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Camilo Doval Drawing Trade Interest

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Giants right-hander Camilo Doval is drawing trade interest from multiple clubs, per Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle on X. The righty just crossed three years of service time in 2024, qualifying him for arbitration for the first time and putting him on pace for free agency after the 2027 season.

It was a down season for Doval but it’s understandable why clubs would still be interested, as it could be a chance to buy low on a guy with plenty of good results in previous years. Doval made 166 appearances for the Giants over the 2021-23 seasons, allowing 2.77 earned runs per nine innings. He struck out 30.2% of batters faced, gave out walks to 9.6% of opponents and kept 53.4% of balls in play on the ground. He earned three saves in 2021 before taking over the closer’s role more permanently, earning 66 more saves over the next two seasons.

But as mentioned, 2024 was undeniably a rough patch for him. He struggled enough that the Giants optioned him to the minors for a couple of weeks in August to try to help him reset his head and get back on track. He ultimately finished the season with a 4.88 ERA in 59 innings pitched. His 60% ground ball rate and 28.8% strikeout rate were both strong but he gave out free passes at a huge 14.4% clip.

Ryan Walker took over the closing job in San Francisco as that was happening. Walker finished his 2024 with a 1.91 ERA, 32.1% strikeout rate, 5.8% walk rate and 46.9% ground ball rate. Given the strength of that performance, he probably has a firm grip on keeping the gig going into 2025.

If the Giants could get Doval back to his pre-2024 form, they could certainly have him in a setup role alongside Walker. It wouldn’t be ideal to trade him if this is a temporary low point and he eventually returns to form.

On the other hand, if they expect his performance to continue to slip, it would make sense to consider trades before his value drops even lower. Even dominant relievers can suddenly experience a sharp drop-off in performance, impacting trade value. David Bednar of the Pirates had his name in plenty of trade rumors while posting a 2.25 ERA over the 2021-2023 seasons but the Bucs didn’t pull the trigger on any offers. Now they might wish they had, with Bednar posting a 5.77 ERA in 2024.

It’s also possible that the shift in the Giants’ front office could impact how they view Doval. It sometimes happens where a new general manager or president of baseball operations has a different valuation of a player than the predecessor, meaning their availability changes. The Giants just replaced Farhan Zaidi with Buster Posey in the POBO role and perhaps the new regime will be less committed to Doval than the previous one.

As mentioned, Doval is just getting to arbitration for the first time. MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz projects him for a salary of $4.6MM next year, with Doval eligible for two more passes through the arb system after that.

There would be plenty of surplus value there for the 2021-23 version of Doval. As shown in MLBTR’s Contract Tracker, the best relievers in the league have secured contracts that pay them $15-20MM annually and even solid setup guys can get eight-figure salaries. For any club with a plan for helping Doval put his 2024 behind him, his arb years would be a bargain, though that’s a bit uncertain at the moment with the way his most recent season played out.

Posey: Giants Pursuing Shortstops

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With the 2024 baseball season now complete and the offseason kicking off, the industry is currently buzzing at the general managers meetings in San Antonio. New Giants president of baseball operations Buster Posey spoke with members of the media and said the club is looking for a shortstop, per Shayna Rubin of the San Francisco Chronicle on X. Posey mentioned that Tyler Fitzgerald performed well in 2024 but can play other positions. Prospect Marco Luciano is seemingly ticketed for an outfield role for now, with the club hoping that can help him focus on taking a step forward at the plate.

It’s a bit surprising to see Posey be so frank in discussing a club need, as club executives are normally more cagy and vague in their statements, but it’s not a shock that he has identified this part of the roster as a target.

Brandon Crawford was a fixture at shortstop for the Giants from 2010 to through 2023, but his performance tailed off at the end of that stretch and the Giants didn’t bring him back for 2024. While Crawford got a bench job with the Cardinals this year, the Giants didn’t find an immediate replacement for him.

