Giants discussed monster extension with All-Star closer

Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle reports that the Giants and closer Camilo Doval discussed a contract extension last year that would have paid Doval around $50M. It isn’t known if the Giants have since made a larger offer or if the two sides have continued negotiations in any significant fashion.

Regarding the timing of the $50M offer, Slusser writes that Edwin Diaz’s five-year, $102M deal with the Mets from November 2022 happened “not long before” the talks between Doval and the Giants.  It might, therefore, be safe to guess the two sides held discussions during Spring Training 2023, as teams routinely explore longer-term contracts with their in-house players during spring camp.

Doval is still a pre-arbitration player, as the right-hander will only enter the arb process for the first of three times this coming offseason.  He is slated to hit free agency following the 2027 campaign, so it seems likely that the Giants’ offer covered Doval’s remaining two pre-arb seasons, his three arbitration years, and at least one of his free agent seasons, with possibly a club option or two also attached.

It would’ve been quite the financial commitment for a pitcher who had only 94.2 MLB innings under his belt heading into the 2023 season, especially for a Giants team that has been wary of giving any kind of long-term contract to a pitcher since president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi took the front office.  It should be noted that the spring of 2023 did see the Giants complete a five-year, $90M extension with Logan Webb, though a longer-term deal with a front-of-the-rotation starter carries less risk than a longer-term deal to a reliever.

There haven’t been many relief pitchers in history who have landed contracts (whether extensions or free-agent deals) worth $50M or more.  Doval was also something of a lightly regarded international prospect who signed for a $100K bonus in 2015, so even if he viewed the offer as unsatisfactory in the wake of Diaz’s deal resetting the market, it must’ve taken quite a bit of confidence on Doval’s part to pass up the life-changing security of San Francisco’s extension.

Two months into the 2024 season, Doval’s decision to bet on himself still looks sound.  Doval has a 2.89 ERA over 90 1/3 innings since Opening Day 2023, with an outstanding 30.4% strikeout rate, a 55.6% grounder rate, and a fastball averaging 99.2 mph.  Some other metrics stand out as red flags, as Doval has always been prone to walks, and his hard-contact numbers have been decidedly below average over the last two years.

Since traditional counting stats like saves are valued by arbiters more than deeper analytics, the number that might matter most to Doval’s future earnings is his Doval’s 75 saves in 87 chances over the last three seasons.  Assuming he stays healthy and effective for the remainder of 2024, he’ll head into his first round of arbitration with a strong three-year platform of quality results in the ninth inning.  If all goes well, this will subsequently line him up for increasingly larger salaries in his next two arb years, and then a free agent deal in the 2027-28 offseason (when he is 30 years old) might set a new standard for closer contracts.

That is still a way down the road, which speaks to Doval's longer-term risk in foregoing an extension.  Nothing is preventing Doval and the Giants from coming together on a long-term deal at any point over the next four seasons, or San Francisco might also now be open to other options for their highest-leverage innings.  As Slusser writes, rookie Randy Rodriguez has looked good in his first taste of MLB action, and might be a potential closer of the future.  This could mean the Giants might eventually explore trading Doval to address needs elsewhere on the roster while saving some money on Doval’s escalating arbitration salaries and perhaps selling high.  Those elevated hard-contact rates, for instance, or Doval’s continued control problems might have given the Giants more concerns over Doval’s long-term viability than they had in the spring of 2023.