SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- For about a month, most of the Giants' best pitching prospects were lined up along one wall in the clubhouse at Scottsdale Stadium. On Wednesday morning, there was a very different look.
Blake Snell's locker was placed in the middle of that row, and a new No. 7 jersey hung from the top bar in the morning until Snell took it down, got dressed in orange and black, and walked outside to play catch in front of a half-dozen players and coaches. Two lockers to Snell's left, Matt Chapman was going through his morning routine. Two lockers to his right sat Nick Ahmed, the likely Opening Day shortstop.
The setup was a clear view of just how much has changed since pitchers and catchers reported five weeks ago. President of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi ended up doing most of his heavy lifting once camp already had started, adding not just a new co-ace and left side of the infield, but also designated hitter Jorge Soler.
Stay in the game with the latest updates on your beloved Bay Area and California sports teams! Sign up here for our All Access Daily newsletter.
The late charge pushed the Giants to about $400 million in committed dollars this offseason through free agency and trades. It overhauled a roster that was not just mediocre last season, but also played a boring brand of baseball during a second-half collapse. In addition to Snell, Chapman, Soler and Ahmed, the Giants signed Jung Hoo Lee, Jordan Hicks and Tom Murphy, while also trading for Robbie Ray and shedding some bad contracts.
Not bad for an offseason that started with Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto rejecting the Giants and other organizations in order to team up in Los Angeles.
"Looking back, I think we just accomplished a lot," Zaidi said on Thursday's Giants Talk podcast. "We accomplished pretty much everything we set out to in terms of improving our defense, adding front-end pitching, creating lanes for our young players to impact the team. I'm just really excited to get going here and to be able to ride the momentum of these last couple of additions so soon into the season.
"I think it's going to make it all the more impactful."
San Francisco Giants
The Giants will have to wait a few extra days for Snell to get fully up to speed, but as he settled into a new clubhouse, the impact of the offseason spending already could be seen on the field. Chapman made a tremendous play at third base in Tuesday night's exhibition game, and a day later, Lee returned from hamstring soreness and made his presence felt on both sides of the ball while raising his spring average to .400. Hicks struck out six in 4 2/3 innings in his final appearance before the Giants head back to the Bay Area.
The two games didn't actually count, but the Giants expect much more of the same over 162 games, and they have plenty of reasons to be confident. FanGraphs projects that their free-agent additions will be worth about 13 Wins Above Replacement, and Lee, Snell and Chapman all are projected to finish in the top 10 in WAR among this year's free-agent class.
Looking back, there seems to be some inevitability to the offseason haul for a franchise that desperately needed difference-makers after chasing Aaron Judge last winter and backing out of an agreement with Carlos Correa.
Not a lot of leaks come out of the executive offices at Oracle Park, but it was well known that the Giants were intent on winning the bidding for Lee. General manager Pete Putila flew to South Korea for the center fielder's final game, a show of respect that Lee appreciated, and Putila was so clearly visible in videos from that game that South Korean reporters repeatedly asked for interviews with Putila, not Zaidi, when they arrived in Scottsdale to cover Lee's first few days.
It was a poorly kept secret all offseason that Bob Melvin, another offseason addition, wanted Chapman to once again be his third baseman. While the reporting on Snell was all over the place -- including a short-lived Houston Astros news cycle over the weekend -- the Giants always were viewed by rival clubs as being one of the favorites.
In the end, it doesn't feel all that surprising that Lee, Chapman and Snell will be standing on the third base line at Petco Park during pregame introductions next Thursday. But Zaidi never felt fully comfortable until one last call with Scott Boras on Monday night.
"If it felt inevitable, I probably could have saved myself like several hundred hours on the phone with Scott Boras," he said, smiling. "You know, there are definitely times when you think you're trending in the right direction or you try to look at the market and say we're the best fit and can see this coming together, but by the same token, you've got to remember there are 29 other teams out there and these guys are really good players who can help a lot of teams.
"I think sometimes you get in a trap where you maybe overestimate your chances with certain players whether it's free agency or a trade, and a lot of times that overconfidence comes from just forgetting there are 29 other teams out there trying to take your lunch."
