SF Giants manager Bob Melvin weighs in on Shohei Ohtani chase

SAN FRANCISCO — It didn’t take long for Shohei Ohtani to be mentioned.

On the day the San Francisco Giants made Bob Melvin the 39th manager in club history, questions were already surfacing about who the Giants would be pursuing in free agency and whether or not this team would add star power to build around its star manager.

Ohtani, 29, is expected to net the biggest contract in baseball history this winter. Despite undergoing elbow surgery that will likely keep him from pitching until 2025, he remains an elite talent who could fetch $400 million or more on an open market.

As of Wednesday, the Giants were considered the third-most likely team to sign Ohtani at plus-500 odds (bet $100 to win $500) according to BetOnline.

Melvin was asked directly about trying to recruit three of the biggest free agents: Ohtani, 25-year-old Japanese right-hander Yoshinobu Yamamoto and 30-year-old lefty Blake Snell, the former American League Cy Young Award winner who played the last two seasons for Melvin in San Diego.

“We’ll see, right?” the skipper said. “Those are all pretty good players. We’d like to have every one of them. But financially, that’s a stretch. All those guys will be talked about and hopefully I have an impact on that and we’ll see how it goes.”

Melvin was asked about his strong ties to players from Korea and Japan, having previously worked with Ichiro Suzuki in Seattle, Hideo Nomo in Detroit and Milwaukee and Ha-Seong Kim in San Diego, among others.

“I do have some familiarity there,” he said. “In Oakland, we opened up a couple times in Japan as well. Hopefully that resonates.”

Melvin didn’t hide his hope that the Giants find a big bat to power an offense that ranked second-to-last in the National League while scoring just 4.16 runs per game and dead last with a .695 OPS this year.

It’s fair to wonder if the Giants have relied too much on platoons without any star power in their everyday lineup.

“It’s not like it wasn’t for (the Giants’) lack of effort last year to bring in stars, it just didn’t come to fruition,” he said. “But yes, to an extent, there are guys who create stability for the team. These guys are in the middle of the order. These guys are going to play every day and then you match up around them. There’s always a conversation to try to create that.”

Melvin said he already talked to Giants president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi about it.

“Every team out there has platoons and matchups, it’s how many you have and adjustments you need to make,” Melvin said. “Farhan realizes there probably needs to be some stability in the middle of the order here.”

The question is whether or not the Giants are willing to spend big to acquire that kind of player.

Ohtani is clearly the best hitter available in free agency this winter and there’s a steep drop-off to the next-best options: third baseman Matt Chapman, who Melvin managed in Oakland, first baseman Rhys Hoskins, outfielders Cody Bellinger and Teoscar Hernandez, or designated hitter J.D. Martinez.

When it comes to the trade market, the Giants are considered the second-most likely team (plus-300, per BetOnline) to acquire Mike Trout if the three-time American League MVP is traded from the Los Angeles Angels, who squandered their years with Ohtani and Trout and might now consider rebuilding.

Trout, 32, has seven years remaining on his contract and is owed $37 million annually. He has a full no-trade clause, but USA Today reported in September that the Angels were open to trading Trout if he indicated he wants out this offseason. Trout told reporters last month that he’ll have conversations with Angels leaders soon.

While Melvin said he was assured by the ownership group that the Giants will be committing resources to improve the roster, owner and chairman Greg Johnson seemed to shy away from a question of whether or not the Giants would consider going over the luxury tax threshold in 2024.

“I think it depends a lot on who we target,” Johnson said. “And when you look at the luxury tax, in a one-year number, you can go past that if you had to. I don’t think it’s something we wouldn’t want to do for a long period. I think if you look at the teams that have jumped up in free agency that didn’t have great years this year with the spending, I’m not sure there’s a direct correlation there.”

The threshold in 2024 will be $237 million. The Giants’ payroll for luxury tax purposes is currently around $159 million, giving them plenty of wiggle room.

“We plan on being active,” Johnson said. “If we have to go through that, we go through that. But we also represent an ownership group that hopefully our goal is to somewhat break even, which is somewhat of a challenge in this business. But I can tell you everybody from the ownership side, the goal is to win, and that’s what we’re doing everything we can to do.”