Ohtani, Yamamoto, the Dodgers gave the SF Giants a billion-dollar wake-up call

Ohtani, Yamamoto, the Dodgers gave the SF Giants a billion-dollar wake-up call

The last top-of-the-line free agent the San Francisco Giants signed was Barry Bonds.

He signed in 1992.

In the 31 years since, the Giants have won three World Series, four pennants, and six division titles. And the second-best out-of-house free agent signed during that time was Johnny Cueto, in 2016.

The history is clear: The Giants are not a free-agent destination. Never have been; probably never will be.

And yet for the past few offseasons, Giants fans — led on by the organization itself — have been adamant that the team should — and will — bring in the best free agents money can buy.

And yet again, the Giants have failed.

The Los Angeles Dodgers have spent more than a billion dollars to sign the two players atop the Giants’ free agency wish list this December.

If that’s not a wake-up call to the Giants’ organization and the fan base, I don’t know what is.

The message is clear, too: The Giants are a second-tier franchise.

It’s a harsh truth. It’s one that defies logic, in many senses. The Giants have a great history, great ballpark, great fan base, great city and region, and big-time money.

But it’s not debatable anymore. Blame crime, the ballpark, taxes, or director of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi if you want, but for a myriad of reasons, the fact remains that the Giants aren’t on the Dodgers’ level. They’re not on the Yankees, Mets, or Phillies’ level, either.

To be successful in this modern game, every team needs to draft and develop players.

But amid that, there are three tiers of MLB teams.

The first are teams like the Pirates and Rays. These teams at the bottom end can still put winning teams on the field, thanks to their minor-league systems and development programs. But they’re not going to sign anyone for eight figures and they’re probably not going to re-sign the good players they’ve developed once they hit free agency.

At the top end of the tier are the aforementioned spenders.

They, like everyone else, need to develop their own talent, but these teams can also attract free agents to be the centerpieces of their roster. The in-house talent augments those stars.

These are baseball destinations, and there are few of them.

(I’d have included the World Series champion Rangers in this camp, but they’re out of money now.)

And then there’s the meaty middle — the second tier of teams:

These teams’ success will, again, be predicated on developing their own stars, but unlike the bottom-tier teams, they can keep those stars (if they choose) once they reach free agency. Plus, they can afford to spend to fill out the bottom end of the roster.

This second tier is clearly where the Giants fit in the hierarchy of baseball. They’ve been there for decades. The team won three titles in five years understanding that this was the team’s path to victory.

And until the organization embraces that fact again, they’ll leave fans disappointed year after year.

Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto went to Los Angeles because the money and the environment was right. Not only did they want to be paid — the Giants were reportedly willing to match both offers — but they wanted to win.

The Giants cannot provide that foundation to top-flight free agents, and they can’t buy it on the open market, either.

And while there are second-tier free agents — tons of them — the Giants must be judicious in signing them moving forward, lest there be another Haniger-Conforto debacle.

Whereas for top-tier teams the prospects and in-system players fill holes around the top-dollar talent, for second-tier squads, it is those kind of mid-money free agents that are asked to patch roster holes.

The problem is that those can be terribly expensive patches, and what the Giants really need is a new hull That might take a while to build. And patience is not something this market or this ownership group is prepared to provide. That’s understandable.

But patience is necessary.

Source