Zaidi has given some variation of that quote in past offseasons. He mentions the 29 other teams often during free agency, but this winter, most of the league was playing a different game.
Boras, perennially the big winner of the offseason, found such a tepid market that four marquee clients -- Snell, Chapman, Cody Bellinger and Jordan Mongtomery -- remained unsigned when camps opened in Arizona and Florida.
Bellinger, like Snell and Chapman, took a short-term deal with the ability to opt out. Montgomery, fresh off a World Series run, remains a free agent.
Near the end of Wednesday's press conference, Boras was asked about the state of the market. He pointed out that teams have spent more than a billion dollars less than they did a year ago, and that's even with the Dodgers guaranteeing more than one billion to just two players.
"These are ownership decisions," Boras said. "It's not about record revenues they're making. It's just (that) they're making strategic decisions about when they want to spend and they all have their own reasons in what they do. Our job is to adapt to that."
The Giants found themselves willing to go all-in at a time when many others didn't even want a seat at the table. The New York Mets are pulling back after an initial spree by owner Steve Cohen, the San Diego Padres seem to be done living at the top of the market after a failed 2023 push, and the Boston Red Sox have frustrated their fan base with their lack of aggression. Other notable franchises were impacted by uncertainty with local TV deals.
The Giants have a stable market that soon could consist of just one team, and they entered the offseason with just one player -- Logan Webb -- signed beyond the 2025 season. That flexibility allowed them to be in on every top free agent, and they ended up with a splurge that stands out compared to just about all of their recent history.
In their first five offseasons under Zaidi, the Giants handed out just four contracts of at least three guaranteed seasons. They did it four times this offseason alone. Their previous largest guarantee to a pitcher was the $44 million deal with Carlos Rodón, which Snell sailed past and Hicks matched. Lee’s $113 million contract was the first nine-figure deal under Zaidi and the largest the franchise has ever given to a free-agent position player.
With Lee leading the way, the Giants guaranteed $323.5 million to free agents, plus potentially another $74 million to Ray. The Snell deal moved them well past the first luxury tax threshold, which they had not reached since 2017, and gave them a projected Opening Day payroll of $208 million, the highest in franchise history. Their luxury tax number is estimated to be about $255 million, putting them one minor addition from clearing the second threshold.
The Giants will finish second to the Dodgers in terms of offseason spending, with most of their biggest checks written over the past month. There's some irony to that, as Zaidi repeatedly has said he would prefer offseason deadlines to force earlier action. Asked on Wednesday if he still feels the same way after landing Chapman and Snell in March, he said he feels the Giants could have ended up in the same place had the market been forced to move faster.
San Francisco happily would have signed Chapman or Snell to these deals at the Winter Meetings, although nobody can blame the players for searching for more over the next three months. Both have positioned themselves to hit the open market again in November if they would like to, and that's fine with the Giants. They saw with Rodón that there's tremendous value in having a player who is so good for six months that opting out becomes an easy decision.
The Giants discussed long-term deals with Chapman and Snell, but both preferred to bet on themselves and hope for more MLB spending in future years. Regardless of what happens with the last two to join, Lee, Soler and Hicks all are expected to be in San Francisco for at least the next three seasons.
The constant roster churn was disliked by the fan base, and team executives realized last season that their method needed tweaking. It certainly will help their sales that they were able to line up Lee's jersey right next to Webb's in the team store at Scottsdale Stadium, with fans knowing that either choice should be viable for most of the rest of the decade.
"I think we feel like there's more stability and continuity on this roster from this point forward," Zaidi said.
The head of baseball operations was all smiles Wednesday, even opening the press conference with a prepared joke that he later admitted fell flat. Zaidi and the rest of the organization know their work is just beginning, and they don't need any reminders that they were feeling pretty good about the previous free-agent additions at this time a year ago.
But the rest will be done between the lines. After twice saying he felt he was done and then going out and adding another big name, Zaidi feels that this time, his offseason truly is over.
"I had to promise Greg Johnson that I wouldn't even expense my early-bird check-in on Southwest," he joked. "I've played all my chips now."