The Giants are planning to issue an $18.9MM qualifying offer to right-hander Kevin Gausman, reports Andrew Baggarly of the Athletic (Twitter link). Team and player remain in contact regarding a potential multi-year deal, Baggarly adds, making the move unsurprising. The team has officially announced the decision.
Gausman looked like a solid rebound candidate when San Francisco inked him to a buy-low, one-year contract last offseason. That turned out to be the case. In his first season in the Bay Area, Gausman tossed 59.2 innings of 3.62 ERA/3.09 FIP ball. He put up a career-best 32.2% strikeout rate on the back of an outstanding 15.2% swinging strike rate. Between his swing-and-miss stuff, youth (30 in January) and mid-90’s velocity, Gausman now looks like one of the best pitchers on the upcoming free agent market.
A multi-year deal might be in the cards. But Gausman’s only a year removed from being non-tendered by the Reds in a much more favorable economic situation. It’s possible he and his representatives will take that lofty single-year salary, then, although they’ll have ten days to weigh the market before making a decision. Gausman could also choose to accept the qualifying offer and then negotiate a multi-year deal with the Giants, as José Abreu and the White Sox did last offseason.
He will accept the offer. In these times, 18.9 million is, in fact, 18.9 million.
As opposed to the pittance 18.9 million was before the pandemic?
That good math
Actually giants are banking on it not being 18.9. Not a bad strategy
I wouldn’t have gave Stroman or Guasman a QO. Neither are worth it.
Stroman is. Lifetime 3..76 era. Mets are assured now of getting draft pick if he doesn’t take Q..O. and signs elsewhere.
Mets also benefit if he takes the Q.O.. In the absence of Mets extension, it’s a one year commitment for a solid starter #3 or 4 starter.who is a New Yorker who loves playing in New York and loves attention.
According to who does he love playing in New York?
He has said he likes playing in New York. He made a few salty comments about how he would be better than anyone in the Yanks rotation this year and how they’re big money and could afford him. All in all hes pretty much just playing the game trying to get some hype around his free agency, I think he takes the deal.
I think a lot of people do forget he was a pretty solid playoff starter for the jays, he seems to live for the pressure so itll be interesting if they get into the playoffs to see what their staff can do.
I feel like that’s not a great thing for the giants
This looks like a mistake by the Giants like issuing a QO to Stroman was a mistake by the Mets. What are these teams thinking? They are not worth $18 mil and who would give up draft picks to sign them?
Smart move. Other teams aren’t going to want to give up a draft pick so G’s will have the edge in signing him. Probaby a 3 yr deal with an avg of about 14 per. dig?
I think you’re right. SF will offer a two or three year deal (3/$36). But Gausman is definitely NOT an $18.9 arm, so I hope they don’t get stuck with that.
The Giants weren’t going to sign somebody else with that money who’d make them win in 2021. If he accepts, he won’t factor into long-term payroll. They may be able to trade him for prospects next July. I can’t see downside, except for the ownership’s pocketbook.
He’s gotta take that
Now he has to play it cool acting like he’s not going to accept it for a few days when he’s probably fist pumping in his living room.
Haha yup
Exactly.
Next headline: Gausman accepts qualified offer.
You got that right.
Ugh
well that was a mistake
Why? They hope he accepts it. If he does, they have a good pitcher on a one-year deal. If he doesn’t then they get a draft pick. Win-win.
Except Gausman isn’t an $18M pitcher
Exactly
Maybe not in this pandemic and maybe not in any era. But he’s probably a 12 -14M guy so a 6M bump for the
I accidentally hit enter too soon. Point is, there is a a bump usually associated with a one-year deal
BFD 6m to them is chump change.
Is it your money?
Am I the only who can go back and edit their post for 5 minutes after I publish it??
its a waste of money. i get they wolnt have cap constraints to worry about, but just from a pure value perspective he’s not worth that.
@Dark, I agree he’s not a 19MM pitcher, but my guess is Farhan is trying to keep him totally “in the fold” while the Giants try to work out a 2-3 year deal with a much lower AAV. Gausman might get
10 MM a year in that scenario tho.
@Dark
That’s your personal value perspective… it’s anything but “pure”.
If (when) he accepts the QO, his 2021 salary is locked in at $18.9m. They are allowed to work out an extension if they want but any extension would not kick in until 2022 and he doesn’t owe them anything for overpaying him for 2021.
Not necessarily. They could do a new contract including 2021 by ripping up the QO portion and resigning him to a longer deal. The Sox did it with Avery last year and this is a quote from that article:
“The White Sox have signed first baseman Jose Abreu to a three-year, $50 million contract, the club announced on Friday. The deal includes a $5 million signing bonus, and Abreu is set to earn $11 million in 2020. His new contract comes after he accepted Chicago’s one-year, $17.8 million qualifying offer last week.”
The Giants aren’t going to compete next year so why take the risk? If he Accepts it’s another bone head overpay.
There’s no such thing as a bad one year deal. But you’re just a troll, so I expect you know that anyway.
Agree 100% It makes no sense at all. Total waste of resources . Use the time to give the minor leaguers every chance to prove themselves on the roster or as trade bait.
Giants too far away to be wasting money on nothing.
why? are you a partner in the Giants syndicate and you were outvoted?
If not, then it’s not your money. He was their best pitcher last season. Would you rather have more of the other retreads: Samard-whatever, Cueto, and Rodriguez?
