This move is just the beginning...

The San Francisco Giants have just two starting pitchers locked into next year's rotation. Yes, you heard that right. Just two. A 65-97 team, a 4.33 ERA, and three open spots in the rotation before the offseason has even started. Then, Jim Bowden with The Athletic publishes his top free agents, and next to Clay Holmes, in black and white, it says, best team fit, San Francisco Giants. So, is Holmes the answer? Well, not by himself, and that's the part nobody is saying out loud. I'll show you why Holmes fits, why he'll be hard to land, and the three other arms the Giants still have to chase because one pitcher does not fix this. Before we get too deep into today's video, make sure to hit that subscribe button. About 75% of you guys who watch the videos are not actually subscribed to the channel. Completely free, takes just a second of your time, and really helps us continue to bring some of the best Giants content and analysis on YouTube. Let's start with what Bowden actually wrote. Holmes made nine starts with the Mets to open 2026, and he posted a 2-3-9 ERA. Then came the freak part of the year. A line drive hit him in the leg, and he missed nearly three months. While he was on the IL, the Mets traded him to the Cubs at the trade deadline. With Chicago, he had a 4.25 ERA in nine starts. For the whole season, he finished at a 3.29 over 101.1 innings. Here's where I'll be honest, because a Giants fan will look this up. A .329 is good, but his strikeout rate was 20.9%, and he gave up a hard contact rate of 44%. And you know who was actually worse in that exact hard hit number? Logan Webb at 49.3%. So the Giants aren't necessarily trading a clean profile for a messy one, they're comparing two messy ones, and Holmes had the better ERA. So how does a pitcher survive the hard contact? The sinker. Holmes throws it nearly 50% of the time, 49 to be exact, and it produces a 62% ground ball rate. His sweeper is the second best pitch, and the changeup is pretty solid. When he starts an at-bat, 60% of the time it's a sinker. He tells the hitter what's coming and dares them to hit a ground ball. Now, opponents also hit .213 against him, but his contact quality says they probably should have hit closer to .244. A little of his 3.29 ERA is luck involved. And I'm not trying to hide that. A 3.29 ERA with a 3.31 FIP tells you the ERA is about right, but the gap in what's expected says he is not a 2-3-9 guy. The last piece is what Bowden calls his flexibility. He can start or relieve, and that raises his free agent value just a slight bit. And for the price tag, Bowden's prediction is 2 years at $44 million. $22 million a year for a 3.29 ERA, that's real money but nowhere near the number you'd pay at the top of the class. And we know the San Francisco Giants do not like handing out big money and long contracts to starting pitchers. To understand the price, you have to understand how he got here. Holmes was actually a closer first. After the 2024 season, he was a free agent and most of the interest was in him as a reliever. Several teams, including the Mets, were asking about him as a starter. The Mets ended up signing him to a three-year $38 million deal and said the plan was to put him in the rotation. The deal came with an opt-out after 26 and a $12 million player option for 27. That's the door he is expected to walk through. So think about what that means for just a second. The Mets paid this guy to be a starter, and in the nine starts before his injury this year, it worked, a 2-3-9 ERA. Then there was the leg, the trade, the Chicago Cubs. The version of Holmes you'd be signing isn't necessarily the 239 guy, but it's also not the 425 guy. It's the 329 guy who could start or relieve for you. Now another number I do want to throw out there is his splits. This year he had a 194 ERA at home and a 442 ERA on the road. Now I can't explain the specific reason for that gap, but 194 at home tells you he can dominate in the right park. And let's be honest, Oracle Park in San Francisco is one of if not the most appealing ballparks for a pitcher to head to. He also added a new curveball this season which he threw just 6.9% of the time. It's small, but it's a fourth pitch for a guy people say only throws a sinker. Now here's the other half of the story. Why San Francisco, and why San Francisco specifically? Well, it's pretty clear. The Giants rotation as of right now is Logan Webb, Landon Roop, and a ton of question marks. Webb had a 4-3-1 ERA over 160.2 innings, Roop had a 4-0-1 ERA over 155 innings. Holmes would be the best ERA of all three. But let's be honest, we are all expecting Logan Webb to bounce back and return to the ace he's been over the last few seasons. And Roop's numbers are better than his ERA. With a 2-7-7 FIP and a 28.7% strikeout rate, he's the one you keep an eye on, but