No, the SF Giants did not choose Carlos Rodón over Kevin Gausman

The SF Giants came out on top in a 3-0 victory over the Toronto Blue Jays on Tuesday night. But, even in the win, the Giants saw what their former ace Kevin Gausman can do. Starting for the Blue Jays, Gausman struck out 12 while allowing just one run across six innings of work. With a 3.01 ERA and a league-leading 139 punchouts on the season, the veteran righty is firmly in Cy Young contention.

Back in 2021, Gausman made it clear when he hit free agency that he wanted to re-sign with the Giants. However, San Francisco chose not to pursue him. Instead, he inked a five-year, $110 million contract with the Blue Jays that now looks like one of the shrewdest moves of that offseason.

Back in contention this year, the Giants are probably a significant starting pitching upgrade away from true championship contention. Frankly, they need a pitcher a lot like Gausman. Now, they will spend the next month scouring the trade market for a pitcher as good as him. It seems highly unlikely that a pitcher of that caliber will be available, and even if one is, it will cost the Giants some of their best prospects. All of that when the Giants probably could have kept Gausman on an even cheaper contract than his reasonable deal with Toronto.

Over the past two seasons, many have defended the Giants decision to let Gausman walk because of one thing: Carlos Rodón. Another one of the top free agent starters during that offseason, Rodón inked a two-year deal with the Giants that included an opt out after the first season. He dominated during his lone season in the Bay Area, opted out, and subsequently signed a massive deal with the New York Yankees. As the argument goes, the Giants chose to sign Rodón instead of Gausman, which worked out well for all parties involved. But that's an incomplete understanding of what happened.

On the heels of a 107-win campaign heading into the 2021-22 offseason, the Giants ultimately replaced four significant contributors, Buster Posey, Gausman, Johnny Cueto, and trade deadline acquisition Kris Bryant. It seems easy, on the surface, to see what they did.

Without a great catcher on the market, the Giants hoped to replace Posey with a combination of former second-overall pick Joey Bart and incumbent backup Curt Casali. Skeptical of Bryant's ability to justify a nine-figure deal, the Giants signed Joc Pederson to replace his middle-of-the-order bat. To replace Cueto in the rotation, they signed Alex Cobb. And, with Gausman inking a long-term deal north of the border, they signed Rodón to be Logan Webb's new co-ace.

The puzzle pieces replaced each other, and most of the decisions aged incredibly well. The Pederson, Rodón, and Cobb signings all look like masterful moves, and while Bart and Casali failed to hold down the catching position, it's not like the 2021-22 free-agent market had another option that was an obvious miss.

There's one problem with this story, though. It presumes that the Giants had already been using all the resources at their disposal in 2021. It seems intuitive, how could a team win 107 games in the regular season without a complete investment? Except, the Giants were a year early in their retool.

The Giants lineup in 2021 was carried by aging veterans like Posey, Brandon Belt, Brandon Crawford, Evan Longoria, and Darin Ruf, most of whom were carryovers from the previous front office. Belt, Crawford, and Ruf actually turned in the best seasons of their respective careers.

The Giants had made massive cuts to their payroll in the early years of president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi's tenure primarily by allowing large veteran contracts to expire without giving out comparable deals in extensions or free agency. The messaging from the franchise, at least publicly, was that payroll would return to previous levels when they returned to contention. In 2021, San Francisco had their lowest Opening Day payroll since 2014, more than $50 million less than the franchise's all-time high three years earlier.

Yet, after winning 107 games, the Giants still walked into 2022 with an Opening Day payroll of just $155 million, less than $6 million more than it had been in 2021. It would be one thing if the Giants team was flush full of depth, but their projected rotation of Webb, Rodón, Anthony DeSclafani, Cobb, and Alex Wood featured a trio of arms with long injury histories (Rodón, Cobb, and Wood) and another just two seasons removed from an implosion (DeSclafani).

The Giants farm system's best pitching prospects were far removed from big-league readiness, which left Jakob Junis, Sam Long, Sean Hjelle, and Tyler Beede as the organization's depth options.

It would be disingenuous to argue that the Giants rotation was disproportionately responsible for the team's disappointing 81-81 record in 2022. The team's position players performed far worse at the plate and defensively compared to the season prior. However, it would be as misleading to act like Gausman's presence would not have helped a team that finished just six games out of the playoffs.

Rodón could have been a luxury that helped push the Giants into contention last year alongside an incumbent tandem of Webb and Gausman. Had they reached the postseason, it's hard not to imagine what a rotation that featured Rodón, Webb, Gausman, and Cobb could have done. Instead, Rodón's Cy Young-caliber season was a necessity just for the Giants to be a .500 team.

The Giants seemed to recognize this mistake last offseason. Despite prospects like Keaton Winn, Tristan Beck, and Kyle Harrison seemingly on a trajectory to reach the majors in 2023, while Webb, Cobb, DeSclafani, Wood, and Junis were all slated to return, San Francisco made multiple additions to the rotation.

However, as had been projected, the free-agent market was far less plentiful of pitching talent. Rodón, who was a comparable age to Gausman when he hit the open market with a far shorter track record and longer injury history, received a six-year, $162 million contract from the Yankees.

So, with a dearth of options, the Giants guaranteed Sean Manaea and Ross Stripling a combined $50 million over the next two seasons ($5 million more than Gausman will make over that span). While it's too early to definitively call either signing a regrettable one, it's unreasonable to expect either one to come close to matching Gausman's production.

The Giants Opening Day payroll increased by more than $32 million from 2022 to 2023. From the outside looking in, it seems like the Giants saw their 107-win campaign in 2021 as an opportunity to continue cutting corners with payroll for another year and finally decided to spend closer to their previous levels after fan morale crashed last season.

The SF Giants did not choose Carlos Rodón over Kevin Gausman during the 2021-22 offseason. In fact, they did not choose any player over Gausman. They prioritized a lower payroll and missed out on locking up a borderline ace on mid-rotation money. Gausman has gone on to dominate in the American League, and now, the Giants office will spend the next month trying to acquire another pitcher of his caliber via trade.