The Giants entered this offseason with a problem: They had almost no starting pitching.
Their 2021 rotation had been a bridge-year group made primarily of short-term bets. Last winter, San Francisco extended a qualifying offer to Kevin Gausman, and it worked out modest, one-year contracts with Anthony DeSclafani and Alex Wood. All three pitchers previously had alternated flashes of success with stretches of disappointment. This meant that each, in his own way, represented something of a gamble. But then something funny happened—it all worked. The Giants weren’t crossing a bridge to winning; they were suddenly all the way over the bridge, and they had hit on every one of their starting pitching bets.