For those just sitting down for their morning coffee & scroll, ESPN’s Jeff Passan has posted that our beloved San Francisco Giants “are aggressively pursuing a second baseman and have been engaged with Chicago on Nico Hoerner and St. Louis on Brendan Donovan, sources tell ESPN.” This is simply a refresh of news reported exactly one month ago by The Athletic’s Katie Woo and about 25 days ago by Susan Slusser, so it’s not new news. Unless Passan’s sourcing is in the ballpark just without the salient
details… because there is one other would-be second baseman out there who’d be a massive upgrade for the Giants: Bo Bichette.
Now, do the Giants have the appetite for a $30+ million AAV player to go with their already expensive group of Devers, Adames, and Chapman? That’s what I’m about to take a look at, as the Giants are still in the market for a second baseman and Bichette is still available.
It’s plausible that Passan’s reporting isn’t anything new and that the timing of it is a simple matter of fact following the Cubs’ acquisition of Alex Bregman, which was the premise of Grant Brisbee’s article for The Athletic that went up yesterday. There is now, potentially, an expendable player on Chicago’s infield, and if the Giants had been interested in him before he became potentially expendable then, ipso facto, they must still be interested or closer than ever to working out a trade — right? Well, they’re not the only ones in the market for a second baseman and so the acquisiton cost for any of Hoerner, Donovan, or Bichette would be high to the point that I think if the team is in for a penny then they should be in for a pound.
But I know most of you out there are skeptical. If you don’t want to safeguard ownership’s dividends, then you’re guarding and protecting your heart from another big free agent rejection. Or, you might retreat to the always-there reasoning that “he’s not worth the price.” So, let’s go through all three of these players and see who makes the most sense, with this MLB Trade Rumors comment being the core of the examination:
Giants second basemen were among the least-productive in all of baseball in 2025, hitting a combined .217/.273/.343. The resulting 73 wRC+ (indicating they were 27% worse than average at the plate) ranked 27th in the majors, leading only the Angels, A’s and Rockies.
Nico Hoerner
2026 age: 29
2026 salary: $12 million
Last 4 seasons: .284/.339/.389 (2,495 PA), 6.4 BB%, 10.2 K%, .105 ISO, 105 wRC+, +50.6 Def, 17.5 fWAR
Other notes: Gold Glove winner (2023 & 2025), 19th in MVP voting (2025). Born in Oakland, went to Stanford
He’s been the 18th-most valuable position player in baseball since the start of 2022 thanks largely to his defense at second base. That +50.6 Defensive Runs Above Average is 11th in MLB over that span, about on par with infielder Andres Gimenez and catcher Christian Vazquez. He has been basically league average with his bat.
Hoerner has been a 4+-WAR player the past four seasons, but few projection systems show him as being any better than a 3-WAR player in 2026, and that’s mainly do to his powerless bat. With all the fastball velocity out there, it’s been tough for “contact hitters” to still be a thing, but Hoerner has managed to do it, with a fairly interesting Statcast profile. If the Giants were to add him to their infield, he’d almost certainly push them over the top in terms of having a team that’s projected to win enough games to make the postseason as the second or third Wild Card. His acquisition would also make it harder for Buster Posey to deny that he’s just rebuilding the Giants in the way that they won when he was there, as Hoerner is basically Freddy Sanchez or Marco Scutaro.
Now we’re at the point in the post where I’ve stopped myself to search and see if any of these comparisons have been made before and — yep — Grant makes the exact same comp in his piece. He also adds that the Cubs would be silly to trade Hoerner, and it’s in that spirit that I went looking to see if there had been anything written about what the Cubs would want in such a trade which led me back to reading Grant’s piece from yesterday.
The Cubs don’t need to do a salary dump and it makes a lot more sense for them to make Matt Shaw the superutility player rather than move him, too; but then again, the Giants could make a great offer for Hoerner that’s too good to ignore. The question is should they? $12 million hitting the books plus a couple of solid prospects going out feels like a steep price for the Giants to pay at this point. At this point, it’s unclear what the rest of the industry considers a “solid” Giants prospect to be. Jhonny Level and/or Bo Davidson seem obvious.
Brendan Donovan
2026 age: 29
2026 salary: $5.8 million
Last 4 seasons: .282/.361/.411 (2,006 PA), 9.1 BB%, 13.5 K%, .129 ISO, 119 wRC+, -10.6 Def, 10.1 fWAR
Other notes: 3rd place in NL ROY (2022), NL All-Star (2025)
Hoerner’s “good eye” but left-handed and draws more walks. He’ll create traffic on the basepaths ahead of Adames and Devers but he’ll be just a hair below average on defense. His value is tied up in that sexy on base percentage and two years of team control (2026 & 2027). Though, in the interest of fairness, I suppose I must mention that he also has some positional flexibility in that he’s played in the outfield some.
