Camilo Doval’s return to San Francisco is already getting a financial reality check.
The Giants brought the reliever back to the Bay Area in the final week of the season, and the reunion came with all the right early signs. Doval said he wanted to stay beyond this season, then opened his second Giants stint by striking out the side in his first inning back, including Los Angeles Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani.
Now comes the part that actually decides things: arbitration.
San Francisco controls Doval’s rights for 2027, and the question is whether the club will be comfortable with the number that comes out of that process. MLB Trade Rumors released its annual salary arbitration projections for 2027, using a model built by Matt Swartz, and Doval came out as the Giants’ priciest projected case.
The projection pegs Doval at $6.6 million. That’s more than one-third of the Giants’ estimated arbitration bill, which Swartz projects at $18.4 million for San Francisco’s nine eligible players.
The numbers aren’t binding, but they tend to land close to the final result. For a Giants team with $160.1 million in adjusted payroll tied up in eight players, per Spotrac, that $6.6 million figure could be a manageable piece of business - or it could be a number that gives the front office pause, depending on how the financial picture looks when arbitration opens in January, assuming a new collective bargaining agreement is in place.
There’s also the baseball side of it, and that’s where the decision gets more interesting. San Francisco’s bullpen was a problem in 2026, and president of baseball operations Buster Posey said after the season that he underestimated what the group had and that it cost the Giants dearly. He also said the team is already talking about it.
Posey’s concern with Doval is straightforward: the walks. Doval issued more than six walks per nine innings, a rate that stands in sharp contrast to his All-Star season in 2023, when that number was cut in half.
So the Giants are left weighing the same thing they always are in arbitration cases with a pitcher who has both upside and volatility: the price versus the risk. Whether Doval is back in 2027 will come down to how San Francisco values that tradeoff, with Posey holding the final call on whether the cost is worth it.
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For the Giants, though, the early read points elsewhere. Arraez missed the Phillies Wild Card series because of an ankle injury, and the team appears more likely to lean on internal options at second base than revisit a reunion. His name will still come up because of what he can offer and because he has already been part of this roster conversation once, but for now the more interesting question is whether any club sees enough reason to make a move before the market settles. [Read more 🡒]