San Francisco Giants: Players with Qualifying Offer that Makes Sense

Now that we know who has accepted and declined the qualifying offer, we can see if any of those players make sense for the San Francisco Giants.

The caveat, for the time being, is that we don’t know what direction this San Francisco Giants team is going — whether they will compete in 2019 or rebuild.

Knowing that makes a big difference for the San Francisco Giants, because if they are trying to rebuild they need to hang onto their high draft picks.

But if they want to compete in 2019 then you don’t really care about that draft pick attached to a player that declined a qualifying offer.

The six free agents that have a draft pick attached to them this offseason are: Bryce Harper, A.J. Pollock, Yasmani Grandal, Patrick Corbin, Dallas Keuchel, and Craigh Kimbrel.

Of course, the Los Angeles Dodgers get richer as Hyun-Jin Ryu accepted the qualifying offer to bolster their starting rotation along with Clayton Kershaw who re-upped with the Dodgers already this offseason.

The new rules for signing players that have a qualifying offer attached to them is pretty confusing now, but I believe the San Francisco Giants would have to give up their second highest draft pick in 2019.

If you want to try and understand the new rules, here is an article explaining.

So if the Giants want to go after one of these players this offseason, they’ll not only have to fork over a lot of money, they’ll slightly sacrifice the future as well.

The San Francisco Giants do have the 10th overall pick in the 2019 MLB Draft, and that is protected, so they’ll at least have a shot at getting a great player early.

But for a team that desperately needs to restock its farm system, they can’t afford to be giving early round picks away.

The players on this list that make sense for the Giants are Harper, Corbin, Keuchel, and Corbin.

I think it would obviously be worth giving up the second round pick for Harper, but not sure it’s worth the risk for Pollock.

It’s probably the same for the pitchers — I think it would be worth it for Corbin, but probably not for Keuchel.

When you sign a player like Harper you could care less about a draft pick, but I think for those other players you have to give it some thought, especially with where the Giants’ farm system is at right now.