San Francisco Chronicle (Sunday)
Yastrzemski could be odd man out for ’25
The downside to being the San Francisco Giants’ longest-tenured player is that your time with the team might be dwindling, like with Austin Slater earlier this season.
Now another outfielder has held down a roster spot longer than anyone else in the clubhouse, and Mike Yastrzemski knows that he’s a question mark for next season as he goes into arbitration for the final time.
“Obviously, when the money changes and the roster changes, then the priorities change,” Yastrzemski said. “That’s a realistic thing that they’ll have to discuss and figure out, and I’ll be just waiting to hear and figure out what happens.
“I want to stay here as long as possible. I’ve grown so in love with this place, the stadium, the fans, the clubhouse, staff, the ownership, the front office, the city. Everything’s been so great.”
The team is leaning a little right-handed-hitting heavy, though, and the lefty-hitting Yastrzemski’s superior defense and his strong clubhouse presence are highly valued. He long has been a plus WAR player (lifetime 14.3 in six seasons), and he won’t break the bank; he’s making $7.9 million this year and that would go up in arbitration, but Yastrzemski would be happy to sign a two-year deal and that could mean a lower annual average value.
“If I could sign something like that, I would love to do so,” Yastrzemski said. “Obviously, I don’t ever want to put so much pressure on that side of things to make anybody wary, and I’m not a guy who is necessarily in a position right now to be like, ‘I want to go out and test the market and see who’s going to fight for me the most.’ I feel like this is the team that I want to fight for the most.”
The Giants might have their 2025 starting outfield set with Heliot Ramos, Jung Hoo Lee and Grant McCray, and Yastrzemski, 34, knows the Giants are aiming to go a little younger. Though he still believes he’s a starter — and the Giants’ pitchers also would argue that based on the way he plays right field — Yastrzemski said he’s willing to move into a fourth-outfielder-type role if warranted.
He can even play first base. “I did in college,” he said. “Three games.”
Ultimately, it might come down to whether the Giants want Yastrzemski back. The same goes for lefty-hitting Michael Conforto, who will be a free agent but who also would like to stay in San Francisco.
“I assume that’s the case,” Yastrzemski said of one going and one staying. “Unfortunately, as close as we’ve grown, it’s going to suck not playing with him — but who knows, maybe at the end of it, we may both be playing together on a different team. That’s just how baseball works.
“It’s something that, as a player, you don’t necessarily want to think about. But I find the more that I put on the back burner, the more that it looms, so I just kind of face it head on and say, ‘There’s a chance you might not be here, and you have to figure things out,’ which is where real life things come in, like: We have all this stuff that we’ve left here for five years, and do we take it with us now? Because we don’t know what to do, because my family loves where we’re staying.”
Yastrzemski has felt a kinship with the Giants and their fans since his debut.
“I didn’t feel like I belonged in the big leagues, and this city, this fan base made me feel like I did with the way they pulled for me,” he said. “I struck out my first atbat, and they gave me a standing ovation — like, that doesn’t happen in too many places. And to have those memories, those are the reasons why I want to stay here, regardless of where the roster goes.
“I want to win more than anybody, so I’m willing to do whatever it takes, and I don’t feel like I’ve finished what I wanted to with this organization — there have been so many seasons where we’ve had such good teams that just didn’t hit the finish line. We’ve had one team that hit the finish line and got clipped the first step over the finish line. So I want to just kind of create something that people are always going to remember here.”