© Kirby Lee | 2017 Nov 7
On Friday morning, Giants head of personnel Farhan Zaidi joined the KNBR morning show, and said that he expects the club to announce a signing or trade in the coming days.
Veteran Giants reporter Henry Schulman hopped on with Gary & Larry shortly after, and prognosticated about what that move may be.
“The two things I believe they’re trying to do is trade from their surplus, what they consider a surplus, of relievers, to maybe get a young controllable starting pitcher, or even a starting pitching prospect who’s close to the major leagues,” Schulman said. “That market has been held up by the free agent relief market that has started to unclog a little bit.”
Schulman’s speculation falls in line with reports that the Giants have been in discussions about deals involving Will Smith and Tony Watson throughout the offseason. The Giants signed Smith to an affordable one-year deal on Friday.
“They just signed Will Smith to a $4.2 million contract to avoid arbitration,” Schulman continued. “That is an extremely friendly contract for a pitcher who has done what Smith has done in the back end of a bullpen; he’s left-handed. I still think you’re going to have a guy like Smith or a guy like Tony Watson dealt to maybe a smaller market team that doesn’t want to pay $12 million a year for an Adam Ottavino or another back-end reliever, and maybe get a young prospect or two in return, or a young major-league ready player.
“The second part of that is I believe they have been focusing for outfielders in the free agent market and that hasn’t moved at all, that has been stone cold dead. Partly I think because of Bryce Harper holding things up. I think that those are kind of the nature of the moves that we’re looking at.
“To summarize it again: Trading relief pitching for maybe a young pitcher or maybe a young outfielder, and then maybe going into the free agent market to deal for outfielders.”
Listen to the full interview below. To hear Schulman on the offseason, start from the beginning.