Neville E. Guard-USA TODAY Sports
SAN DIEGO — The Giants and Madison Bumgarner are not divorced. Yet, the Giants are optimistic there will be more pitchers to love.
With the prospect of bringing back their legendary lefty seemingly growing steeper by the day, each Zack Wheeler and Stephen Strasburg contract pushing Bumgarner’s worth north, the Giants still will check in with agent Ed Cerulo to gauge the market for the 30-year-old at the Winter Meetings.
“We’re in contact with his representatives,” Farhan Zaidi said late Monday afternoon from the team’s hotel war room. “We expect to meet with him here.”
They better hurry, as the starting pitchers are quickly being taken off the shelf. The Gerrit Cole sweepstakes are close to being settled, Strasburg is back to the Nationals on a $245 million pact, Wheeler to the Phillies for $118 million. Bumgarner, along with Hyun-jin Ryu, is tucked firmly into the next tier, and word is that he now believes he can receive a five-year deal worth nine figures.
The suddenly polarizing Giants front office, fresh off non-tendering the popular Kevin Pillar and replacing beloved Bruce Bochy with unknown Gabe Kapler, could be facing severe backlash for allowing the face of the organization and owner of three World Series rings to go. While Zaidi said he didn’t want to speculate on the potential PR problem because Bumgarner has not left, he did mention that if he builds a winner, the crowds will come.
“I think our fans want a winner,” said Zaidi, who sat with Kapler and new GM Scott Harris. “A lot of [media] were around in ’10 and ’12 and ’14, and the electricity in our ballpark was unlike anything I’ve seen anywhere else. That was fueled by winning — that’s our goal, to get back to having a winning team. When you have a winning team, there are going to be players for fans to get behind.
“We had a lot of guys come up in 2019 who are going to be here for a few years that our fans have started developing allegiances to as well. So we’re looking forward to bring up guys and create more of those connections.”
The Giants can pencil in two-fifths of their rotation — assuming Jeff Samardzija and Johnny Cueto return — but Zaidi said he thought there was a good chance the Giants could land at least one starter during these Meetings, which end Thursday. While the Giants are not expected to shop on the top shelf, Zaidi did not want to concede the market has priced out Bumgarner.
“Everybody’s running their own process and have their own factors: geography, where teams are in the competitive cycle,” Zaidi said, with Wheeler reportedly eschewing a bigger deal to stay local in Philadelphia. “There are non-monetary factors that are affecting these guys’ decisions, so it’s really hard to say how one [large pitcher contract] affects the other.”
