Latest On Giants’ Offseason Targets

The Giants are among the teams looking to upgrade at second base, write Ken Rosenthal and Katie Woo of The Athletic. The keystone and right field are the obvious needs on the position player side for Buster Posey’s front office.

Tyler Fitzgerald entered the season as San Francisco’s starting second baseman. He’d hit .280/.334/.497 over 96 games during an impressive 2024 rookie campaign. A 32% strikeout rate always made him a clear regression candidate, however, and the Louisville product stumbled to a .217/.278/.327 line this past season. Fitzgerald lost his hold on the starting job by the end of June and spent most of the second half in Triple-A.

Casey Schmitt now holds the top spot on the depth chart. Schmitt had a league average .237/.305/.401 slash line over 348 plate appearances. That’s carried largely by a scorching two-week stretch in June, and he hit .227/.282/.402 after the All-Star Break. Light-hitting utility player Christian Koss is the only other option on the 40-man roster. Giants second basemen had a .217/.273/.343 showing on the season overall.

There’s not a whole lot available in free agency. There’s a clear roster fit for Bo Bichette if he’s willing to move to the other side of the second base bag, but the Giants already have three long-term deals in the infield for Matt Chapman, Willy Adames and Rafael Devers. They could make a run at Ha-Seong Kim, who declined a $16MM player option and is one of the better shortstops available in a barren class.

Jorge Polanco’s knee injuries make him an iffy bet for everyday playing time at second base. The Giants won’t have many designated hitter at-bats available barring a surprising Bryce Eldridge trade. Luis Arraez would be an offensive upgrade but has been pushed mostly to first base over the past two seasons because of his lack of range. Utility pieces Willi Castro, Isiah Kiner-Falefa, Luis Rengifo and Adam Frazier have limited upside.

There’s a little more available on the trade market. The Rays are willing to consider offers on Brandon Lowe, who’ll make $11.5MM in the final year of his contract. More than half the league should have interest in Cardinals utilityman Brendan Donovan. The Giants have an interesting group of controllable but not quite proven arms (e.g Landen Roupp, Hayden Birdsong, Trevor McDonald, Blade Tidwell, Carson Whisenhunt) that could get the ball rolling in talks with the Cards, who are focusing on pitching in their trade returns. That’s theoretically also true if they want to make a push for Ketel Marte, though it’d be shocking if the Diamondbacks deal him within the division.

San Francisco is balancing the positional questions against their needs on the pitching staff. Posey called pitching the priority at the beginning of the offseason. Chairman Greg Johnson and general manager Zack Minasian each subsequently downplayed the team’s desire to make a long-term investment on the pitching side. ESPN’s Buster Olney suggested over the weekend that the club was more involved on mid-tier free agent starters.

This afternoon, Andrew Baggarly of The Athletic also downplayed the likelihood of a huge splash for a starter. Baggarly writes that the Giants do not expect to sign Tatsuya Imai and are unlikely to make a nine-figure commitment to any other top-tier starter (e.g. Framber Valdez, Ranger Suárez). That aligns with Olney’s reporting about the Giants playing in the middle of the market.

Baggarly adds that the Giants are also looking to rebuild a bullpen that was hit hard this summer. They traded away Camilo Doval and Tyler Rogers (though the latter would have been a free agent anyhow) and lost breakout righty Randy Rodríguez to Tommy John surgery. Their only acquisition so far this offseason has been a one-year flier on lefty reliever Sam Hentges, who hasn’t thrown an MLB pitch since July 2024 because of shoulder and knee surgeries.