The aforementioned Fitzgerald got most of the playing time there this year and performed well at the plate. His 31.7% strikeout rate was on the high side but he hit 15 home runs in just 341 plate appearances, leading to a .280/.334/.497 batting line and 132 wRC+.

His defense was another story, however, as the advanced metrics weren’t keen on his work at short. Outs Above Average gave him a grade of -4 for his 594 innings at the spot while Defensive Runs Saved had him at -6. As Posey mentioned, Fitzgerald played other positions, spending some time in the outfield as well as at the three non-shortstop infield spots. Both OAA and DRS were more fond of his work at those other positions, so there’s logic in having him get bumped into a regular gig somewhere else or a super utility role.

As for Luciano, he has been considered a potential long-term solution at short for a while now but hasn’t cemented himself at the big league level. He has hit just .217/.286/.304 in the majors so far, in a small sample of just 126 plate appearances. His Triple-A performance hasn’t been great either, with a .243/.370/.386 line and 95 wRC+ at that level over the past two seasons.

His glovework has also been an issue and this isn’t the first time that the club has talked about moving him off shortstop. In September, manager Bob Melvin talked about Luciano getting more work at second base to finish the season, which was followed by then-president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi talking about Luciano getting some work in the outfield.

It seems the organization now plans to stick with that latter path. Luciano doesn’t yet have any official game action in the outfield, majors or minors, so there may be a learning curve for a while. But given how demanding the shortstop position can be, it’s possible that lining up on the grass could help him unlock his offensive potential at some point.

He hit well through the lower levels of the minors and up through Double-A, spending plenty of time on top prospect lists during that rise. Baseball America considered him the #12 prospect in the whole league as recently as 2021, giving him a 60 grade for his hitting and a 70 for his power on the 20-80 scouting scale. Getting Luciano back on track in the batter’s box is understandably a priority for the Giants, even if he won’t be in the shortstop position.

With the club viewing both Fitzgerald and Luciano as ticketed for other spots, pursuing an external shortstop candidate is a logical offseason goal. The free agent market has one clear top candidate in Willy Adames. There’s also Ha-Seong Kim, but he recently underwent shoulder surgery and has an uncertain return timeline. Padres president of baseball operations A.J. Preller recently gave a vague “May, June, July” answer about Kim getting back on the field.

The Giants could sign Kim and then keep Fitzgerald at short until the shoulder issue is resolved, but signing Adames is a more straightforward solution. Playing for the Rays and Brewers, Adames already has 150 career home runs, a .248/.322/.444 batting line and 109 wRC+. He just finished a season wherein he stole 21 bases, hit 32 long balls and slashed .251/.331/.462 for a 119 wRC+.

Defensively, Adames has received strong reviews in his career but is coming off a down year. He was credited with 10 fielding errors in 2024, despite having only seven over 2022 and 2023 combined. His -16 DRS for the year was dreadful but he’s still at +4 in his career, even when factoring that in. OAA had him at exactly league average this year but had him at +16 in 2023 and +10 the year before that.

It would be odd for Adames to suddenly experience a steep drop in his fielding abilities at the age of 28, so perhaps clubs will view his 2024 glovework as an odd aberration. Either way, Adames is the clear top shortstop available and MLBTR recently predicted him for a six-year, $160MM contract as part of our annual Top 50 Free Agents post. All four contributors to that post predicted Adames would indeed sign with the Giants, which doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a slam dunk to happen. However, it does reflect that Adames and the Giants are a logical pairing, for the reasons laid out above.

The Giants have made more recent headlines for the top free agents they didn’t sign as opposed to the ones they did. They’ve been connected to big names like Aaron Judge, Carlos Correa and Bryce Harper in past offseasons and reportedly made some strong offers. Most notably, the club and Correa agreed to a 13-year, $350MM deal two years ago, which would have solved their shortstop situation at that time. But the deal got scuttled by the medicals and Correa eventually signed with the Twins.