he's still just one arm. The Giants also have Adrian Hauser on the 60-day IL who will most likely grab a rotation spot and of course four young starters who are currently dealing with Tommy John surgery. That means the cavalry is not coming from inside the Giants clubhouse. In 2027, the rotation is whatever the Giants are willing to spend this winter. And the staff as a whole finished 2026 with a 4-3-3 ERA, which was 23rd in baseball. You do not fix that with a simple pep talk. Think about this season for a second. The Giants finished 65-97 with a run differential of minus 91. That's the team these pitchers are being asked to fix. Even by just their runs, they probably should have won 72 games, which means a rotation with real arms could flip a lot of those losses. That's exactly why Bowdoin's pick is smart. Holmes is not a luxury, he's one of the most affordable and effective ways to help stop the bleeding. However, the San Francisco Giants will have some competition on the free agent market. Robert Murray, along with a ton of other insiders, have already said that Holmes is going to be a popular name on the market. Bowdoin himself listed two teams, not just the Giants. The White Sox were also on there. And according to Holmes himself, he's reportedly open to returning to the New York Mets. And lastly, he is expected to opt out of the 2027 player option and test the free agent market. Think about what a bidding war does in this instance. The price Bowdoin predicts is two years at $44 million. But every team that calls is continuing to push that number up and up and up. The Giants do have one advantage here though. They need a starter more than the White Sox do, and a pitcher who wants a rotation spot knows there's one wide open in San Francisco. So if Giants want him, they need to move quick, especially with a lockout looming. But here's the catch, even if they win the Holmes race, they should still not be done. So the question that every Giants fan is going to be asking, will they actually pay for all of this? Well, take a look at what's already on the books for next year. Devers at $29.2 million, Chapman at $25.2 million, Jung-Hoo Lee at $18.8 million, and Logan Webb at $18 million. Add up the rest of the roster and that's roughly $128 million dollars of signed luxury tax money before any arbitration raises or any new signings. A $22 million a year Holmes is a big number, but it's a fraction of what a rotation that was 23rd in ERA. That's the key difference between Holmes and a guy like Michael King. Holmes is the value signing, King is the big swing. Now of course the smart plan is simple, take the value arm, then spend the real money on the one who makes the rotation actually different. Even with Holmes, the Giants would probably still need another arm, or maybe even two. You have Logan Webb, Landon Roop, and hypothetically Clay Holmes. That's three. Hauser is currently hurt, should be back, and the young arms are recovering. The fourth and fifth starters are not necessarily locked into the roster yet. So here's the big swing, Michael King. King would give the Giants a real co-ace. He threw 185 innings with a 3-2-1 ERA and a 4.3 WAR in the 95th percentile of pitchers. Put him next to Logan Webb, and this front of the rotation looks like a legitimate rotation. A 3.21 ERA and a 4.31 ERA, but King's hard hit rate is 31.3% to Webb's 49.3%. Then there's a guy like Shota Imanaga, a 3.77 ERA, but a 2.94 FIP, a 28% strikeout rate, and a 6.2% walk rate. He also threw 174.1 innings, so he's clearly a workhorse and not a project. Then you have Trevor Rogers, a 4.03 ERA over 169.2 innings. Not flashy, but a guy who has put together some real good seasons in Major League Baseball. Put all four together, hypothetically, and the picture is simple. King's the co-ace, Holmes and Imanaga are in the middle, Rogers is the innings. There are a ton of options on this free agent market. The San Francisco Giants just need to be willing to spend it. Nobody on this list is perfect, but every one of them is better than whatever the Giants would trot out in that third spot right now. So where do we land? Bowdoin's right, Holmes is a pure fit. Ground balls, flexibility, a price that doesn't make you flinch. He's the kind of signing a team makes when it's finally honest about what it truly needs. Either way, the San Francisco Giants cannot treat Clay Holmes as the only plan. He should be the first move of a winter where they need at least two arms. If they signed Holmes and stopped, we'd be right back here next October asking who the third starter is and how they fix this situation. So let me know in the comment section below. Do you think Clay Holmes is part of the solution? Or do you want to see the Giants go after a guy like Michael King, Trevor Rogers, Shota Imanaga? There are a ton of options on this free agent market.