The Giants Baseball Blog

 We're less than a month away from pitchers and catchers reporting to spring training, yet there's still a lot that needs to settle among this free agent class before that happens. The question is, will the Giants be involved? After the Jordan Hicks signing became official last week, Farhan Zaidi held a state of the union interview and gave off indications that the team is likely done shopping at the top end of the market, at least for pitching. The Matt Chapman rumor that has surrounded this club all winter long won't go away until he signs somewhere, but any chance of pairing Logan Webb with Blake Snell atop the rotation seems to have ended.  The most important question this late in the winter is simple; are they a better team now than they were at the end of 2023? I don't think so, and even if they are, it's only marginally. Even if Jung Ho Lee pops off with a quick, seamless transition to Major League baseball and shores up center field and the top of the order.

 Over the last month, the Giants have handed out their largest free agent contract and also swung their biggest trade during the Farhan Zaidi era. Both are nice steps in the right direction but may take a little time to yield fruitful results.  As we stand, a week into the new year, I would say this team is pretty equal to the one that finished below .500 last year. I do think the Jung-Hoo Lee signing will wind up a good one at the end of the day. I know they had to go a little higher than his projected price tag heading into the offseason, but with the way the free agent market is inflating, we may look back in two years and realize the Giants got a bargain with this. Of course, Lee will have to pan out here for that to happen but it's a risk this team needed to take. It's true that the KBO is equivalent to the talent level of the mid-minor leagues in America, but Lee dominated there. He's a 25 year-old with high-end contact skills, good speed and good defense. Those shoul