Blake Snell is the best available free-agent pitcher for the Giants’ roster needs*.
Our own Tim Britton has been reliable with his contract projections for several years now, and he has Snell getting a four-year deal for $110 million. Cy Young-caliber pitchers usually get long-term deals in free agency, with the general understanding that the last couple seasons, at least, are expected to be less cost-effective. While I wouldn’t put $28 million of my own money to predict that Snell is still pitching at a high level in 2028, I would put down $5 to win $20.
Snell is almost certainly not coming back to the Giants. Call it an educated guess based on a variety of factors, such as the timing of the offseason, his agent, the Giants’ new president of baseball operations, the other pitchers on the free-agent market and the Giants’ willingness to spend ace-type money on a pitcher who was an ace only for a couple of months last season. Andrew Baggarly recently wrote, “With Blake Snell almost certainly headed elsewhere after opting out of his $30 million contract for next season,” as if it were a given. Probably because it is.
It’s understandable, but it’s also a shame. I’ll write a lot of free-agent previews over the next month, and most of them will be for players who won’t sign with the Giants — I once spent hours on an Edwin Díaz profile, fer cryin’ out loud — so it’s still worth looking at the pros and cons of Snell, the most talented Giants player to explore free agency in a long, long time. I’m on a bit of an island here, but maybe I can convince you, too.
* Unless there’s some sort of young “super pitcher” from a different country who decides to come to the majors. But what are the odds of that?
Why the Giants would want Snell
If you’re reading this, you can probably appreciate the Giants’ robust history with starting pitchers. Juan Marichal is in the Hall of Fame. Tim Lincecum won two Cy Youngs. The Giants have sent seven pitchers to start for the National League in the All-Star Game. Heck, if you’re a baseball fan in general, that means you’re statistically likely to be 94 years old. You might have watched Con Dempsey on the 1948 San Francisco Seals, who went 112-76. Which is simply too much baseball.
Snell’s second half was the best half of baseball from a pitcher in Giants history with a minimum of 10 starts. That’s true if you go by ERA, but it’s true if you use batting average, slugging percentage, OPS, and the difference between his OPS and the league’s (sOPS+). Snell faced 260 batters in the second half, and he allowed 31 hits. Only seven of them went for extra bases. He dominated opposing batters like few pitchers have in history. Again, we’re talking about the pitcher who won the Cy Young the season before. That guy is available for nothing but money. The draft-pick penalty was already paid to sign him last season. It’s just money this season.
He might not even get a six- or seven-year deal. That isn’t a given, and you can read more about it in the next section. The problem with signing an ace at ace prices is that you worry about how long the contracts are. The fear of an onerous contract affecting a team in 2024 or 2025 was the only reason there were debates about whether Gerrit Cole would fit with the Giants (of course he would have) or if Zack Wheeler made sense for a reloading team (he made sense for every team, but especially the Giants). The only reason a person wouldn’t want one of those pitchers on their team is because of the harm their contracts might do to future roster-building plans.
I suggested the Giants should extend Snell back in July, which was before he went bezerk, with the idea that the Giants had a chance to get an ace without as much contract baggage. If there’s still a chance to do something similar, even for four years, that would elevate him over some of his peers, like Corbin Burnes or Max Fried.
But don’t forget about the part about Snell being better at pitching than everyone else available. His second half was one of the most absurd stretches of pitching we’ll see for a long, long time. He would make the Giants better than almost any active pitcher — much less any available pitcher — could, and that counts for an awful lot.
Why the Giants wouldn’t want Snell
You think Scott Boras is crossing his fingers and hoping he can get four years for Snell? Maybe he’ll consider it in March or April if he has to, but that’s not where his head is right now. He’s talking ownership stakes and private islands with the teams calling this early. It’s not out of the question that he’ll get one of them on the hook, either. You watched the postseason. There are a lot of teams that need better pitching. Some of them are rich. Like, Giants-rich. A couple of them are even richer, if you can imagine it.
The only chance for the Giants is if Snell really wants to stay, even if it costs him a little money or a chance to join a better team. That’s what Matt Chapman did. It is most certainly not what Snell is going to do. His decision to sit out his final start of the season might have been the right choice for him, cynically speaking, but it wasn’t the move of someone secretly desperate to stay. The Giants will need to take a number and get in line.
This is a problem for a lot of reasons, but the main one is that the Giants are far less likely to play the Boras game. The Giants are likely to move quickly and decisively with roster decisions this offseason, in no small part because of what happened last season. It turns out that spring training is actually important when it comes to a player’s timing and routine. Snell’s first half was a disaster, but don’t forget Matt Chapman’s first month, either. He looked cooked cooked, not just regular cooked.
More than the obvious, though, is that a late roster addition gives a team less time for everything else. Less time for the analytics department to figure out the best way to improve these players. Less time to explain those plans to the players. Less time to settle the rest of the roster. The Giants don’t want to deal with that again, and I don’t blame them.
For as excellent as Snell was in his final 10 starts, he was still a 2 WAR player according to Baseball-Reference. If his range of potential outcomes is somewhere between 1 and 7 WAR, there are others who can at least offer a chance at every value on that spectrum, albeit with lower odds at the top. Some of these pitchers might require the dreaded fifth or sixth year, but at least there’s a chance they’ll sign around the Winter Meetings, which makes them likelier to add value in 2025. And what they’re expected to do in the short term is the biggest reason why they’re getting so much in the first place.
There’s also a chance that the Giants are less than entranced with Boras. More so than usual, even. Here’s Buster Posey cracking wise about Scott Boras’ claims that his agency was more involved in the Chapman negotiations than Baggs’ reporting suggested:
“If you wanna know about the Matt Chapman deal you can just read all of Boras’ quotes, he’ll tell you exactly the way that it went.” 😂
Buster Posey pokes fun at Scott Boras and clarifies his role behind getting the Chapman extension done pic.twitter.com/nDTQmmcoSk
— KNBR (@KNBR) October 1, 2024
There’s also Snell’s decision to skip the final start, which nobody was exactly thrilled with, even if it made business sense. Don’t forget that Snell took up a roster spot for 11 days before his first appearance, rather than get a tuneup start in the minors, which wasn’t the most team-friendly decision. Then there was the part where he was vocal about feeling rushed back from his injury, which didn’t sit well with a lot of people.
He’s a player who doesn’t want to do any favors for ownership that he doesn’t have to. As a host of the only pro-labor podcast on the internet, I respect his position. Doesn’t mean that he’s an easy player for a front office to work with or plan for, though.
Verdict
My goal was to convince you that Snell was the best option for the Giants because of a combination of talent and likely contract demands. Instead, I managed to convince myself that it’s best to move on. Sometimes, these free-agent profiles are for me, not you.
For about 10 starts, Snell was incredible, and he made Giants baseball as must-see as it’s been since 2021. We’ll always have the no-hitter:
Very cool. Worth every penny. Or at least a decent chunk of the pennies. Maybe, like, a car trunk filled with the pennies. Either way, Snell’s very strange, very fun time with the Giants will be remembered fondly. And it’s almost certainly over.
(Top photo of Snell with Boras last spring: Ross D. Franklin / Associated Press)
