Giants Quietly Upgrade With Joc Pederson and Matthew Boyd

The Giants continued to fly under the radar Wednesday night, signing outfielder Joc Pederson and pitcher Matthew Boyd to one-year deals. Boyd will receive $5.2 million in 2022, and Pederson will snag $6 million of his own. Neither of these deals makes the impressive splash that acquiring one of the Oakland Matts or Freddie Freeman (now starring for the division-rival Dodgers) does, but they both incrementally improve San Francisco’s roster without spending a princely sum or requiring a long-term commitment.

Pederson made enough of a splash in 2021 to make the term “Joctober” a thing, but the larger problem in recent years has been his Jocpril to Joctember performance. Through 2019, his age-27 season, his career line was at a healthy .233/.339/.474, respectable for a corner outfielder who can fake center field a bit, though with the caveat that he needed to be protected against left-handed pitching. But he’s struggled since the start of 2020, hitting .238/.310/.422 over 180 games, well off his career numbers up to that point. If Pederson had hit free agency after the 2019 season, ZiPS projected that he would have received a four-year deal worth $74 million, so his decline has been sharper and at a younger age than typical.

As a role player who can carefully be used in a platoon, the Giants are a good home for him. Manager Gabe Kapler has shown an admirable ability to mix and match situation players to get the most value of their performance. Earl Weaver’s Orioles lineups were full of players like this, such as Terry Crowley, John Lowenstein, Jim Dwyer, Pat Kelly, and Gary Roenicke, none of whom you wanted to see play 150 games a year on their own most years, but all of whom had some standout skill that could be used to leverage runs. The Giants overall had an average outfield with a combined wRC+ of 101, impressive for a team that only really had one real starter in Mike Yastrzemski. In the end, the Giants were one of the best teams in baseball at getting the platoon advantages with their offense.

San Francisco ranked sixth in hitter platoon advantage in 2021, but it’s even more impressive when considering that they managed without switch-hitters for almost the entire season. The five teams ahead of the Giants in this chart had switch-hitters getting anywhere from 787 plate appearances (Rays) to 2,292 (Tigers). Kapler’s only switch-hitter was Skye Bolt, who only went up to the plate once during the season. In the platoon game, he was simply playing on a higher difficulty setting.

As basically two-thirds of a two-WAR player, Pederson’s price tag is more than reasonable for a contending team like the Giants. They will complete this two-win chimera with some combination of Darin Ruf, Wilmer Flores, and Austin Slater, depending on the rest of the lineup on any given day. Pederson will likely see most of his time at DH given that San Francisco has superior defensive players, but he’ll likely see a bunch of scattered games in the outfield. Now, it would be nice if Joc could catch too, but you can’t get everything you want.

To replace a serious Cy Young contender in Kevin Gausman, the Giants have taken a quieter approach than some other teams. Carlos Rodón looked like a Cy Young contender for most of the early months of the 2021 season, but injuries stood in his way, and he wasn’t quite as sharp after the All-Star break. Alex Cobb may have had the best season of anyone in 2021 that nobody seemed to notice, putting up a 2.92 FIP in 18 starts with the best strikeout rate of his career. But the histories of both mean you can’t just write in 180 innings for either, or possibly even combined; you need to have some reinforcements. That’s what Boyd brings to the table.

Boyd won’t match that inning total, simply because ZiPS is unaware that he had surgery in the offseason. He’s expected to return a bit before midseason and will likely be in a swing role for the Giants if they’ve been lucky with health up until that point. One of Boyd’s weaknesses is the occasional grooved pitch that’s crushed a mile, but Oracle is a better home field to mitigate that issue. ZiPS projects him to have a slightly above-average ERA for a starter, so $5 million represents real value for the franchise. Think of it this way: every summer, teams will pay to acquire a league-average starter who makes $5 million the rest of the year, but this way only costs dollars rather than prospects as well.

Will either of these moves leave the Dodgers quaking in their cleats? No, but both of these are solid, quiet signings that leave the team a few wins better off. Most chess games aren’t won due to gambits or wild sacrifices, but to quiet positional play and the accumulation of tiny advantages. Kapler has two more good pieces on the game board.