Choose your own adventure.
By now you’ve surely heard the news that Santa delivered with the expired coal the day after Christmas: not only did the San Francisco Giants fail to sign Corbin Burnes, but he instead signed with a division rival with whom the Giants hoped to fight for third place in the NL West with.
And perhaps you’ve heard the other news. Allow me to quote my coworker Bryan Murphy, who quoted reporter Andrew Baggarly, who quoted president of baseball operations Buster Posey, who said: “We believe in our young arms, and feel like they are in a position to take some big steps forward. Will continue to look on the offensive side for players that give us a chance to score runs in multiple ways.”
While I still expect the Giants to sign a starting pitcher of some sort, that does seem to be an admission that there won’t be a game-changer. The MLB-proven aces are off the market. Posey knows the team is highly unlikely to land Rōki Sasaki (who also seems destined for the NL West). And that sort of quote certainly seems to suggest that the team has no interest in snuggling up against the tax to sign a Jack Flaherty type (of which Jack Flaherty is probably the only member).
But it also suggests that the team will target an offensive upgrade, which is at least a little surprising. It’s also a little difficult.
According to Fangraphs’ free agent tracker, there are only five unsigned free agent position players who project to be worth more than 1.5 fWAR next year. And one of those five — infielder Ha-Seong Kim — will be injured to start the year and derives the bulk of his value from defense, not offense.
So that leaves four. Let’s examine their cases, in order of most to least projected value.
Alex Bregman
Pros:
- Hits dingers
- Draws walks
- Doesn’t strike out
- Is remarkably consistent — in his nine-year career he’s never been worse than 14% better than average as a hitter, per wRC+, and yes, that sentence was designed to hurt your brain
- Great clubhouse guy
- Ultra durable
Cons:
- Will get paid third baseman money to play second base, a position he’s played 32 innings of at the Major League level, and none since 2018
- Will become one of the highest-paid players in the Majors, just to displace Tyler Fitzgerald, one of the team’s best players last year who is essentially free, forcing Fitzgerald to be the backup for three of the most durable infielders in all of baseball
- Has had steadily declining underlying metrics
Pete Alonso
Pros:
- Dingers
- More dingers
- A whole lotta dingers, and from the right-hand side
- Super cool dude
Cons:
- Basically everything else
- Bad defense
- Same position as Bryce Eldridge
Anthony Santander
Pros:
- Dingers
- Yep, all the dingers
- Switch-hitter
- Get to hear Dave Flemming say his last name seven months a year
Cons:
- Bad defense
- Bad batting average
- Bad on-base percentage
Jurickson Profar
Pros:
- Is occasionally really, really, really good at baseball
- Won’t re-sign with the Padres and kick the Giants ass repeatedly if the Giants just sign him
Cons:
- Despite his 2024 greatness, in 2023 he was the least valuable player in the Major Leagues by WAR
- There were 1,457 players in the Major Leagues in 2023
- Just, like … re-read those last two bullet points and think about them for a while
- Also he hates San Francisco and the Giants fanbase
- Like, really hates it
- He’s in a pattern of being really good every other year and awful every other year, so maybe just punt this idea until 2026
Well, take your pick, I guess.