharing backstop duties for the next few years. Hector Sanchez is a perfectly serviceable catcher to stash in AAA in case of injury. He isn’t spectacular, but his usage is ideally rare.

This is good, as the free agent crop of catchers is pretty bad. The most appealing free agent, Matt Wieters, is going to be a 1B/DH hybrid in a few years and is fresh off Tommy John Surgery. Catchers age extremely poorly, so it’s difficult to find a great one in free agency. The Giants are set with Posey/Susac/Sanchez for the forseeable future.

Position                First Base
Free Agents       Top-Heavy
Team Status       Shallow
Free Agency       Middle-Tier Depth

Technically, the Giants have one first baseman on the roster, and that is oft-injured Brandon Belt (I was very careful to word it that way and not “injury prone”), but Posey plays a fair amount of first base (42 games in 2015). Kevin Frandsen, Nick Noonan and Joaquin Arias all saw multiple games at first in 2015. The Giants have a glut of decent infielders, and they plug them in at first base in a pinch. Behind Belt and Posey, it’s more of a committee. This seems to be by design, as the Giants will have a logjam in a few years when they need to start preserving Posey’s knees by moving him to first more and more. Belt is a free agent in 2018, and that’s likely the last season that you see Posey behind the plate and Belt in a Giants uniform. For now, the Giants will likely re-sign Kevin Frandsen and stash him in AAA, to backup both first and third in case of injury.

The free agency market is top-heavy, with masher Chris Davis leading the way and aging Justin Morneau, Steven Pearce and Mike Napoli following him up. If the Giants don’t go after Frandsen, a familiar face (Travis Ishikawa) could make his way back onto the roster as a backup. Kyle Blanks as a OF/1B platoon option is also on the table. The available players don’t match the Giants’ roster needs, especially since it’s one player teams would actively want and a bunch of retreads.

Position                Second Base
Free Agents       Decent-to-okay
Team Status       Deep
Free Agency       2B-only unlikely

Second base this year is highlighted by a handful of top names and a bunch of okay guys that are definitely top-30 at the position but not ideal.  The top free agents at the position, Howie Kendrick and Ben Zobrist, will probably re-sign with their current teams on shorter deals. In a perfect world, the Giants will get Chase Utley to complete my Chase Utley and Hunter Pence on the Giants fan fiction from 2006, but I doubt it will happen.

The Giants have a glut of young talent coming into their own at second base, with Buster Clone Joe Panik leading the way. Kelby Tomlinson likely played his way into a 25-man spot last season given his versatility, and Nick Noonan is also in tow. Barring injury, however, Panik is the only player the Giants will need manning second for the near future. The Giants will probably pick off a middle-tier multi-position guy like Kelly Johnson or Sean Rodriguez as a bench bat out of this group.

Position                Shortstop
Free Agents       Likely to be overpaid
Team Status       Gold Glove!
Free Agency       Don’t need it

Shortstop free agents are a lot of “named” talent that has struggled recently. It’s headlined by Ian Desmond, and rounded out with Jimmy Rollins, Alexei Ramirez and Steven Drew. These guys all have one thing in common: they’re old. Desmond is the youngest of those four and he’s 30. The list thins out quickly, as former Giant Joaquin Arias is a top-ten free agent option at the position.

Brandon Crawford is one of many home-grown talents on this team, and he had been a glove-first bat until this year. He finally broke out with the bat and he, ironically, finally hit well enough to get a Gold Glove nod. Behind him are a couple of super-platoon guys with Ehire Adrianza and Matt Duffy. Duffy will be playing third, but Adrianza is likely to be Crawford’s true backup. The Giants are basically set at short stop and they probably won’t be ponying up any cash to the available options, except maybe Joaquin Arias. The Giants can’t quit him.

