Key Points
Bullet point summary by AI
- An NL West team faces a critical decision at the MLB trade deadline with multiple high-priced veterans underperforming.
- The front office must decide whether to eat large portions of future obligations or accept modest returns on expiring deals.
- One player already traded signaled a willingness to make tough moves, but the upcoming deadline will test their ability to handle expensive decisions.
Buster Posey’s front office reportedly wants to move not just impending free agents like Luis Arraez, Robbie Ray and Tyler Mahle, but also expensive veterans in Rafael Devers, Willy Adames, Matt Chapman and Jung Hoo Lee. Which makes sense: The San Francisco Giants are desperately in need of a financial reset, and getting out from under those underperforming contracts would give Posey significantly more flexibility to add talent moving forward.
The problem? Those four are owed roughly $510 million combined through 2033, and none of them are living up to that money right now. The closest thing to a value in the group is Chapman, and his contract is set to pay him $100 million or so from his age-34 to age-37 seasons. It takes two to tango, as they say, and Posey might have a hard time finding a dance partner to help facilitate a deadline overhaul.
The Giants who are actually leaving at the trade deadline
Arraez (.326/.360/.453, 4.1-percent K rate) sells himself, a contact outlier with $7.5 million left on his deal. In an era where strikeouts are eating everyone alive, Arraez remains one of the league's scrappiest hitters. There should be little issue in finding him a home that will put hardware in the case in October.
Ray and Mahle are both on expiring deals, with less than $22 million combined in future obligations. Ray likely gets moved first as a lefty with an ERA of 4 and decent control. Mahle becomes more difficult to move if you look solely at the ERA; his FIP of 4.88 says he needs to be on a team that can back him up defensively.
Everything after this gets much harder.
The contract that made Rafael Devers untradeable wasn’t signed by the Giants
Boston locked him up for 10 years and $313.5 million in January 2023. The deal was supposed to signal commitment to winning. Instead, it ended with positional disputes, a messy breakup and Devers landing in San Francisco as a first baseman after spending nearly his entire Boston career at third.
He’s hitting .240/.301/.431 with a 30.1-percent strikeout rate and an xwOBA of .295. He is providing league-average offense at a premium price. He still hits the ball hard, with a 91.9 mph average exit velocity, and he has a 49.2-percent hard contact rate; the tools haven’t gone anywhere. The results are real in both directions: He’s hitting the ball hard right to the defenses that have him figured out. Adjustment just doesn't seem to be his strong suit.
Moving the Devers contract will require the Giants to eat a significant portion of that feel-good contract for Boston. It will also require finding a team with a first-base opening, tolerance for strikeouts and a willingness to bet on exit velocity over results. I am coming up short on which team that might be.
Posey’s first move as team president is now his biggest problem
Posey signed Willy Adames himself in December 2024, inking the shortstop to a seven year, $182 million deal which was at the time the largest contract in Giants franchise history. It was Posey’s first major move as president of baseball operations, a statement that San Francisco was serious. Adames came off a 32-home run season in Milwaukee as one of the best power-hitting shortstops in the game.
Adames is hitting .229/.274/.434 this season. The OBP is the real problem: Adames is selling his at-bats for the big hit, yet a .434 SLG is hardly proof that it's working.
Posey can’t move Adames without his permission thanks to a no-trade clause, and Adames has little incentive to waive a clause that protects him on a seven-year deal he just signed 18 months ago. The most unsellable contract on the roster is the one Posey put there himself.
Buster Posey hasn’t even called about a Matt Chapman trade
Matt Chapman is hitting .252/.337/.400 with a 10.4-percent walk rate and an xwOBA of .294. He’s the best-performing player in this group, and the one most committed to staying.
Chapman has intimated that there has been no conversation about waiving his no-trade clause, and there is no indication a trade is coming. Further, he has no interest in leaving. He signed a six-year deal to win in San Francisco and is treating it like a commitment.
The rebuild, if it happens, gets built around Chapman, whether Posey planned it that way or not.
The one player on this list actually worth acquiring
Jung Hoo Lee is hitting .325/.357/.448 with a 9.3-percent strikeout rate and a .335 xwOBA. The contact profile is real; he’s not a power hitter, but he makes enough contact at enough quality that the production holds up. He has a low strikeout rate and plays a decent outfield defense.
The Giants want to move him purely because of the contract. The performance has held up fine; that’s a different conversation than Devers or Adames. Teams know what they’re getting with Lee, which is a legitimate big-league right fielder. Whether San Francisco finds the right match before the deadline is the only question.
What the trade deadline actually decides for San Francisco
Posey got a jump on the roster reconstruction already. Trading Patrick Bailey in May, a two-time Gold Glove catcher, for a draft pick and a pitching prospect was a real move, one that made a statement that Posey will do things to try to make a difference.
The Aug. 3 deadline will be harder. Bailey’s contract was manageable. Devers and Adames, meanwhile, are $317 million of future obligations between two players who aren’t performing at half the level of their contracts. Moving either one requires San Francisco to eat money and accept that the return will be modest.
If the Giants move Arraez, Ray and Mahle and get stuck with the rest, they’ve dumped three expiring deals and called it a rebuild. Three players at roughly $29 million in future obligations out the door, two players at $317 million still in the building.
The Bailey trade proved this front office will make uncomfortable decisions. The deadline will prove if they can make expensive ones.
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