The San Francisco Giants did not land their man.
Zack Greinke was the team's No. 1 target this offseason, locking them into a battle with the Los Angeles Dodgers for the ace's services. But the Arizona Diamondbacks undercut both division rivals to swipe Greinke, leaving both to reassemble their offseason game plans.
The Giants have already executed part of theirs by signing free-agent right-hander Jeff Samardzija to a five-year contract for $90 million Saturday. The deal is pending a physical. It's not the impact move that Greinke would have been, but it just might be a solid start to building a good rotation behind ace Madison Bumgarner for the next handful of years.
History shows the soon-to-be 31-year-old is not a consistent front-of-the-rotation starter, but it also tells that he is capable and talented enough to be one.
“Even in tough times [last year] he still put 200-plus innings on the board,” Giants general manager Bobby Evans told Alex Pavlovic of CSN Bay Area. “You look at his track record, you look at his presence that he brings on the mound, you look at back-to-back-to-back 200-plus [inning] seasons, and you realize this guy is a force to be reckoned with. There’s a reason why we targeted him and a reason why we focused on him as one of our top priorities.”
Samardzija entered last season with massive earning potential coming off a year in which he had a 2.99 ERA and made his first All-Star team pitching for the Chicago Cubs and Oakland A’s.
But after being traded to the Chicago White Sox in his contract year, Samardzija struggled for most of the summer, putting up a 4.96 ERA and 4.23 FIP in 214 innings. He also led the American League with 228 hits allowed, 29 home runs allowed and 118 earned runs allowed. His strikeout rate also dropped to a career-low 6.9 strikeouts per nine innings as a full-time starter.
Things could change with the Giants, and in the National League West, where he will pitch in three parks that favor pitchers, including his new home, AT&T Park. The innings totals—647.1 over the last three seasons—are also attractive to the Giants, a team that dealt with several injuries in their rotation to just about everyone not named Madison.
And the innings to come should be aplenty since Samardzija spent his first four seasons in the majors mostly as a bullpen weapon.
“You’ve got a guy who has made the conversion from reliever to starter and has done that well,” Evans told Pavlovic. “There are a lot of innings left in that arm.”
The quality of those innings is unknown and unpredictable at this point in Samardzija’s career. Last season highlighted those facts and severely limited his value on the open market.
Samardzija is not seen as a front-line starter at this point, and that is why his signing is a definitive downgrade from what the Giants were shooting for with Greinke. But that does not mean the deal is destined to be a bust.
The Giants believe in Samardzija’s stuff. He still carries a fastball that sits at 94 mph and topped out at about 98. The Giants have one of the more renowned pitching coaches in the game in Dave Righetti, a big reason why they believe they can get better results out of Samardzija.
The Giants also feel, according to Pavlovic, that Samardzija suffered last season because he pitched in front of the worst defense in the majors. The White Sox had a minus-41.5 overall defensive rating, according to Fangraphs, easily the worst in the game. The Giants were at 30.2, the second best in the majors behind the Kansas City Royals.
However, Samardzija cannot be the Giants’ only get this offseason. While the club might be confident it can fix whatever has made him inconsistent, it would be foolish to totally rely on that for next season, especially with the Dodgers already being linked to Johnny Cueto, Kenta Maeda and Hisashi Iwakuma and with the Diamondbacks having Greinke in their rotation.
Since the Giants will not be spending the money on Greinke, they might use it to not only ink Samardzija, but also possibly an arm like Mike Leake, who pitched for the Giants last season.
Samardzija is not Greinke, obviously. But the signing shows the Giants are serious about upgrading to stay in the mix in the NL West with the Dodgers and Diamondbacks. And they might not be done adding pieces.
That being the case, losing out on Greinke and adding Samardzija does not look as bad. And this deal could be the start of the Giants again constructing a quality rotation that keeps them among the league’s elite.
All quotes, unless otherwise specified, have been acquired firsthand by Anthony Witrado. Follow Anthony on Twitter @awitrado and talk baseball here.
Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com
- Login to post comments