Probably not, unless they do.
If you haven’t heard, Juan Soto is set for free agency, and all 29 teams other than the Vaguely Central Western Athletics are expected to make some sort of offer in pursuit of the Hall of Fame talent.
The San Francisco Giants will be one of those teams, because that’s how math works, and because it’s not every day, every year, or every decade that one of the greatest hitters in MLB history hits the market a few days after turning 26 (for context, Soto, who has already amassed 36.3 fWAR in his career, is more than a year younger than Tyler Fitzgerald).
So yeah, the Giants will make a run at Soto. But will they make a run at Soto?
During Farhan Zaidi’s tenure, the Giants openly pursued four established MLB stars who were due large contracts: Bryce Harper, Aaron Judge, Shohei Ohtani, and Carlos Correa.
They didn’t have the largest contract offer for Harper, and so he signed elsewhere. They didn’t have the largest contract offer for Judge — or even a larger offer than the one that his incumbent, heavily-favored team offered — and so he signed elsewhere. They matched the preset offer for Ohtani, who wasted no time remembering that money is not the only perk to consider in free agency, and so he signed elsewhere. They did offer the largest contract to Correa, and so he signed with them, or at least agreed to before the violent disagreement between his ankle and the team’s doctors.
The lesson was simple: in almost all cases, the most money wins. This is not a problem unique to the Giants, though given their circumstances — they play in a pitcher’s park and have had one winning season in the last eight years — it’s a problem that they don’t have any alternate solutions to when pursuing hitters. Almost every team needs to offer the largest contract, but teams like the Dodgers and Yankees have valuable tiebreakers like “having a really good team” and “playing in a huge market” and “offering players a chance to be on a really good team” and “playing in a city every player loves” and “being surrounded by really good players because the team is really good” and “guaranteeing you make the postseason because the team is really good.”
The Giants have no tiebreakers. If the question is, Can they sign Juan Soto, 26-year old superstar who hits left-handed and is represented by Scott Boras, then the answer is an unequivocal “yes.” But if the question is, Can they sign Juan Soto, 26-year old superstar who hits left-handed and is represented by Scott Boras without having the best offer on the market, then the answer is an even more unequivocal “no.”
So the question that the headline asks — Are the Giants actually going to make a run at Juan Soto? — is really asking whether the Giants are actually interested in outspending the Yankees and Mets and, well … 26 other teams that aren’t owned by John Fisher. Which surely means starting the bidding at double-digit years and a price tag exceeding $600 million, and I would certainly assume means moving into the $700 or $800 million waters eventually.
As Bryan brilliantly wrote about recently, the Giants are preparing to lower payroll this year. It’s not very realistic to do that and sign Soto, but Soto — like Ohtani and Judge before him — is the kind of player that makes teams change plans, if for no other reason than because he creates that much value in excitement, which is, after all, fiscally valuable (Buster Posey, President of Baseball Operations may tout the value of being in the “memory-making business,” but Buster Posey, Shareholder and Board Member knows that the “memory-making business” is admirable because it’s synonymous with the “money-making business”). “Preparing to lower payroll” really means “preparing to lower payroll unless there’s a financial reason to do otherwise,” and Soto is that financial reason.
But absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. A desire to lower payroll doesn’t preclude the giants from making a run at Soto, but it sure doesn’t provide reason to believe they will make a run, either.
One thing is clear, however. If they haven’t made up their. mind yet, they need to make it up immediately. In all likelihood, valuable free agents will come off the board before Soto decides which team will fund his great, great, great-grandchildren’s college tuition, and the Giants need to know whether to make a run at those players. There’s no need to make a run at finishing third for Soto — if the Giants thought a boost existed for such attempts, they’ve surely been dispelled of those illusions in recent years. Go all in or … well … go all-in on the next guy.
But don’t make a call just to make a call.