The Giants aren’t window-shopping—they’re sprinting down the aisle. Targeting either Nico Hoerner or Brendan Donovan signals a seismic shift from power-hungry swings to on-base, contact-driven lineup ignition that Oracle Park has craved since the even-year magic faded.
Why second base became Ground Zero for Farhan Zaidi
San Francisco finished 2025 28th in team wOBA from the right side and dead-last in contact rate with runners in scoring position. The front office chalked those October whiffs up to a lineup that couldn’t “move the line” once the air got heavy at Oracle. Enter two of baseball’s toughest strikeout rates: Hoerner (12.1%) and Donovan (11.8%), both inside MLB’s top five.
The Giants have prospect Ryan McCrostie penciled in at Triple-A, but he’s a 2027 ETA. A win-now club with Logan Webb and Kyle Harrison anchoring the rotation can’t wait two seasons for offensive stability. Zaidi’s aggression is therefore equal parts roster math and public-relations optics—prove to a restless fan base that 107-win 2021 wasn’t a unicorn.
The price tag: what St. Louis and Chicago are demanding
- Cardinals want controllable pitching, preferably a left-hander who can miss bats. San Francisco’s No. 5 prospect, Carson Whisenhunt, was floated in December talks.
- Cubs are open to moving Hoerner if the return swells their 2026 payroll flexibility and nets a top-100 position player. The Giants’ Grant McCray (No. 3 organizational prospect, 55-hit, 60-run tools) fits that ask.
Chicago’s ask is heavier, but Hoerner has four years of control versus Donovan’s three, giving San Francisco an extra season of a cost-controlled leadoff type who also saves 8–10 defensive runs annually.
How each target changes Gabe Kapler’s lineup card
Donovan is the Swiss-army knife: 40 starts at 2B, 35 in LF, 17 at 3B, 11 at 1B, 9 at RF in 2025. Plugging him in behind LaMonte Wade Jr. lets Kapler rest veterans without burning a bench bat, a must in the NL’s new timed-reentry era.
Hoerner is the table-setter: a career .287/.352/.410 slash at the leadoff spot with 98th-percentile baserunning instincts. Pair him with Matt Chapman’s pull-side power and Oracle’s right-field arcade becomes a 370-foot RBI factory.
NL West dominoes: why the Dodgers and Padres are watching closely
Los Angeles elected to keep Gavin Lux at short but still project only 1.9 fWAR from the keystone. If San Francisco lands Hoerner’s 4.2 projected fWAR, that’s a two-win swing in a division the Giants lost by three games in 2025. San Diego, meanwhile, is shopping Jake Cronenworth** to cut payroll; watching a rival upgrade at their expense only raises the pressure on A.J. Preller to pivot to **Dylan Moore** or **Luis Urías** on shorter deals.
Odds and timeline: when will a deal cross the finish line?
Scuttlebutt at the Manchester Grand in San Diego this week says the Giants want resolution before January 22**, the date arbitration figures are exchanged. Both players are first-year eligibles—signing teams prefer to know the exact payroll figure before locking in multi-year extensions. Expect San Francisco to push its offer to the 48-hour mark; if the Cubs insist on McCray plus a second piece, Zaidi could pivot back to Donovan and close by the weekend.
Whichever name is stitched across the front of a new orange-and-black jersey, the message is already loud and clear: the Giants are done patching holes with one-year flyers. They’re importing certainty, and the rest of the National West has been put on notice.
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