The Giants had an interesting offseason.
After winning 107 games, San Francisco mostly stood pat when it came to their lineup after the departures of Buster Posey and Kris Bryant. They did add to an already stellar rotation, signing former Tigers starter Carlos Rodón to a multi-year deal. Still, it was a little head scratching to see a team that looks to be in win-now mode enter 2022 with a lower payroll than they had in 2021.
Giants president Larry Baer joined Murph and Mac from Oracle Park on Friday, and responded to a questions about their budget.
“What goes into the payroll number is not just what you’re paying the guys because there are some deferrals and other things,” Baer began. “Every year when we talk to the board and Farhan [Zaidi], it’s really a matter of ‘Hey, what do you think you need to do the team right, the way you want to do it?’ And we’ll have options out there if there’s a free agent out there, that number can expand. Putting together budgets, he put together a budget that it was the bottom of the top 10 in salary. We don’t need to be out there.
“Some teams have done that. Some teams they are trying to get themselves back up, and they are spending big, big, big. A couple big free agents went to the Rangers for instance and they have a new ballpark. Where Farhan was and where his staff is, ‘This is what we think we need to get back to where we were last year.’”
The lack of spending is part of the reason nearly every projection has the Giants finishing either second or third in the West, with many having them miss the playoffs. It should be noted that these same projections had the Giants doing even worse last season, a year where they won the most games in franchise history.
Baer reiterated that even if the payroll looks low right now, the roster isn’t necessarily complete.
“One-hundred and seven games is hard to do, but obviously we want to be in postseason and so that’s the goal and we want to get there. The other thing that we did last year — and increasingly this is the case — the team you see in April is not the team you see in September. Last year Kris Bryant helped a lot as a midseason acquisition, so the flexibility there is important and sometimes those deals are at the trade deadline, sometimes they are at different times during the year.”
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