Kurtenbach: Blake Snell is coming to San Francisco and suddenly the Giants make a whole lot more sense
The reigning National League Cy Young award winner was worth the wait, because he's exactly what the Giants needed.
The Giants wanted to make a splash this offseason.
Well, the offseason ended weeks ago, but the Giants have certainly made a splash.
To start off March, San Francisco signed All-Star, Gold-Glove third baseman Matt Chapman — one of the top free-agent position players on the market.
And on Monday, they went even bigger, signing the reigning National League Cy Young winner, Blake Snell. The New York Post reported that the Giants and Snell agreed to a two-year deal (with an opt-out after 2024) worth $62 million.
Add those two big-time pickups to a team that already added centerfielder Jung Hoo Lee (at a more traditional time), and the Giants have done pretty well for themselves.
It took a while, but this team makes some sense now.
In a league where so many teams are simply playing to be a bit better than mediocre — 83 or 84 wins should land a Wild Card spot — San Francisco should be expected to rise above that morass with Snell and Chapman in the fold.
The Giants are no longer a team that is simply hoping to be good enough to make the playoffs.
No, the Giants have to view themselves — and be seen — as a team that expects to make the playoffs this season.
And frankly, that’s the only acceptable standard for a big-market, big-fan-base, big-money team.
They’re acting like one. And it was worth the wait.
Oh, and about the money: The Giants added two of the best players on the free-agent market this month because they waited for the market to cool down like a San Francisco summer night. They’ll pay both Chapman and Snell handsomely—as both players deserve—but San Francisco won’t take on the long-term risk that comes with so many big-money contracts.
In essence, both Chapman and Snell are on one-year deals.
And there is no such thing as a bad one-year deal.
Zaidi has his detractors, and most have salient points, but this is good team building, even if new manager Bob Melvin has been left with little time to actually prepare this late-assembled team for the regular season.
These are the kinds of deals the Giants have found success with in the past, too, particularly for pitchers. You can pay big bucks and give a long term to players who you develop from your minor-league talent pipeline — guys like Logan Webb.
But seeing as the Giants have, to date, developed exactly one everyday position player under Zaidi — catcher Patrick Bailey — there was simply no excuse for San Francisco not to have done what they did: flash around a little short-term cash and maximize for the upcoming season.
Worry about 2025 next year.
Win some games now.
Now I’d hold off on buying a Chapman or Snell Giants jersey, but that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy what both will bring to San Francisco.
Chapman is the kind of MVP-caliber (at his best) everyday player the Giants have lacked in the Zaidi era.
And Snell now gives the Giants an elite No. 2 pitcher to follow Webb in the rotation. That righty-lefty 1-2 might be as good as any in baseball this upcoming season.
Despite being a reigning Cy Young winner and a two-time winner of that award, Snell was on the market until Monday because his underlying metrics didn’t align with his on-field performance. This guy led baseball in both ERA and walks last season — a wildly impressive combination of stats.
He was successful because he limited homers. Of all qualified starters last season, Snell was fourth-best in baseball in home runs per nine innings, allowing three home runs every four games.
Teams’ concerns were that that kind of home-run suppression is hard to maintain year over year, even with Snell’s high-fastball, low-breaking-ball arsenal. With Snell’s walks, any regression could be a problem—especially away from San Diego’s nighttime marine layer.
But if Petco Park’s thick air was Snell’s secret to success (there’s certainly more to it than that, but it helped), then Oracle Park should prove to be a superpower.
This fly-ball pitcher is headed to a fly-ball pitcher’s dreamscape.
It’s something of a dream scenario for the Giants, too.
If just one of the Giants’ young starters develops into the kind of pitcher San Francisco thinks them to be — the Giants were so bullish on them, the team seemed willing before Monday to bet the season on multiple young starters providing above-average performance over 30 starts — the black and orange might have one of the better rotations in the National League, as Alex Cobb and Robbie Ray wait in the wings.
Adding Snell relieves some of the pressure that was placed on Kyle Harrison’s shoulders. He might be the man one day, but that day does not have to be today. Keaton Winn can just be a back-end-of-the-rotation starter — the Giants don’t need anything more from him than that.
This pitching staff makes much more sense with Snell in the fold.
And this lineup — which still has some question marks — looks so much better with Chapman and Lee in the lineup every day.
No, this is not a Giants team that can seriously compete with the juggernaut Dodgers in the National League West, but they should be able to play with everyone else in the league.
They should be able to beat everyone else in the league.
This is a team that should win.
The Giants haven’t done enough of that since Zaidi took over — even accounting for the 107-win 2021 season.
And for all the talk about plans and systems and vision, winning is all that matters. There’s no downside to winning.
So bringing in two big-time, team-changing, game-winning players on deals with no downside is a big deal.
It’s exactly what was wanted. It was exactly what was needed.
And for the Giants, it caps off an “offseason” that, with the regular season just days away, is enough to excite you about the possibilities this summer.