It’s December. The San Francisco Giants came away from MLB's Winter Meetings sad that they did not get their guy. The Golden State Warriors are off to a rough start amid off-court drama. And there are people doubting this Brock Purdy kid playing quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers.
What year are we in again: 2022 or 2023? They all blend together after a while.
The feelings of déjà vu are very real for the Giants, while maybe less so for the Warriors and much less so for the 49ers. But this column is about the déjà vu Giants, who once again kicked off the offseason with desires to land a mega-star in free agency, only to see that star stay right where they were, because of course they were going to stay.
Last year it was Aaron Judge staying in New York, more specifically with the Yankees, after the Giants pushed hard (and finished third) for his services. This year, it was Shohei Ohtani deciding to stay where he was, but not in the same way Judge did. Ohtani decided to stay in Los Angeles, but also make things worse by signing with the Dodgers.
The Winter Meetings are quickly becoming an yearly tradition of anguish for Giants fans. If the Giants are not being spurned at the Meetings themselves, as they were with Judge last year, they are finding different and fun ways of falling flat at other points in the offseason, like with Carlos Correa last winter, or Bryce Harper during the spring of 2019.
But with Ohtani, it feels worse, and it is solely because he chose the Dodgers. If he chose the Not Dodgers, Giants fans would be less mad, maybe even a bit relieved. But instead Giants fans are mad. Whether it be at Ohtani himself, the Dodgers (in fairness one must always be mad at the Dodgers) or the most popular man in town to be mad at, Farhan Zaidi.
And that anger is justified in a sense. Farhan Zaidi has become the face for all that is wrong and bad about the Giants over the last 5 years since his arrival, producing only one winning season that we sometimes wonder if it even happened or if it was just some bizarre fever dream (Brandon Crawford was THIRD in the MVP voting? Come on, that had to be an AI simulation).
There is a belief amongst Giants fans that Farhan Zaidi cannot close big deals, flailing them away instead. Coffee is for closers, and flailing is for Farhan.
But I am going to zig here when most would choose to zag. I am going to let Farhan Zaidi get a pass for this Ohtani debacle and not direct any (new) ire towards him. I cannot be mad at Farhan Zaidi for making a deal he was never going to able to make, no matter what was offered.
The Dodgers are giving Shohei Ohtani $700 million to wear the Dodger uniform. We do not know as of this writing what the Giants offer was. It probably will not matter. First, remember the fact that the number the Giants could offer is set by ownership and not Farhan Zaidi. My guess is there was no deal the Giants could have offered to Shohei Ohtani that would have convinced him to sign here. They could have offered $750 million, and then upped it to $800 million, free parking anywhere in San Francisco, a Pixar movie about his life and the rights to Treasure Island to build his own version of Xanadu on the Giants dime, and he still probably says no.
I always knew this was going to be the endgame for Shohei Ohtani. I was telling anyone who would listen to me this summer that the transcendent two-way star was going to sign with those dreaded Dodgers. I warned as many as I could to prepare for the inevitable as early as possible to soften the blow when it lands. Few wanted to heed my warnings. They called me a madman.
But I knew Ohtani would end up in Los Angeles, playing for the Dodgers, for two reasons.
1. We live in the worst timeline, so of course, he is going to go to the Dodgers.
2. The Dodgers made all the sense in the world for him.
Ohtani got a taste of Los Angeles already, albeit the diet taste, while marooned on the Angels in Anaheim. With the Dodgers, he gets the full LA experience. Shohei wants to win, and do so with a gaggle of talented players around him. He wants to boost his own star potential and maximize every dollar he can get. And the Dodgers offer him a chance to do all of that without having to change zip codes. Never has a glove fit so snug in South California as Shohei Ohtani fits in with the Dodgers.
The Giants meanwhile, have nothing of the sort to offer Shohei Ohtani. They do not have a gaggle of stars. They barely have one. Sure, the Giants have money, or so they say, but that money is not translating to wins. Shohei wants to play for a team with a promising future. The Giants right now can offer very few promises about the future other than “the ballpark will still be pretty.”
It goes deeper than that. The Dodgers had been in on Ohtani since 2012. The belief around the industry was always that he would wind up there someday in part because of how smart the Dodgers are with their money spending (remember how they sat out last years free agency?). And all it took was a fake plane ride to Toronto to secure that money.
If the devil is in the details, further proof of Ohtani’s desire to sign with the Dodgers can be seen in the structure of the contract he is signing, which will ridiculously pay him $2 million per year from 2024 through 2033, and then pay him $68 million per year from 2034 through 2044. It’s as ridiculous as it is legal in MLB's rule books.
All of this is to say, the Giants could have NEVER hoped to have signed Shohei Ohtani. Do they get points for trying? Sure, in the same way I would get points for trying to open field tackle Deebo Samuel or beat Stephen Curry in a three-point contest. You are certainly welcome to try, you probably won’t succeed, and you really cannot be mad that you failed as a result.
This is not to say that there is no heat on Farhan Zaidi. This is not to make excuses for him or explain why you should trust him or anything like that. This is all to say this particular setback is not worth getting upset about. As the feared mercenary Bane said at the start of The Dark Knight Rises, “Now is not the time for [anger at Farhan Zaidi]. That comes later.”
(I may have changed the wording a bit)
There is still a lot of offseason left to happen. With a new extension and a new manager, Farhan Zaidi has, in a sense, a clean slate. He is aware of the Giants need for star power. New manager Bob Melvin said the loud part out loud the other week when he echoed the need for star power sentiment. There are still plenty of good players the Giants can sign. A free agency haul of Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Cody Bellinger, Jung-Hoo Lee and Blake Snell would be stellar for the Giants. Swap Lee for Matt Chapman and Snell for a trade for Brewers ace Corbin Burnes and the Giants would make waves too. Getting just Yamamoto and Bellinger would be good, but it could be better. Going into spring training with just Snell and Chapman will not be inspiring.
Anything below that would be a massive failure of an offseason for Farhan Zaidi, and we will all be mad together at him for it.
But for day, curse the Dodgers and Shohei Ohtani for choosing the worst path. Curse the Blue Jays for flying out the wrong guy. Curse the baseball writers gaslighting you about how great Ohtani’s marriage to the Dodgers is “good for the game of baseball.” It is not.
But hold off on your cursing of Farhan Zaidi. But keep those curses close by. You still might need them later.