Position                Third Base
Free Agents       Awful
Team Status       “Third base can never die, only the players who play it. OH YEAH!”
Free Agency       Oh Dear Lord

The Giants like to have a lot of super platoon players. They love it so much, they make career first baseman Brandon Belt a 1B/LF. Their third basemen, in turn, tend to end up at other positions (Duffy played a lot of 2B in the minors, as well). They will likely use some of their free agent cash on a multipositional player to fill this hole. Their ties to Ben Zobrist make sense here. Free agency is a disaster, with the cream of the crop being some mix of David Freese, Mike Aviles and… Juan Uribe?!

Position                Outfield
Free Agents       Plentiful
Team Status       Desperately need
Free Agency       A target

The Giants were racked with injury in the outfield in 2015, but Angel Pagan was actively detrimental to the team when he wasn’t injured. Desperation showed when the Giants made a move for Marlon Byrd towards the end of the year and every time Brandon Belt ended up in left field. It’s odd that the Giants declined Nori Aoki’s option, but all indications are that they intend to re-sign him once his concussion symptoms clear. Hunter Pence should be completely healed from his various injuries, and should return to his iron man ways (2015 was the first time since 2007 that Pence played fewer than 150 games).

The free agent market is plentiful at all levels. There are massive stars available, with Yoenis Cespedes and Jason Heyward testing free agency. There are solid everyday contributors available as well, like Dexter Fowler, Ben Zobrist and Alex Gordon. The Giants have been tied to Zobrist because they are reportedly enamored with his multi-position eligibility. With the lineup shuffling Bruce Bochy has had to do over the last couple of seasons, can you blame them? The Giants could also get a fourth-outfield type, like a Gerardo Parra or a bounce back candidate like Denard Span. There are a ton of options at outfield, and the Giants are expected to dive into the market headfirst.

Position                Starting Pitcher
Free Agents       Oh, so many
Team Status       Oh, so desperately needed
Free Agency       Top priority

The Giants pitching staff in 2015 was a disaster. They were a combination of has-beens and broken down former stars, but they were mostly paying off their debts from rewarding the staff pieces that brought them three titles in five years. Now, however, Mike Leake, Tim Lincecum, Tim Hudson and Ryan Vogelsong are all coming off the books, which clears a whopping $43,000,000 off the books just from the pitching staff alone.

Three “name” free agents have already linked, two of them superstars, lopping the top right off the market. David Price defects from Toronto to Boston and Jordan Zimmermann completes the Zimmermann-Scherzer Swap as he heads to Detroit to fill out their pitching staff. Two of the top free agents still remain: Johnny Cueto and Zack Greinke. Cueto appears to be linked to the DBacks, Dodgers, Red Sox, Giants and Cubs (per Jon Heyman). He’s already rejected an offer from the DBacks at $20 million a year over 6 years. The Red Sox won the Price Sweepstakes, so that leaves the Giants, Dodgers and Cubs.

Greinke is also tied to the Giants and Dodgers, so now that the Price and Zimmermann dominos have fallen and the market has been set, that means that the Giants are in position to get one of the two Tier 1a free agent pitchers on the market. If you figure they throw $25 million a year at one of those two, it should get it done. For my money, I hope it’s Greinke. Greinke is notably cerebral and the idea of him donning the Orange and Black solely to figure out how to pitch to the dimensions of AT&T Park is the magical concept.

The Giants will still need another rotation arm, but a #3 to go with Greinke (hopefully) and Bumgarner. There are quite a few on the market, but they all carry question marks. Whether it’s the iffy arm of Hisashi Iwakuma or the corpulence and age of Bartolo Colon, or the Yovanigallardoness of Yovani Gallardo, they’ll all have the baggage of uncertainty. The Giants feel like a perfect suitor for Gallardo, apropos of nothing. Given their ups and downs of their rotation last year, however, I wouldn’t be surprised for them to pull down a more consistent, if not flashy, arm like John Lackey or Doug Fister (assuming he bounces back).

The Giants are set to be major players in free agency this season, likely making one flashy splash, a moderate signing and a bunch of depth signings. They have a good nucleus of offense, but they need to work on their pitching consistency and depth. Both of these things absolutely murdered the Giants last season. And it’s an even year, so they pretty much have to.