What would it cost Giants to bring Rodón back in free agency? originally appeared on NBC Sports Bayarea
SAN FRANCISCO — As he chatted with reporters a few days after the end of the season, Giants president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi gently pushed back on the perception that the organization has a line it won’t cross when it comes to contracts for starting pitchers.
“I know your history of contracts lines up, it’s easy to have set rules from that,” he said in response to a question about shorter-term deals. “We don’t have strict, hard-and-fast rules in terms of contract lengths or things like that. With starting pitchers, there’s a track record and a history of the longer contracts and you try to factor that in, but he had a spectacular season for us, there’s no doubt about that.”
The player Zaidi referred to was Carlos Rodón, the best player on the 2022 Giants and possibly the best starting option on the market this offseason. Rodón became a Giant because he fit in perfectly with their recent history of contracts, and to bring him back, the Giants would have to make their first huge splash on a starting pitcher since Zaidi and a new front office took over in 2018.
There might not be hard-and-fast rules about contracts for pitchers, but the Giants certainly have shown a strong lean. As he tried to get the organization’s payroll under control, Zaidi focused initially on one-year deals for starting pitchers looking to rebuild their value. Last offseason, the Giants went to multi-year deals, but not by much.
Anthony DeSclafani signed a three-year, $36 million deal that still stands as the largest guaranteed contract given out by the Giants since 2017. Alex Wood and Alex Cobb got two years each, and Rodón signed a two-year deal with an opt-out after the first season.
When Rodón stayed healthy in 2022, that opt-out became an off-ramp to a nine-figure deal, and if the Giants are to bring him back, they’ll need to at least triple this front office’s previous high for a starting pitcher.
The Giants know what the baseline is because they were in this same position just a year ago. Rodón’s 2022 season was better than Kevin Gausman‘s 2021 and he’s a year younger, so even when you throw in his injury history, he’ll sail past Gausman’s five-year, $110 million guarantee from the Blue Jays last offseason.
At the same time that Gausman was signing with Toronto, Cy Young winner Robbie Ray went from the Blue Jays to the Mariners for $115…