Three free-agent starters SF Giants need to avoid this winter

As usual, there is a slew of free agents available on the market this offseason.  With a clear need at starting pitching, the SF Giants will be adding some arms, but which ones do they need to avoid at all costs?

With football being the only major North American sport in season at the moment, the other three sports are preparing various free-agent pitches for the most coveted players on the respective markets. Everyone knows the SF Giants will be coveting one thing above all else: starting pitching.

The Giants have a few other needs to address this offseason, but none more pressing than in their starting rotation. President of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi and general manager Scott Harris have already begun trying to position themselves to retain at least one free-agent starter by extending Kevin Gausman a qualifying offer.

At the moment though, Johnny Cueto, Logan Webb, and Tyler Anderson are the only starters from  the Giants 2020 roster under team control in 2021. Of those three, Anderson was the only one able to manage an ERA under 5.00 for the season (4.37). Needless to say, the team clearly needs more depth, but probably also needs some upgrades at the top of the rotation as well.

After teams made their team option decisions last week, even more Giants potential free-agent targets became available. At the same time, with plenty of free agents on the market, there are also plenty of players to avoid. While the team has a clear need on their pitching staff, there are some starters they need to avoid.

Free-Agents for SF Giants To Avoid
3. Mike Fiers

Mike Fiers will be one of the most sought-after pitchers on the market. The 6-foot-2 right-hander leads all free agent pitchers with six victories in 2020. But along with that comes his 4.58 earned run average (highest since 2017) and 65 hits allowed in 59 innings of work.

Fiers is a pitcher that needs a lot of run support and strong defensive play because he surrenders a decent amount of baserunners. Along with his hits allowed, he sported a 1.37 WHIP (walks and hits per inning) and gave up multiple runs in nine of his 11 starts. That included six outings of at least three runs, four of which he allowed four and one in which he gave up a season-high five.

Additionally, Fiers held opposing lineups to four hits or less only twice. The 6-foot-2 right-hander allowed a season-high seven hits six times (including the outing where he allowed five runs), six hits once, and five hits twice. Furthermore, his .294 batting average on balls in play (BABIP), implies that he did not suffer from much bad luck.

Fiers doesn’t induce many strikeouts as well. He only sent down 37 of the 257 batters he faced this season and has 990 in 1,141 2/3 career innings. This means Fiers relies on hitters making contact in order to produce outs, putting that much more pressure on the defense. As he gets older, and plays in the era of the juiced ball, that’s not a recipe for success.

The only benefit for the Giants to sign Fiers is that he’s a workhorse and eats up innings (he averaged 5.4 innings per start this season). But he’s too much of a risk because of his propensity to allow baserunners and heavily relies on his defense.

The Giants offense can mask Fiers’ flaws. However, there are plenty of better options on the market for next season.

Free-Agents for SF Giants To Avoid
2. Aníbal Sánchez

Ever since he finished fourth in Cy Young Award voting in 2013, Aníbal Sánchez‘s career has gone on a downward spiral. Although his win-loss record has been passable (50-54 in 185 games), his overall statistics are all over the place.

His earned run average ballooned from a career-low 2.57 in 2013 to 6.41 in 2017 with the Detroit Tigers. Then it dipped all the way down to 2.83 in his lone year with the Atlanta Braves in 2018. However, after a decent 3.85 mark last season, it spiked up to a career-high 6.62 this year in the nation’s capital.

Sánchez is susceptible to the long ball as well as he has served up at least 20 homers six times in his 15-year career. That includes back-to-back years of 20 (2011 and 2012) and a three-season stretch (2015 to 2017) in which he allowed 29, 30 (career-high), and 26 respectively. There are few pitchers more directly harmed by the MLB’s new juiced ball.

Sánchez’s hit-to-inning ratio isn’t all that great either as he has accumulated more hits allowed than innings pitched three of the last five years, including 70 hits in 53 innings this season. One upside for the 6-foot right-hander is that his strikeouts have remained relatively consistent around 7.5 strikeouts per 9 innings. He induced 43 in 53 innings in 2020, right in-line with his performance in 2019.

If the Giants are thinking about signing Sánchez to strengthen their rotation, they are banking on him having one of his more productive seasons. Sanchez would greatly benefit from the pitching confines of Oracle Park, but he’ll be 37-years-old by the time next season starts. He’s shown the ability to bounce-back from bad seasons before, but eventually, a career has run it’s course.