Spot on
Uh, Gausman could quite comfortably fit in the “retread” category.
wrong.
Wow. I didn’t expect that to happen.
You’re kidding me, right? 19M for Kevin freakin’ Gaussman?. Shows you the disparity between the big revenue folks like the Giants and the small revenue ones.
Keep in mind that no Revenue Sharing next year means the Big Boys don’t have to pay anything in, not just that the small guys won’t get anything. That’s going to dramatically impact the off season.
Maybe teams should stop pretending not to have money to spend
this isnt having money to spend, this is throwing it away
Amen, brother.
Not many pitching options this year. Zaidi probably knows the market better than the MLBTR comments section ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Seriously!
Clampdown! Zaidi ‘propably’ knows better? Scorching.
3 years 45 – Option year ?
Wasted money
It’s a good thing the Giants scrounged around some extra pennies by letting go 10% of their full time workforce so they can pay him.
You act as if they’re the only team to pare down their employees for next season…they’re not
Giants FO is cheap. They laid off 30 people from their organization.
no fans mean that no one is buying their $15 Heinekens and $9 garlic fries
the local homeless population are sleeping by the gates to Oracle Park
all the tech bros have left town
its going to be a long road back…
A troll’s comment.
Exactly.
I may be the minority but this seems like a reasonable decision given the giants want him back.
You have to pay a premium for a one year contract which provides the giants with a much needed starter and maintains future payroll certainty/flexibility.
You also get the ability to solely negotiate in spring training to get a deal that works for both the player and club.
He was paid $9M last season and is due an increase, so the overpay is between $3 – $5M?
Argument either way I think.
Exactly!
It’s one year…get over it everyone
Is anybody expecting him, not to accept the QA? Yeah, that’s what I thought
More likely he turns it down than the Expos returning to Major League Baseball.
Gausman would be out of his mind not to accept. Much like bringing the Expos back.
Regardless of whether you think the baseball Giants should have offered it, or not I’m pretty sure this torpedoed his free agency. I think he’s a guy the draft compensation stuff will lay heavily on.
Only if he declines it, which be won’t
Who the heck is the GM of this team?! Really Bad Decision. Maybe I can sell my oceanfront swamp property to him. hmmm
Like…. we all realize how stupid this is right??? Even if they ultimately get a draft pick for it, the risk of him coming back on the team for 1 year at that salary is far too high. Out of 6 guys who got the QO, this one is odd.
I wouldn’t be surprised if he accepts the QO… I mean I don’t see him getting anywhere near that much on an AAV basis considering it was just a year ago that he was essentially being given up on. He clearly pitched well last year and if he keeps it up… he’ll be looking at a really strong market for his services next year should he accept the QO. or who knows maybe he values the certainty of a longer-term deal now and does wind up singing with the Giants (or someone else) for less than the $18.9M this year but for significantly more overall $. Will be interesting to see how teams view him, if they feel he legitimately has reestablished himself as a front of the rotation starter… of if they’re more hesitant given how shaky his track record was in the previous few seasons.
@Jeff he will accept
Interesting that many are upset with this move. Have you considered the state of the Giants SPs without Gausman? Pitiful. Yes…the QO is a lot of money but it was necessary.
@jints1 could they have signed a better SP for $18.9m or less? If so then no it was not necessary.
I have to disagree with a lot of the comments so far. Yes, in a vacuum, Gausman isn’t worth $18.9M. But this isn’t a vacuum, there’s context. And the context of this off-season is that there are a lot of teams desperate for SPs. There are more teams needing pitching then there are available pitchers. That inflates the value of every single SP on the market.
Gausman is easily in the top 5 among available SPs, and $15M isn’t an outrageous amount to pay him, so the difference is only $3.9M. That’s a pittance, which they can well afford, to ensure that they retain Gausman. That is clearly the Giants wish. And I’d trust their evaluation of Gausman’s worth over everyone posting comments here.
This is a one year qualifying offer… The drastic increase & craziness to pay for starting pitchers? Kevin worked out in the pathetic little 60 game tournament season… Why not submit a qualifying offer and give the team the ability to give him a 3-year 35 million dollar deal or something like that… He was a quality arm and will appease the fans bringing him back – giants fans aren’t too desperate or angry … Three recent rings calm the nerves.
It is actually what I expected, the giants would prefer to keep him probably at around 5mm less but you got to figure that with only 1 person in the rotation and still building the farm, considering that gausman is the top name on the market even though you are overpaying you solve at least 1 of 2 problems by doing the offer and teams may not be so concerned about the draft.
If you think you’ll be able to nail down a 3 year deal at a decent AAV with him, at a time when you need bridge starters to get you to 2024 when their next home-grown rotation takes over, it’s a good move. Next, they’ll nail down Smyly and then one of Walker, Ray, or Teheran and then move onto the rotation while the rest of the league sits on its hands still in COVID shock.
And you wake up one day in early January and realize the Giants built a passable rotation and bullpen for the next 2-3 years to go with a decent offense, and will still have a far lesser payroll in 2022-2023 than they did last year. And will still have pieces to move at the deadline for more minor leaguers.
But go ahead and argue about how dumb Zaidi is.
He’s worth 12
I was hoping the Angels would add Gausman for 2-3 years at $12-14 million/yr. In hindsight that may have been a little low. Regardless, it doesn’t look likely now.
Mid-90s, not mid-90’s. Plural, not possessive.
thank you. grammar first, baseball second…
Spahny? Come on . . .