Put the torchforks down! I mean that in the sense that the Dodgers are not the ones stopping the Giants, or any other team for that matter, from being more competitive in the free agent market.
Good morning, baseball fans!
It’s Sunday, and I’m always at my saltiest when the week is coming to a close, so I wanted to add my editorializing to an interesting read from Alex Simon over at SF Gate a few days ago.
In the piece, Simon talks about how the San Francisco Giants players and staff are sick of hearing about the Los Angeles Dodgers, piecing together quotes from the likes of Bob Melvin, Duane Kuiper, Logan Webb (in a sense), etc.
Essentially it comes off like they’re complaining that the Dodgers are basically buying their way to victory. To that I’d like to say “duh” and also remind everyone that the Giants could be doing the exact same thing. Any team could. And any ownership group that says otherwise is cheap, end of story.
Sure, you could say free agents aren’t signing here, but the owners haven’t exactly been backing up the bank truck to give them an offer they can’t refuse. If faced with comparable monetary offers, of course players would choose a winning team. That just makes sense.
As I’ve said before, the only way for a team in the Giants’ position to be competitive in the market is to sweeten the pot. And not by a minuscule amount. Plenty of agents have used the Giants’ tendency to go only slightly over what other teams are offering to get their clients paid more by the team they ultimately sign for.
Of course they do that. Why wouldn’t they? The Giants have not landed a blockbuster deal in….my adult life? I guess I would say Barry Bonds is the last one that I would qualify as a blockbuster deal. Your take may vary. But it boils down to the fact that the Giants absolutely could be making deals to be competitive against their division rivals. But they aren’t. So maybe the anger would be better directed to the top, rather than the south.
How many days until Opening Day?
60 days to go, that’s less than two months! Kind of. February is weird.