When right-hander Marcus Stroman opted out of the final year and $21MM of his deal with the Cubs over the winter to test free agency, he kicked off a relatively quiet foray into the open market for a pitcher of his caliber. The veteran only received publicly-known interest from the Royals prior to him landing a two-year deal with the Yankees that guaranteed him $37MM.
At the time of Stroman’s agreement in the Yankees, Jon Heyman of the New York Post indicated that a handful of other teams were interested in the righty’s services before he ultimately landed in the Bronx. Heyman discussed Stroman’s free agency further in a recent article, expanding upon interest Stroman received from the Giants that he had previously reported while also reporting that the Padres, who had not previously been connected to Stroman, made the 32-year-old an offer.
Per Heyman, Stroman reportedly considered both two- and three-year offers from the San Francisco as well as a longer deal with a lower average annual value from San Diego. It’s not clear how the offers the veteran received from the Giants and Padres stacked up relative to the two-year, $37MM guarantee he ultimately accepted from the Yankees, though Heyman indicates that signing with the Yankees was Stroman’s preference as a Long Island native who grew up a fan of the club.
That the Giants and Padres were in the hunt for pitching throughout the offseason is hardly a surprise. After all, each club made buzzer-beater deals just before the season began to add front-of-the-rotation starters; the Giants inked left-hander Blake Snell to a two-year deal worth $62MM in late March, shortly after the Padres swung a deal with the White Sox to acquire right-hander Dylan Cease. Those weren’t the only additions made by those clubs this winter either, as San Francisco landed Jordan Hicks in free agency as well as Robbie Ray by trade while San Diego’s return for superstar outfielder Juan Soto was headlined by right-hander Michael King.
Given both clubs’ respective needs for pitching, it’s easy to see how Stroman could have fit into the rotation mix of either club. The right-hander sports a 3.40 ERA and 3.59 FIP since the start of the 2021 season and could’ve slotted comfortably into the front of San Francisco’s rotation alongside Logan Webb or replaced Snell in the Padres rotation alongside Joe Musgrove and Yu Darvish. That being said, it’s possible that an early addition of Stroman may have blocked either club from pursuing their respective late-spring blockbusters due to financial concerns, much as the Yankees and Snell failed to come to an agreement following the Stroman deal despite seemingly making progress earlier in the offseason.
For the Giants, the addition of Stroman at even the $18.5MM AAV he landed in New York would have not only pushed them past the second $257MM luxury tax threshold, but also would have put them just over $5MM away from the third $277MM threshold according to RosterResource. The Padres, meanwhile, signed the likes of Yuki Matsui and Wandy Peralta to deals far longer than they were projected for this winter in order to tamp down the AAV on those deals. That’s allowed the club to limbo under the lowest threshold of the luxury tax, which sits at $237MM, to open the season.
It’s unlikely that the Padres would’ve been able to dip under the tax this year while still being able to afford Cease’s $8MM salary had they landed Stroman. Even a five-year deal in a similar range to the Yankees’ total guarantee would have left the veteran right-hander with an AAV in the neighborhood of $8MM, which would leave virtually no margin for error given the club sits just over $11MM below the first threshold as things stand.
