The San Francisco Giants are close. At least, they seem to think so. It’s why they’re willing to spend millions on an unproven manager. An organization doesn’t do that unless it thinks the roster might be a personality away from doing something special. The Giants might be a personality away, alright. That, and a few more players. (Some of the good ones.)

This is where a team’s spending really starts to matter. The Dodgers spent scores of millions on Michael Conforto because they were running out of things to spend on. The Rockies won’t become a contender if you slap two $40 million players onto their roster. That squishy spot in the middle, though, is where the wins can be bought, and every win the Giants can buy is orders of magnitude more important than the wins most teams can buy. The Giants’ budget should be a big story this offseason.

Let’s examine the players the Giants have under contract, those entering their arbitration years, and the pre-arbitration players who are criminally underpaid. Let’s also guesstimate what they might have to spend.

The six highest-paid players on the roster will make roughly $137 million next season

Those players would be Rafael Devers, Matt Chapman, Robbie Ray, Logan Webb, Willy Adames and Jung Hoo Lee. It doesn’t get much more flexible in 2027, either, as Adames’ backloaded contract is set to increase, which would wipe out any savings from Ray leaving in free agency. About a fifth of the roster is spoken for, and that should be the case for the next couple of offseasons, at least.

Just those six players will make more than the Brewers’ roster did last season. They’ll make twice as much as the entire 2025 Marlins did. That says more about those teams than the Giants, but the larger point stands: A chunk of the payroll is already spoken for.

Patrick Bailey and/or Ryan Walker might be Super Two players

Patrick Bailey and Ryan Walker each have two years and some change of service time, which is riiiiiight where the cutoff usually is for Super Two players. That would be the difference between a modest pre-arbitration raise and a much more substantial increase. (Red Sox outfielder Jarren Duran got $3.85 million as a Super Two player last season, for example.)

Patrick Bailey and his Platinum Glove could be in for a big raise this offseason. (Sean M. Haffey / Getty Images)

The extra payroll the Giants would have at the expense of Bailey and Walker wouldn’t be the difference between Kyle Tucker and Kyle Schwarber in terms of total contract value, but it could be close to the difference between their annual salaries in 2026. It’s enough money to matter.

The recent history of Giants payroll is all over the place

Here’s how the Giants have spent over the past decade:

2016: $178.8 million (6th out of 30 teams)
2017: $189.8 million (4th)
2018: $205.7 million (2nd)
2019: $178.6 million (5th)
2020: $73.4 million (9th)
2021: $171.9 million (9th)
2022: $162.4 million (12th)
2023: $189.4 million (12th)
2024: $207.1 million (10th)
2025: $178.3 million (13th)

It’s almost charming that the first and 10th years are so similar, but a $178 million payroll is much less impressive in 2025 than it was in 2016. The Giants’ fall in the league-wide payroll rankings tells that story.

The Giants have been willing to be a top-10 payroll team when the roster has justified the investment, and it’s worth noting that the last time they did it, it was with a new manager/president of baseball operations combo. Maybe every new regime gets a new set of training wheels when it comes to the payroll.

The Giants are well under the luxury tax threshold for 2026

The league’s luxury tax threshold will be $244 million next season, so even with the Big Six making a Brewers-size payroll, the Giants shouldn’t have to worry about any penalties for next season. Even if they signed the most expensive free agent on the market, they’d still be comfortably under.

After getting sent to luxury tax timeout in 2023, they got (way) under the threshold last season and reset the penalties. They’re back with the first-time offenders again, which means they’d pay a 20 percent penalty on any salary over $244 million.

It would be fun to worry about that. You will not have to worry about that.

Remember that calculating payroll for the luxury tax includes costs like health care and retirement, which aren’t publicly available. The way to work around this is to make up a number between $5 million and $13 million and hope you’re close. Add that to the payroll and, boom, it’s now a luxury tax payroll. It’s only unscientific if you think about it.

It’s a figure that’s good enough for our purposes, anyway, considering that the Giants aren’t likely to come close to it. They’d have to reach $225 million to start worrying, and that would be quite the offseason. Not sure if they could get there even if they wanted to.

The Giants will have the wiggle room to get creative

If the Giants spend on another player in the Adames/Devers salary range, they can use some pre-arbitration players to fill gaps. The roster looks something like this right now:

All of those open roster spots seem daunting, but it doesn’t take much to get rid of a lot of them:

Feel free to define “internal option” as you see fit. Jerar Encarnacion and Luis Matos are two of the more obvious fits, but anyone on the 40-man roster has a chance.

When it comes to the Giants’ must-fill openings, the list looks something like this:

• Outfielder (preferably a center fielder)
• Backup catcher
• At least two starting pitchers
• At least two veteran relievers

Just for yuks and chuckles, pick the most expensive player for each opening and see where that gets the Giants. Kyle Tucker, Victor Caratini, Framber Valdez, Ranger Suárez, Edwin Díaz and Robert Suarez would probably push the Giants over the luxury tax threshold. You wouldn’t be opposed to it.

Two of the top-shelf players would still probably be too much for the Giants, even with some lower-cost free agents around them. Tucker for $35 million and Valdez for $30 million, say, would get them far too close to the luxury tax, even if they grab an Oracle Park reclamation special like Zac Gallen or Zach Eflin to fill out the rotation. One of the Zac or Zach or Zacks. They’d also have to pretend that bullpens don’t exist.

Any single player they want, though? As long as that player is interested, the Giants shouldn’t get priced out. They can afford the best outfielder on the market, and it would still give them enough flexibility to get a quality starting pitcher or two. They can get one of the very best starting pitchers, and it would still leave them enough to get another hitter you’ve heard of. They can rebuild the bullpen with semi-expensive relievers, or they can wait for the market to shake out. (After they’ve re-signed Tyler Rogers, of course.)

What’s more likely is a quantity of quality. Instead of the Kyle Tucker aisle, they might shop in the Harrison Bader aisle, while keeping an eye on second basemen like Brandon Lowe, Gleyber Torres and Jorge Polanco. Instead of the best starting pitcher on the market, they might get the third-best pitcher on the market. Or they might swoop in and get both the seventh- and eighth-best starters on the same day. You get the idea.

Just about every option is available to them, though, even after the Devers trade. They can target one guy and harass his agent until he breaks down in tears. They can spread the risk (and the money) around. They can sign Miles Mikolas, Trent Grisham and absolutely nobody else, just to annoy you.

It’s as wide open as it’s been in a while, especially if the Giants would even consider returning to a top-five payroll again. Attendance went up after they added Adames and Devers to the payroll. There just might be a lesson there.

Only the Giants know how much they’re actually willing to spend, but they’ll have options. It’s a roster that isn’t too far away, and the window is closing. They’ve spent plenty to get here, but it’s the dollars they’ll spend before Opening Day that will make the difference.