As such, the largest free agent contract the Giants have given out in the past five years was to Jung Hoo Lee. He got a $113MM guarantee over six years but was an exceptional case as he was coming over to North America at the young age of 25. Apart from that, in the same five-year window, the Giants haven’t given a free agent more than the four years they gave Jordan Hicks and haven’t given a guarantee larger than the $62MM to Blake Snell. The latter deal didn’t even play out in full as Snell opted out after one year.

But perhaps Posey has a goal of flipping that narrative. He recently spoke about getting the Giants back into the “memory-making business” and was reportedly instrumental in getting third baseman Matt Chapman to sign a six-year, $151MM extension, a fairly similar pact to the deal projected for Adames.

RosterResource projects the Giants for a payroll of $155MM next year, more than $50MM south of the 2024 spending. Assuming they are willing to run a similar payroll next year, there’s plenty of room to sign Adames and pursue other goals as well.

There’s also the trade market for Posey to explore, though it’s unclear if there’s a better option than Adames available. Bo Bichette of the Blue Jays has been in plenty of rumors but that club’s general manager Ross Atkins recently threw cold water on the possibility and Bichette is coming off the worst season of his career anyway. He missed time due to injury and hit just .225/.277/.322 for a wRC+ of 71, after hitting .299/.340/.487 for a 126 wRC+ in previous seasons. A deal now would be a big sell-low move for the Jays while the Giants would be taking a big gamble on a bounceback. Bichette is also just one year away from free agency and would only be a short-term solution, unless the Giants wanted to pursue a trade-and-extend path, though that would only add to the downside if Bichette can’t quite get back on track. Bichette also has mediocre defensive grades for his career, making it fair to wonder how much longer he can stick at short. Nico Hoerner was another theoretical trade possibility but he recently underwent flexor tendon surgery and has an uncertain path forward.

Posey is only just beginning his first offseason as a top front office executive, so perhaps he will take some time exploring his options before making a decision. But for now, he has shown some refreshing candor in laying out one clear priority for the winter ahead.

Braves Hire Pete Putila As Assistant GM

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The Braves hired Pete Putila in an assistant general manger role, as initially reported by ESPN’s Jorge Castillo (X link).  Putila will be focusing on operating Atlanta’s international scouting department, and he’ll join Jason Pare (whose purview is research & development) and Ben Sestanovich (player development) as the third AGM under president of baseball operations Alex Anthopoulos.

Putila spent the previous two seasons as the Giants’ GM, working as the chief lieutenant in the baseball ops department under PBO Farhan Zaidi.  However, Zaidi was fired at season’s end, and new president of baseball operations Buster Posey announced that Putila would be replaced as general manager and given a new role in the organization.  It perhaps isn’t surprising that Putila was looking for a fresh start himself in the wake of the Giants’ front office overhaul, thus leading to this new role in Atlanta.

Beginning his baseball career as an intern in Houston’s front office in 2011, Putila spent 12 seasons with the Astros, rising up the ranks to an eventual assistant GM title in 2019.  Even after the Astros shook up their front office in the wake of the sign-stealing scandal, Putila remained in his role under new general manager James Click, and stayed in Houston until the Giants came calling in October 2022.  It wasn’t the first time Putila had drawn interest from other teams, as the Pirates and the Giants themselves had previously considered Putila as a candidate for past front office vacancies.

Robbie Ray Declines Opt-Out Clause In Giants Contract

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Left-hander Robbie Ray has declined the opt-out clause in his contract, meaning that he’ll remain with the Giants for both the 2025 and 2026 seasons.  ESPN’s Jeff Passan (X link) was the first to report the news.  The five-year, $115MM pact Ray signed with the Mariners prior to the 2022 season was slightly backloaded, and thus Ray will earn $25MM in each of the 2025 and 2026 seasons.

It’s not terribly surprising that Ray is taking the proverbial bird in the hand here. He underwent ulnar collateral ligament reconstruction, commonly known as Tommy John surgery, and a flexor tendon repair in May of 2023. While recovering from that operation, the Mariners traded him to the Giants.

