Kevin Gausman and the San Francisco Giants are reuniting for the 2021 season. Gausman accepted the $18.9 million qualifying offer the team extended to him.
Kevin Gausman is coming off the best year of his career for the 2020 San Francisco Giants, and he has no plans to pursue a change of scenery.
Right-hander Kevin Gausman will accept the qualifying offer and return to the San Francisco Giants, a source familiar with the situation tells ESPN. Gausman, who had a breakout 2020 after joining the Giants, will make $18.9 million on a one-year deal.
— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) November 11, 2020
I’m going to add this to the ever growing list of “shocking 2020 off-season moves”. At 29 years old and coming off a really productive season, Gausman likely would have hit the free agent market in any other season. He could have locked up a decent contract over multiple years.
For pitchers especially, that multi-year deal provides important financial security. Pitchers are far more likely than hitters to suffer career-threatening injuries. I mean we’re at the point where if a pitcher hasn’t already undergone Tommy John surgery it makes people nervous.
Even if Gausman was unlikely to match the $18.9 million AAV he’ll receive for accepting the qualifying offer, the overall value of a multi-year deal would have exceeded that number with the guarantee that he’d receive every penny of it no matter what.
But 2020 is no normal off-season. Teams are clearly not willing to write huge checks to sign middle-tier free agents. And that’s what Gausman’s career to this point says he is. It’s tough to judge a player’s 2020 success accurately due to the shortened season. It’s especially tough to judge a pitcher’s success accurately when they’re only making 10 starts.
Gausman’s traditional 2020 numbers were clearly the best of his career, but the advanced stats don’t really jump off the page. The biggest improvement he made from 2019 to 2020 was in his strikeout rate, which rose from 25.3% to 32.2%. His barrel rate and average exit velocity remained consistent and the dimensions of Oracle Park may have played a role in his drastically improved ERA. When teams are already dreading the idea of spending money, it’s tough to take a risk on a guy whose best season came in a ten start effort.
So Gausman decided to take the $18.9 million qualifying offer and test the free agent market again in 2021 when, hopefully, teams start to see standard revenue again. Maybe he’ll prove that 2020 was a turning point in his career. Maybe it’ll turn out to be a blip on the radar. But 2020 simply isn’t the year for teams to take a chance on Gausman long term so he’ll take the safe $18.9 million.