SF Giants: Should They Have Traded for Blake Snell?

The San Diego Padres traded for Blake Snell in the first of a flurry of recent moves. Should the SF Giants have tried to steal him away from San Diego?

Last Sunday night, the San Diego Padres set the hot stove ablaze this offseason. They acquired Tampa Bay Rays ace Blake Snell and have since acquired big names like Yu Darvish and Ha Seong Kim. The moves have put the SF Giants even further in the Padres’ and Los Angeles Dodgers’ wakes.

Hold on, did I just hear Trevor Bauer is heading to San Diego as well, per an anonymous phantom sportswriter? Poor MacKenzie Gore (currently MLB Pipeline’s 3rd overall ranked prospect) might never make it to the big leagues now.

Wait. No. False Alarm. My bad. For a moment there, I got a bit too mesmerized by the Padres’ incoming frontline starting pitching cornucopia.

Luckily, the Giants only need three to five more potential aces to catch up to the Padres.

But imagine for a moment if it was the Giants who had recently landed Blake Snell.

At the very least, they would be looking at one less ace in a division-rivals rotation. Snell also would likely have been a massive upgrade to their rotation for the next three years. Still, the cost may have been steep.

All things considered, could it have made sense for San Francisco to trade for Snell in their attempt to make up some of that ground between them and the two NL West juggernauts?

Let’s look at why the Giants should have made an aggressive push to acquire Snell, but consider the reasons why their president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi and general manager Scott Harris opted not to.