Ray was able to get back on the mound with San Francisco in 2024, but made seven starts with an unimpressive 4.70 earned run average before spending the month of September on the injured list due to a left hamstring strain.

Pitchers with injury question marks can still get paid but Ray would be hard-pressed to find more than $50MM on the open market. Carlos Rodón had plenty of injury absences in his early career but was able to secure a two-year, $44MM deal from the Giants going into 2022. However, Rodón had just made 24 starts for the White Sox in 2021 with a 2.37 ERA and was going into his age-29 season. Ray, on the other hand, is now 33 years old and has made eight starts over the past two years with a 5.03 ERA.

Taking all that into consideration, Ray’s best financial move was to keep this guarantee. He’ll return to the Giants next year and hopefully get back on track. While it’s probably unrealistic to expect him to get back to his Cy Young winning form from 2021, getting even part of the way back there would be nice. The year that he earned that hardware, he made 32 starts for the Blue Jays with a 2.84 ERA, 32.1% strikeout rate and 6.7% walk rate.

One Giant starter is departing, as Blake Snell has opted out of his deal. Next year’s rotation in San Francisco projects to include Ray, Logan Webb and Kyle Harrison. Perhaps Jordan Hicks will get another shot at starting or maybe he’ll be back in the bullpen. Guys like Landen Roupp, Keaton Winn, Tristan Beck, Hayden Birdsong and others would also be in the mix.

If the club looks to bolster that group, the free agent market will be headlined by guys like Snell, Corbin Burnes, Max Fried, Jack Flaherty and plenty of others. The trade market should feature Garrett Crochet, Sonny Gray and more.

Wilmer Flores Exercises Player Option To Remain With Giants

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Wilmer Flores has exercised his $3.5MM player option for the 2025 season, the Giants announced.  Flores signed a three-year, $16.5MM extension with the Giants in September 2022 that allowed him to opt out of the 2025 season, and the club would’ve then had an $8.5MM club option to decide on if Flores did opt out.

Of course, this all became a moot point due to an injury-marred 2024 season for the veteran infielder.  Flores was bothered by knee problems all year, resulting in a pair of trips to the injured list and a season-ending Tenex procedure in early August.  Flores concluded his 12th Major League season with an ugly .206/.277/.318 slash line over 242 plate appearances, and a sub-replacement level -0.7 fWAR in 71 games.

It made Flores’ decision to exercise his option a pretty easy call, and the $3.5MM salary is low enough that it wouldn’t be a surprise if San Francisco chose to move on from the 33-year-old entirely in the form of a release.  A trade also isn’t out of the question if another team views Flores as a bounce-back candidate, or the Giants themselves might see Flores as a useful player to keep around if they feel he’ll return to form when healthy.

After all, it was just a season ago that Flores hit .284/.355/.509 with 23 homers for San Francisco during 454 PA during the 2023 campaign.  Flores’ ability to play first, second, and third base and his traditionally strong numbers against left-handed pitching made him a valuable member of the Giants’ platoon mix prior to this past season.  The Giants have been rumored to be in the mix for a bigger upgrade at first base, but if such help isn’t acquired, the team could fall back on a Flores/LaMonte Wade Jr. platoon at the cold corner.

Blake Snell Opts Out Of Deal With Giants

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Left-hander Blake Snell has exercised the opt-out provision in his contract and is now a free agent. Andrew Baggarly of The Athletic was among those to relay the news on X.

The news is not at all surprising. Snell was a free agent a year ago and didn’t find the contract he was seeking, despite the fact that he was coming off a Cy Young campaign in 2023.

He eventually signed with the Giants on a two-year pact with a $62MM guarantee. That came in the form of a $15MM salary and $17MM signing bonus for 2024, with a $30MM salary for 2025 if Snell stayed.

The opt-out after the first year was clearly there to give Snell a chance to take another shot at free agency if he could stay healthy and engineer another strong season in 2024.

