The San Francisco Giants have come up short in their pursuit of high-profile free agents over the last few offseasons. After missing out on Aaron Judge, the Giants agreed to a massive deal with Carlos Correa, but his injured ankle put a snag in that.
This offseason, the Giants were in the mix for Shohei Ohtani, who elected to take a similar offer from the Dodgers and switch sides in Los Angeles. Yoshinobu Yamamoto is the next man on the list and San Francisco is among the list of suitors.
Giants manager Bob Melvin joined Tim Kawakami on the Audacy podcast “The TK Show” to discuss the Giants’ pursuit of high-profile free agents with Yamamoto still deciding where to sign.
“The expectations are what they are, and we’re trying. There are only a few of these guys out there and only one team’s going to come up with them,” Melvin said (8:25 in player above). “You look at it in the case with Shohei, we offered him the same contract so he went somewhere else. So it’s not for a lack of what we were trying to do. So who knows how it plays out with the other guys.”
The Giants reportedly offered the $700 million that Ohtani received from the Dodgers with similar deferrals. Nevertheless, Ohtani wanted to remain in Southern California and switched over from the Angels to the Dodgers.
Japanese pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto is now the belle of the MLB offseason ball amid the holiday season.
“Yamamoto’s the next guy. We had a great, I thought, sit-down with him but you’re reading about the New York teams getting involved too and you have no idea how high the price goes with him,” Melvin said. “So look, we’re in on him. We’d like to have him. It’s going to be his decision. We’re going to do as much as we can to get him here.”