Giants exploring rotation market

The Giants’ rotation was a big strength early in the season but has struggled more of late. Fifth starter Hayden Birdsong was optioned to Triple-A earlier in the week, and it’s not entirely clear how they’ll fill out the rotation moving forward. President of baseball operations Buster Posey sat down with Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle to talk about a variety of topics — Giants fans, in particular, will want to check out the whole Q&A — and suggested that he’s always on the lookout to improve his team’s pitching group.

While Posey called out Carson Seymour, Carson Whisenhunt and Kai-Wei Teng as in-house options who’ve been pitching well and create some depth, he also added that “…you understand sometimes it’s going to take a lot of different guys to get you across the finish line, so you’re definitely scouring the markets.”

Giants starting pitchers rank 11th in the majors with a 3.89 ERA on the season, but that number drops to 4.49 (21st in MLB) over the past month. Birdsong’s struggles have played a major role, but both Justin Verlander and even ace Logan Webb have ERAs north of 5.00 in the past 30 days.

It’s also fair to wonder how Robbie Ray will hold up as the season wears on. The 33-year-old lefty has been excellent so far but is in his first full year back from Tommy John surgery. His 123 1/3 innings not only rank 12th in the majors but are more than double the 60 innings he pitched all of last year (majors and minors combined). He only tossed 3 1/3 innings the prior season before injuring his elbow. Breakout righty Landen Roupp has become a key rotation piece, but he’s up to 101 1/3 innings after pitching only 76 2/3 frames last year in a season spent primarily as a reliever. He pitched just 31 innings in 2023.

[Related: San Francisco Giants Trade Deadline Outlook]

Alex Pavlovic of NBC Sports Bay Area wrote earlier in the week — before Birdsong was optioned — that the Giants indeed seem likely to look around for a starting pitcher. Posey’s comments to Slusser only reinforce that thinking. Per Pavlovic, however, ownership doesn’t want to push the payroll too much further after absorbing the remainder of Rafael Devers’ contract in last month’s blockbuster with the Red Sox. That’s not to say they can’t or won’t augment the starting staff, but it’s fair to speculate that they might err toward pitchers with reasonably affordable salaries.

While the market offers plenty of high-priced rotation pieces (e.g. Sandy Alcantara, Mitch Keller, Charlie Morton, Seth Lugo), there are still plenty of affordable arms to be had. Jeffrey Springs’ $10.5MM salary (both this year and next) is relatively manageable, and he’d provide stability beyond the current season.

If the goal is to come in even lighter on the salary side, names like Washington’s Michael Soroka ($9MM), Milwaukee’s Nestor Cortes ($7.7MM), Tampa Bay’s Zack Littell ($5.72MM) Pittsburgh’s Andrew Heaney ($5.25MM) or Adrian Houser of the White Sox ($1.35MM) are all playing on salaries under $10MM. That’s just a speculative set of names, to be clear, but it illustrates that even the rental market has a fairly wide breadth of options of varying quality.

Bigger swings on the affordable side of the financial coin would include Twins righty Joe Ryan (a Bay Area native) or Marlins righty Edward Cabrera. Both pitchers — Ryan in particular — would come with exorbitant asking prices in terms of prospects, however. Ryan feels particularly unlikely to move; the Twins are reportedly asking for at least two top-100 prospects in exchange for either of their top relievers (Jhoan Duran or Griffin Jax), and the ask on Ryan would be even higher.

The Giants have also been poking around the market for help at second base and could look for complementary bats on the bench/in the outfield (ideally a right-handed one). We’re still less than a year into Posey’s run atop the team’s baseball operations department, but between the free-agent signings of Willy Adames and Verlander, the extension of Matt Chapman and the trade for Devers, it seems fair to expect that he’ll look to remain active. The Giants are just one game back in the NL Wild Card chase and a more distant (but still potentially surmountable) six back in the division.