The San Francisco Giants Ace is the best free agent available

The San Francisco Giants they are coming off one of the most disappointing seasons in the franchise’s long and storied history.

Now, three years after a 107-win campaign, there is a growing sense that it was a fluke, and the team’s ability is much closer to what it has shown us in the years since.

Things were supposed to be a lot different this year, even though they were always going to be tough for the Giants to contend with San Diego Padres and the Los Angeles Dodgersthe latter of which are still celebrating their second World Championship in five years.

Last offseason, the organization brought in the likes of Matt Chapman and Blake Snell, the undisputed National League Cy Young Award winner.

San Francisco signed Snell to a two-year, $62 million deal that included a player option for the 2025 season, the one small detail that turned everything upside down.

Snell chose not to exercise his player option, deciding he would rather enter the 2025 MLB free agency class.

Keith Law by The Athletic ranked Snell as the seventh-best free agent available this winter and the third-best starting pitcher.

“He walks too many guys, but he misses a lot of at-bats and his stuff generates a lot of weak contact,” Law writes, “enough that he can still be an above-average starter even when he’s not winning awards.”

To say Snell walks too many men may be an understatement, as even during his 2023 Cy Young campaign, the left-hander has walked 99 batters, the most in Major League Baseball.

While he’s managed to cut down on the number of walks this year, he’s still walked more than most with his 10.5 percent strikeout rate.

Missing bats are Snell’s calling card, though, and the pitcher has done so with ease for many years, posting a 32.1 percent rate from the start of the 2018 season through this year and never seeing that rate dip below 30% that year. time.

With Snell’s official decision to opt out of his contract with the Giants and enter free agency, the available starting pitchers on the market have increased.

Snell has proven he can be the ace of any contending team with two Cy Young Awards to his name and could be suiting up for another team as early as Monday.