The Giants didn’t trade for Juan Soto, but it doesn’t sound like former Giant Hunter Pence is all that bummed about it.
On Monday before the Padres landed the slugger, Pence told Tolbert & Copes why he didn’t think the Giants trading for Soto was a good idea.
“I’m an absolute no on Juan Soto and giving up the blue chip prospects for him,” Pence said on KNBR. “And not because I don’t love Juan Soto or think that he’s great, I just don’t think you win championships on a position player. Everyone says we need a star. No, all we need is to win. When you win everyone becomes a star, and you win off of pitching and solid defense. So when you start getting a couple bullpen arms that seal the deal, you lock up the defense and the outfield and maybe bring in a catcher.”
Interestingly, the Giants didn’t do much to improve either their pitching or their defense at the deadline. San Francisco offloaded Darin Ruf, Curt Casali and a few pitchers who didn’t see action with the big league club, for a haul of relatively unknown prospects and J.D. Davis, a designated hitter type.
So for the Giants to win according to Pence, they will simply have to have their current players improve.
It makes sense that Pence would be against the going all in for a star approach. None of the Giants’ three World Series teams won using that strategy.
“We won our championships not on the talent of our hitting, but we played defense and we had bullpen arms that shut you down and we had starters that could take on your No. 1 or your No. 2 no matter what,” Pence continued. “The Giants have that recipe, they’re very close. The stars come after that happens.
“To me putting that much investment into a position player, we’ve seen what’s happened with the Angels and Mike Trout. It seems appealing and eye candy and exciting, but when they’re winning, everyone is cool.”
Ironically, the Giants didn’t even have the prospect haul to land Soto if they wanted to. Farhan Zaidi made it clear on Tuesday that they were interested in the former MVP, but that other teams, notably the Padres, had more attractive packages.
Listen to the full interview below. You can listen to every KNBR interview on our podcast page at knbr.com/podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Catch Tolbert & Copes weekdays from 2 – 6 p.m. on KNBR 104.5 / 680 and streaming live on KNBR.com.