Free agency is here, and the Giants need pitching — a lot of it.
They need starters, and they need relievers. The pitching staff isn’t the only area that worth addressing, but there is no confusion about San Francisco’s top priority: pitching, pitching and more pitching.
“That’s going to be a focus of ours is trying to reinforce the staff — starting pitching and relief pitching,” president of baseball operations Buster Posey said in early October.
As things stand, the Giants’ starting rotation definitively features Logan Webb and Robbie Ray and likely includes Landen Roupp. That leaves, at the minimum, two spots to fill.
San Francisco’s current internal options are Hayden Birdsong, Carson Whisenhunt, Blade Tidwell, Trevor McDonald, Kai-Wei Teng and Carson Seymour. The Giants will likely get some starts from this group, but they’ll have to look outside the organization for more established arm.
The team already has a fair amount of money tied up, but they should have enough flexibility to address their needs. Webb, Ray, Willy Adames, Rafael Devers, Matt Chapman and Jung Hoo Lee will combine to make around $140 million in 2026, but a good chunk of their roster is currently made up of pre-arbitration players.
San Francisco also gets a bit more flexibility since catcher Patrick Bailey and right-hander Ryan Walker barely missed the cutoff for Super Two status, saving the team several millions. The Giants also got under the luxury tax in 2025 after going over in ‘24, so they should be free to explore that avenue if need be.
The headliners of this free agency class are Framber Valdez, Dylan Cease and Ranger Suárez, all of whom are projected to receive multi-year deals in the range of $150 million. There’s also Tatsuya Imai, who will make the jump to the United States after posting a 1.92 ERA last season for the NPB’s Saitama Seibu Lions.
The Giants, on paper, would improve as a rotation if any of those four elected to take their talents to San Francisco. Yet it seems unlikely that San Francisco would be comfortable offering a nine-figure deal to a starting pitcher, especially with so much money already tied up long-term.
“We’re always open to the situation,” Giants chairman Greg Johnson told this news organization when asked about increasing payroll. “We’ve proven that in the past. We don’t look at it from a cap number or anything. I think we’ve got a lot of money tied up long-term with a lot of players right now, and that creates a little less flexibility. But if we feel like the right situation is there, we’ll certainly bump up in the payroll.”
The next tier of free agents features names such as Michael King, Zac Gallen, Merrill Kelly, Shota Imanaga, Chris Bassitt, Brandon Woodruff, Lucas Giolito, Zack Littell, Zack Eflin and Cody Ponce. The length and value of these players’ deals will vary, but this group will likely land one or two-year deals (potentially three) with an average annual value (AAV) around $10 million to $20 million.
It’s worth mentioning that Valdez, Suárez, Cease, King, Gallen, Imanaga and Woodruff were tendered qualifying offers. If they don’t accept the qualifying offer (one-year, $22.025 million) and sign with a new team, their old team receives draft compensation.
There’s also the “future Hall of Famer in the twilight of their career” subcategory, the two entrants being Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer.
Verlander, who turns 43 in February, proved he still has gas in the tank last season with the Giants. Despite making minimal progress in his quest for 300 career wins, Verlander bounced back from an awful, injury-plagued 2024 to post a 3.85 ERA over 152 innings, getting better as the season went along.
Scherzer, 41, is coming off his own rough season (5.19 ERA, 17 starts) defined by injury, but a one-year deal in San Francisco shouldn’t be discounted given his relationship with new manager Tony Vitello. Scherzer’s freshman year at Missouri coincided with Vitello’s first year as a full-time assistant, and Vitello helped Scherzer grow as a pitcher during his time with the program.
“They kind of grew up together in our program,” said Tim Jamieson, Missouri’s head coach from 1995-2016, last month. “Max would go to the end of the world for Tony because of what Tony did for him as a coach, not necessarily developing him as a pitcher but developing him as a person. Max had things he had to clean up from the baseball side of things, but I think who he became as a person, he owes a lot of that to Tony.”
Acquiring relievers will require more creativity. The Giants haven’t dolled out big money to a reliever since signing Mark Melancon to a four-year, $62 million deal, and the team got nothing close to its return on that investment. Edwin Díaz and Robert Suarez will get paid handsomely this winter, but that money likely won’t be coming from the Giants.
Walker is likely a lock for next year’s bullpen (especially since he’s still making pre-arbitration money) and left-hander Erik Miller should have a good shot despite missing the latter half of the season due to a left elbow sprain. From there, the rest of the bullpen is up in the air.
The Giants recently claimed left-hander Reiver Sanmartin off waivers from the Cincinnati Reds, and it’s possible the team continues finding creative ways to find relievers. Whether it’s waiver claims or minor-league free agency or the Rule 5 Draft, there are multiple avenues for San Francisco to add bullpen arms without spending millions in free agency.
Still, there is one free-agent reliever who makes sense for the Giants: Tyler Rogers.
San Francisco traded Rogers at last season’s trade deadline, but it wouldn’t be shocking if the Giants reunited with the submariner this offseason. Rogers turns 35 in December, but no reliever has thrown more innings or appeared in more games over the last five seasons than Rogers.
The Giants have yet to execute a trade or sign a free agent, but they’ve had an active offseason up to this point. They’ve fired Bob Melvin, hired Vitello (and Bruce Bochy) and parted ways with most of last year’s coaching staff. With free agency underway, Posey and Co. will turn their attention to fielding Vitello’s first major-league roster.