San Francisco Giants Can’t be Foolish in Free Agent Market this Offseason

While there will be a lot of tempting names on the open market this offseason, the San Francisco Giants have to be smart in how they dish out money.

A lot of fuss was made this past offseason about staying under the luxury tax so the San Francisco Giants could be players in this offseason’s free agent market.

After a 73-89 season though, it’s hard to see them going all out on one big free agent this offseason.

Maybe they make a run at Bryce Harper or Manny Machado thinking they’ll help turn this ship around a little quicker. But I seriously doubt they will be players for either of them at this point.

They already have $128 million typed up among eight players enter the 2019 season.

And $21.83 million of that is already a waste because Johnny Cueto likely won’t throw a pitch in 2019.

And then you include about $20 million for arbitration and pre-arbitration players and you’re looking at about $150 million already tied up for the 2019 season.

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Even if the San Francisco Giants decided to max out the budget in 2019, that leaves them around $50 million to spend this offseason. That would certainly be enough — one would hope — to sign a Harper or Machado, but it doesn’t leave much wiggle room for anything else.

Unless the Giants get creative and find some ways to move a big contract or two — in which case they’d likely have to include some money in the deal — I don’t think it’s wise to spend all your money in one place.

This team is not very good, and they’ve proven as much over the past two seasons. There is more than just one hole on this team.

Sure you can hope that everyone is healthy in 2019 and plays to their career stats, but that’s not much to hope on.

I think the smarter route this offseason would be to let other teams break the bank on the top free agents and then wait for the prices on secondary players to drop down.

We saw it happen with several players last offseason, including J.D. Martinez, and I think we see it again this offseason.

That way the San Francisco Giants can make a multiple of big moves to hopefully put this team back in contention.