During an interview on Tim Kawakami's podcast, The TK Show, this week, SF Giants president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi was directly asked about owner Greg Johnson's controversial comments during the postseason press conference when he mentioned a desire to "somewhat break even" when asked about potentially paying the luxury tax. Zaidi's response left something to be desired. He seemed to hint that the team's more conservative spending is because of employee benefits.
"I'm not just thinking about our player payroll," Zaidi said. "I think about not laying people off, I think about providing benefits and resources to the people who work here, which we do a wonderful job of."
Zaidi continued that the team needed to focus on "economic sustainability" for the team's employees - not just players and fans.
While there's no reason to doubt that the Giants take care of team employees - Zaidi didn't get into specifics about the team's group health care or 401K plans - it's unusual that he presented spending on free agents as an either/or proposition with mass employee layoffs. After all, the scale of costs is simply drastically different. It's hard to believe that pay raises and increased benefits to non-player employees are responsible for the team's decline in payroll since its peak in 2018, especially since the Giants received significant criticism from the concession stadium workers' union for not doing due diligence to protect them from the spread of COVID-19 and not pressuring their subcontractor (Bon Appetit) to improve pay and benefits.
Declining revenues from the COVID-19 pandemic are partially responsible, but any cashflow problem for the Giants may be partially self-created as well. They decided to engage in a $2.5 billion real estate project at Mission Rock because they believe it will be a lucrative long-term venture. That may be a great long-term business move for them, but in the meantime, they have needed to fund the development with limited immediate return.
Zaidi's comment was an odd hedge in what was overall a very frank and honest conversation about the team's offseason activities. Zaidi said that ownership authorized spending big on three top free-agent targets: Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, and Jung Hoo Lee. He didn't think money was a limitation, saying that at a certain point in the process, players decide where they want to go and agents simply try to get the most money from those teams. He also did a good job dispelling rumors that there were geographic disadvantages to the city of San Francisco. Granted, he did leave out some context in a brief rehashing of the 2021-22 offseason.
Zaidi also revealed the team's secret weapon in recruiting Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamato: Bento boxes. While he wouldn't confirm exactly which free-agent recruit loved the food they served, he shouted out Akari Japanese Bistro for their generous portion sizes. Maybe that's also an expensive employee benefit?
Assuming the $73 million remaining on Robbie Ray's contract with Friday's big trade shows that ownership will spend money if only to erase the ill-advised signings of Mitch Haniger and Anthony DeSclafani. But let's not pretend the Giants are bargain-hunting in free agency purely to avoid layoffs. Much like the SF Giants offense in 2023, that explanation is a big whiff.
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