The Giants do need more OBP and they could use someone who doesn’t cost a lot for the next couple of years. The Casey Schmitt-Tyler Fitzgerald wait-and-see plan is bested rather easily by adding Donovan (or Hoerner), but Chaim Bloom isn’t trading Donovan just to trade him. It’ll be a steeper prospect cost than Hoerner, and Donovan’s warts are more pronounced by comparison: not much more power, much worse on defense, a more extensive injury history (Hoerner has played in 91% of the Cubs’ games vs. Donovan’s 76%) — and, even though it’s nice to have a left-handed hitter in the lineup, lefties still don’t fare too well at Oracle Park (third-worst, according to Statcast’s Park Factor). Having said that, he’s killed the Padres and Diamondbacks in his career.
Will he hit enough overall to overcome the average-at-best glove? Is it worth trading Jhonny Level and Bo Davidson to find out?
Bo Bichette
2026 age: 28
2026 salary: TBD (probably $30-$32 million AAV)
Last 4 seasons: .291/.333/.453 (2,262 PA), 5.7 BB%, 18.8 K%, .162 ISO, 120 wRC+, +1.2 Def, 12.8 fWAR
Other notes: 2-time AL All-Star (2021 & 2023), 4-time MVP vote-getter (2021, 2022, 2023, 2025); since 2021: 7th in hits, 10th in doubles, 10th in batting average, 30th in RBI.
I am totally fascinated by this situation. Why/how could the Giants get him? They recently added a new owner to the group and it’s the second straight season where the team has added an owner. Teams typically solicit investments when their aim is to raise money. I’ve speculated that’s because they need to account for rising costs, but what if they’re now in a situation to raise it enough to add one more key player?
He satisfies Buster Posey’s inclination for high contact hitters. He’s an obvious upgrade in terms of power, compared to both the in-house and rumored options. He has that family history with the sport (his father is Dante Bichette) that might trigger Zack Minasian’s interest. He’s hung around the MVP conversation for most of his career and bounced back tremendously (134 wRC+, 3.8 fWAR) after a disastrous 2024 (70 wRC+, 0.3 fWAR).
He isn’t a slam dunk, though. We’ve seen players rebound from a bad season in time for their free agent walk year so often in our lifetimes that it’s (deservedly) a red flag. He’s had knee and quad issues throughout his career and over the last four seasons has missed about 21% of the Blue Jays games due to injury.
Back in November, Grant made the case that the Giants would have to pay a lot for a good but not great player. He’s been a shortstop for his career, but has basically washed out of that position to the point that he and his agent know he’ll need to move to either second or third. I don’t know if that makes it easier on his knees and quads or if balky knees & quads is simply a bad condition for a middle infielder to have (yeah, it’s that).
His relative youth compared to the remaining free agent field coupled with his position makes him valuable, but just how valuable is what the market will decide and what the Giants will have to top (probably) in order to land him. The deals for Kyle Schwarber, Pete Alonso, and now Alex Bregman all point to something in the range of $30 million per season as the floor. Bregman’s plain $35 million AAV is adjusted down for league accounting purposes because of deferrals, giving him a $32.5 million AAV at the end of the day. He would also cost the Giants some draft bonus pool money as well as a pick, and that’s perhaps not a situation they want to be in after having the good fortune to nab such a high pick.
Grant also noted a meaningful long-term complication:
With Chapman, Adames, Devers, Lee and Bichette, the Giants would owe more than a half-billion dollars to five players, none of whom is likely to win the MVP in any given season.
I dispute the “none of whom is likely to win the MVP in any given season” just a little bit because Bichette has received votes in four of the last five seasons, but the larger point would remain that a team that needs to maintain financial flexibility would have practically zero if they added another high AAV guy to their ledger. Chapman, Adames, and Devers might all turn into baseball pumpkins within the next 3 years, and there’s a nonzero chance that could happen to Bichette, too, once he crosses 30. Only 64 players age 30 and above have qualified for the batting title since 2023. Just 48 of them register as “above average” hitters.
Still! Greg Johnson has been clear that although the team won’t make long-term commitments to pitchers, they’re open to position players. Bichette is an All-Star who nearly beat the Dodgers in the World Series. They’ve got at most three years remaining with Logan Webb. I think the window to do something meaningful until the next crop of top prospects comes around is to try to shove open a window. You could imagine the Giants imagining for themselves a situation where this move makes sense. It makes a little more sense than waiting to see if Tyler Fitzgerald, Luis Matos, and Jerar Encarnacion can be difference makers or letting the team’s most daring move be signing a college manager to take run a storied franchise.