For a while, it seemed like that wasn’t going to come to pass. Perhaps due to the fact that he didn’t sign until the middle of March and had a delayed spring training, he stumbled out of the gate in 2024 and also suffered a few injuries. At the end of June, he was on the injured list for the second time, the first one labeled as a left adductor strain and the second as a left groin strain. He had a 9.51 earned run average in the six starts he was able to make.

But he came back shortly after that and was completely dominant the rest of the way. He posted a 1.23 ERA in his final 14 starts of the year. His 10% walk rate was a tad high but he struck out 38.1% of batters faced.

Snell has had a few injury absences over the years but has continually demonstrated himself to be one of the best pitchers on the planet when on the mound. From 2018 until the present day, he has a 3.03 ERA and 32.1% strikeout rate, both of which are top ten numbers among qualified starters for that stretch. Among pitchers with at least 250 innings pitched over the past two years, only Tarik Skubal has a lower ERA than Snell’s 2.57 mark. Snell’s 32.7% strikeout rate in that time is also second best, a hair below Tyler Glasnow’s 32.8% rate.

Given that elite performance, it was widely expected that Snell would return to free agency in the hopes of a finding a more robust market this time around. He will be one of the top starting pitchers available alongside Corbin Burnes, Max Fried and Jack Flaherty. Snell is leaving $30MM on the table but should be able to blow past that with a nine-figure deal of some kind.

Giants Outright Donovan Walton

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The Giants outrighted infielder Donovan Walton off their 40-man roster, tweets Alex Pavlovic of NBC Sports Bay Area. The utilityman has multiple career outrights and has the right to elect free agency.

San Francisco called Walton up as a stopgap utility player in September. He appeared in nine games, hitting .136 with one homer. The left-handed hitter has been a depth option in San Francisco for three seasons. The Giants initially acquired Walton in a small trade with Seattle in May 2022. They’ve shuttled him through waivers and continued to bring him back on minor league contracts over that stretch.

A former 5th-round pick by the Mariners, Walton has 70 MLB appearances over parts of five seasons. He’s a .174/.227/.305 hitter over 205 career plate appearances. Walton had a nice year in Triple-A Sacramento, running a .306/.380/.441 slash with nearly as many walks as strikeouts over 99 games. He has a solid offensive track record in parts of four Triple-A campaigns. Walton can play throughout the infield and should find another minor league contract if he elects free agency.

Rangers To Hire Justin Viele As Hitting Coach

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The Rangers plan to hire Giants co-hitting coach Justin Viele as their new hitting coach, reports Evan Grant of the Dallas Morning News. Andrew Baggarly of The Athletic first reported that Viele “appeared headed” to the Rangers even though he had a year remaining on his contract and had been invited back for the 2025 season.

Viele, 34 later this month, will step in for veteran hitting coach Tim Hyers, who was recently hired away by the Braves. He’s been on the Giants’ coaching staff since the 2020 season and spent several years as a college coach and a minor league coach with the Orioles and Dodgers organizations prior to his time in San Francisco. Viele and Rangers bench coach/offensive coordinator Donnie Eckers were both on the Giants’ coaching staff in 2020-21. A former infielder at Santa Clara University, Viele had a brief two-year minor league career after being drafted by the Orioles back in 2013.

There will be other changes coming to the coaching staffs both in Texas and San Francisco. The Rangers recently bid farewell to associate manager Will Venable, who was hired by the White Sox as their new skipper just yesterday. They’ll need to replace him.

Meanwhile, Baggarly added that Giants assistant hitting coach Pedro Guerrero has interviewed for a position with the Marlins, who recently gutted their entire staff. There’s no indication yet that he’ll be hired, but he’s not yet been eliminated from consideration, either. The Giants enlisted three hitting coaches this past season: Viele, Guerrero and former big league slugger Pat Burrell. With Viele departing and Guerrero potentially following, it stands to reason that San Francisco will look to bring in at least one new hitting coach to help shoulder the workload.

