SF Giants have the third-worst core in MLB, per ESPN insider

A disappointing season for the SF Giants has them plummeting down Kiley McDaniel's ranking of the best cores in Major League Baseball.

As we approach the end of the regular season, ESPN MLB Insider Kiley McDaniel ranked each team in the league by the strength of their core talent. Perhaps unsurprisingly, but still a notable indictment of the state of the SF Giants, the Giants were ranked 28th out of the 30 teams. The only organizations below them were the Washington Nationals and Colorado Rockies.

McDaniel broke players into three tiers: Elite, Above Average, and Solid. The Giants had no one in the elite category, and Logan Webb was their only player in the Above Average group.

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There were 11 Giants listed in the solid category, but only seven of those players (Alex Cobb, Joey Bart, Austin Slater, Mike Yastrzemski, Camilo Doval, and Anthony DeSclafani) are currently on their big-league roster. The rest were prospects (Marco Luciano, Kyle Harrison, Luis Matos, and Patrick Bailey).

While McDaniel's list omits Giants ace Carlos Rodón and outfielder Joc Pederson, it's important to remember the purpose of his analysis. He was not ranking teams by the best players on their roster but by the strength of their core talent. Rodón and Pederson are both expected to become free agents this offseason. There's no guarantee that either will be in San Francisco next season.

This list exposes one of the holes in Giants president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi's approach to team-building. San Francisco has done a fantastic job betting on bounceback candidates from Drew Pomeranz to Kevin Gausman to Rodón. However, by only signing those players to one-year deals (Rodón technically signed a two-year deal but had an opt-out that guaranteed he would leave if he performed well this season), the Giants force themselves to pay a premium if they want to keep them around long-term.

Maybe Gausman was uninterested in signing a long-term deal after the 2020 season, but he accepted a one-year, $18.9 million qualifying offer. Could the Giants have enticed him with a four-year, $70 million contract? Would Rodón have been willing to give up an opt-out in his contract if the Giants had offered a three-year, $80 million deal last offseason instead of the two-year, $44 million deal he signed? Those contracts would have carried more risk for San Francisco, but front offices must take risks to win big.

McDaniel wrote that it was "shocking" that the Giants had fallen so far this year. He said they "were the darlings of the industry last year" but noted, "It now looks like that was more than a bit lucky, with the team currently performing at the level everyone thought they would last year."

He still credits the SF Giants for developing Webb, and McDaniel noted that he's confident in Luciano or Harrison joining him soon in the Above Average or Star tier. Still, his advice was simple: "the Giants will need to spend in free agency to bolster this core (and I bet they will)."