{"id":336275,"date":"2025-12-08T04:11:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-08T04:11:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/336275\/"},"modified":"2025-12-08T04:11:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-08T04:11:07","slug":"mets-giants-met-with-framber-valdez-in-november","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/336275\/","title":{"rendered":"Mets, Giants Met With Framber Valdez In November"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Orioles are the only team publicly linked to Framber Valdez<\/a>\u2019s market this winter, and MLB Network\u2019s Jon Morosi<\/a> reports that Valdez and his reps indeed met with officials from the O\u2019s at the GM Meetings in November.\u00a0 Around that same time, however, the Giants and Mets also spoke with Valdez\u2019s camp, which fits given how both teams are known to be looking for starting pitching help.<\/p>\n

Valdez ranked sixth on MLBTR\u2019s list of the offseason\u2019s top 50 free agents<\/a>, with a predicted contract of five years and $150MM.\u00a0 This projection makes San Francisco\u2019s interest all the more intriguing, since both GM Zack Minasian<\/a> and team chairman Greg Johnson<\/a> have each stated since the GM Meetings that the Giants prefer to add pitchers on shorter-term contracts.\u00a0 Valdez is entering his age-32 season, which may raise the risk level even further about making a big commitment to the left-hander now that he is past what are generally considered a player\u2019s prime years.<\/p>\n

The Giants\u2019 stance doesn\u2019t technically preclude a pursuit of Valdez, if the team perhaps offered the southpaw a short-term contract with a higher average annual value.\u00a0 That said, Valdez\u2019s age might make such a consideration unlikely on his end, as surely he wants to strike as lengthy and lucrative a deal as possible now that he has reached the open market.\u00a0 Despite his age, Valdez is a workhorse who has tossed 767 2\/3 innings over the last four seasons, and he has 85 more innings under his belt on his career postseason resume.<\/p>\n

Valdez is a grounder specialist who doesn\u2019t miss many bats, but that skillset would work just fine with Matt Chapman<\/a> and Willy Adames<\/a> backing him up in the San Francisco infield.\u00a0 More pressingly, Valdez\u2019s ability to eat up innings with quality work is a nice fit in a Giants rotation that has plenty of question marks beyond ace Logan Webb<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Robbie Ray<\/a> and Landen Roupp<\/a> project as the next two starters, and Ray is a free agent next winter while Roupp had a solid 2025 season but is an overall unproven commodity over the long term.\u00a0 A collection of other younger and unproven arms (Hayden Birdsong<\/a>,\u00a0Trevor McDonald<\/a>,\u00a0Blade Tidwell<\/a>, Carson Whisenhunt<\/a>, Kai-Wei Teng<\/a>, Keaton Winn<\/a>) are currently in the mix for the fourth and fifth spots.\u00a0 Signing Valdez would do a ton to solidify this group, as the Giants would have a very strong top three of Webb-Ray-Valdez that could easily line up as a playoff rotation, and Valdez would be the replacement for Ray if the former Cy Young Award winner went elsewhere after the 2026 campaign.<\/p>\n

That said, it could all be a moot point if the Giants aren\u2019t willing to splurge on a long-term pitching contract.\u00a0 It could be that the Giants checked in with Valdez and other pitchers to get an early gauge on their expectations, and without much hope of finding a bargain, the team is now being open about its preference to stick with smaller (and presumably less-expensive) contracts.<\/p>\n

Mets president of baseball David Stearns shares a similar view on starting pitching contracts, yet New York\u2019s decision to stick to such deals with the likes of Sean Manaea<\/a>, Frankie Montas<\/a>, and Clay Holmes<\/a> last winter backfired badly on the team.\u00a0 These three pitchers and the other members of the rotation simply seemed to break down last season, leading to the team\u2019s collapse in the second half as an influx of pitching prospects couldn\u2019t stop the downward spiral.<\/p>\n

Between the veterans (Manaea, Holmes, Kodai Senga<\/a>, David Peterson<\/a>) and the youngsters (Nolan McLean<\/a>, Jonah Tong<\/a>, Brandon Sproat<\/a>, Christian Scott<\/a>), the Mets have plenty of pitchers on hand, yet adding a durable frontline starter like Valdez would be a huge boost to this group.\u00a0 In the wake of last year\u2019s collapse, Stearns expressed regret over not doing more to reinforce the pitching staff, and owner Steve Cohen surely couldn\u2019t have pleased with how things played out.<\/p>\n

The Amazins\u2019 interest in upgrading their rotation has been evident by the many big names on their radar this winter.\u00a0 Valdez joins the likes of Tatsuya Imai<\/a>, Michael King<\/a>, Ranger Suarez<\/a>, Joe Ryan<\/a>, and Tarik Skubal<\/a> as free agents and trade candidates who have been liked to the Mets in some fashion.\u00a0 It might be safe to guess at this point that the Mets will head into Opening Day with at least one big new arm at the front of their rotation, and it\u2019s just a matter of whether the club will obtain their rotation help via trades or pricey signings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Orioles are the only team publicly linked to Framber Valdez\u2019s market this winter, and MLB Network\u2019s Jon…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":336276,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[87208,363,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-336275","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-framber-valdez","9":"tag-mlb","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=336275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336275\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/336276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=336275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=336275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=336275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}