Giants To Name Zack Minasian General Manager

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The Giants are planning to name Zack Minasian their new general manager on Friday, reports Bob Nightengale of USA Today. He will work under new president of baseball operations Buster Posey.

Minasian, the brother of Angels GM Perry Minasian, has been the Giants’ vice president of professional scouting since 2022 and a member of the front office since 2019.

Prior to coming to the Giants, Minasian spent 14 years working with the Brewers. He held various titles in that time, mostly in the scouting realm, before getting plucked out of Milwaukee and landing in San Francisco.

The Giants are undergoing a significant front office overhaul. Posey was tapped to replace Farhan Zaidi last month. Amid reporting on that change, it was also noted that general manager Pete Putila would be given a new role and replaced with a new GM.

Various names were floated as candidates, including Athletics assistant GM Billy Owens, Giants assistant GM Jeremy Shelley, Astros special advisor De Jon Watson and others, but the Giants will promote from within by giving Minasian the gig.

Presumably, Posey and Minasian already have some familiarity with each other. Posey was on the field for the Giants as recently as 2021 and later moved into a new role, buying a minority ownership stake and getting a seat on the club’s board of directors.

Regardless of whatever pre-existing relationship they had, their future partnership figures to be important for the franchise. Most baseball decision makers come from a background in scouting or analytics and are already familiar with the day-to-day role of running a baseball club. But Posey’s path is fairly unusual so he might be leaning on his second-in-command a bit more than other front office leaders, at least until he learns the ropes.

Scott Sharp Withdraws Name From Giants’ GM Search

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As the Giants continue their search for a new GM to take over for Pete Putila and serve as Buster Posey’s second-in-command following his installation as president of baseball operations, The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal reports that one name under consideration has withdrawn himself from the mix for the job: Royals assistant GM Scott Sharp, who Rosenthal notes is removing himself from the pool of candidates due to family considerations.

Sharp, 51, currently serves as a senior vice president and assistant GM for Kansas City. The longtime Royals exec got his start in the club as a the club’s assistant director of player development in 2006 and since then has steadily climbed the organizational ladder, also serving as the director of minor league operations and director of player development in Kansas City before eventually becoming assistant GM in 2015. Prior to his time with the Royals, Sharp served as a scout for the Pirates, Dodgers, and Rangers organizations.

That strong background in player development is likely the reason the Giants had interest in Sharp for their GM role. As Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle noted this past week, Posey has made it clear that he’s looking for a candidate with an extensive scouting background for the GM role. That’s led the Giants to pursue plenty of candidates with resumes similar to the one Sharp brings to the table, including Athletics assistant GM Billy Owens, former Dodgers VP of amateur scouting Logan White, and former Nationals director of player development De Jon Watson.

Posey’s desire for a GM with a strong background in scouting is sensible given his own relative inexperience on the front office side of the baseball world; the 37-year-old is just three seasons removed from his playing career and since then has served on the club’s board of directors after purchasing a minority share in the club two years ago. While he’s had a hand in the club’s operations since then, working to recruit free agents and even taking on a significant role in the recent extension negotiations with third baseman Matt Chapman, it’s unclear how much of a hand Posey had in the day-to-day operations of the Giants prior to his ascent to the president of baseball operations gig. With that being said, Slusser indicates that experience in contract negotiations and arbitration hearings isn’t necessary for Posey’s GM given assistant GM Jeremy Shelley’s experience in that role.

Turning back to Sharp, it seems as though the longtime Royals exec may only be interested in making a change if he would be stepping into an opportunity to lead an organization. Rosenthal’s report suggests that Sharp has interest in leading baseball operations for an organization at some point in the future, though it’s unclear whether or not the fact that he would answer to Posey was a factor in his decision to withdraw his name from consideration for the Giants’ GM job. For the time being, however, it seems that Sharp is content to remain with the Royals on the heels of a surprising 86-win campaign that saw the club return to the postseason for the first time since their 2015 World Series championship.

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