Giants should be increasingly thankful they lost ill-fated free agent bidding to Mets

The SF Giants do not have the most sterling starting rotation in baseball. For years the team has been reluctant to spend top-dollar on starting pitching much to the chagrin of fans. However, sometimes the Giants have dodged bullets on top free agent pitchers. It seems that’s exactly what they did with Kodai Senga of the New York Mets.

The Giants were one of a number of teams interested in Senga before he signed a five-year, $75 million deal with New York back in 2022. Some even speculated that the Giants were trying to sign Senga to make San Francisco a more enticing destination for Aaron Judge.

Well, we know how all of that turned out. Judge simply used the Giants as leverage in negotiations with the New York Yankees, the Giants had the whole Carlos Correa debacle, and instead of Judge and Senga the Giants ended up with Michael Conforto, Sean Manaea, and Ross Stripling. If that doesn’t reek of .500 baseball I don’t know what would.

Giants probably lucked out by not landing Senga

Obviously not signing Judge is unfortunate, even if the Giants never had a chance, since he’s one of the best players in the game. The Mets took a gamble on Senga though as he was coming from Japan and that gamble has not quite turned out as planned.

While he was phenomenal and an All-Star in 2023, he missed basically all of 2024 due to injury. He had a solid 3.02 ERA last season in 22 starts but that does not tell the whole story. He was struggling so much at one point that he had to be sent to the minors and it seems last year’s struggles have carried over to 2026.

In five starts this season, Senga has a 9.00 ERA in 20 innings pitched. That’s right: 20 innings, 20 runs. Ouch. The Mets have been struggling as a team but they have to be feeling like the last few years of that contract are going to age very poorly at this rate.

As things have worked out, the Giants have three starting pitchers they feel good about right now in Logan Webb, Robbie Ray, and Landen Roupp. Tyler Mahle has been okay at times while Adrian Houser has really struggled.

It’s going to be fascinating to see what San Francisco does in the offseason since Ray and Mahle will be free agents. Webb and Roupp are the only two Giants fans can feel confident about for 2027 so maybe the Giants will try to swing a trade for a starter like they did with Ray or maybe Greg Johnson will finally let the team go after an ace in free agency.

Either way, the Giants probably have to be feeling pretty good about the fact that they are not on the hook for Senga with how bad he’s looked in 2026.

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