Giants sign starter Adrian Houser to 2-year deal

The San Francisco Giants didn’t wait for us to catch our breaths from the signing of quasi-closer Jason Foley as just moments ago Jeff Passan broke that they’ve also signed starting pitcher Adrian Houser to a 2-year, $22 million deal with an option for a third year. Does this move effectively end the team’s exploration of the free agent market and did they properly stopgap their rotation?

Two weeks ago, I looked at some low-cost pitchers who might fit ownership’s desire for short-term, low-value deals as a way to supply depth to the starting rotation. Houser was on the list, and at the time, I wrote:

Houser’s ability to get groundballs is useful (57% from 2019-2021, 47.7% since), but [he] has been one of the hardest hit pitchers in the Statcast era.

Hard Hit Rate by season:

2025: 47.6% (5th percentile)
2024: 40.4% (35th)
2023: 46.3% (5th)
2022: 41.5% (19th)
2021: 36.0% (69th)
2020: 32.8% (75th)
2019: 35.3% (61st)

That’s three seasons well above average and four seasons well below and it’s all thanks to a fastball velocity that went from above average to below over the span of a few seasons.

Prior to 2025, he’d never been better than league average. He stormed out of the gates with the White Sox this season before coming back down to earth with the Rays, who acquired him at the trade deadline.

Still, a lot of his career numbers might not apply to the pitcher he is today, and that includes the uninspiring Steamer projection for 2026: 24 GS 138 IP 4.48 ERA 1.2 fWAR. So, if you’re looking for an immediate counter to what I’ve outlined to this point, there you go. Also mentioned in my Houser analysis:

Per Kiley McDaniel for ESPN.com, “Houser had a good 2025 in large part because mechanical tweaks helped the velocity of his sinker go from 92.5 mph in 2024 to 94.4 in 2025.” His slider spin increased, too.

Indeed, his spin rate jumped from around 2,200 rpm for his career to 2,432 rpm, approaching the platonic ideal of a major league pitcher, according to the Giants.

He had a 1.56 ERA through his first 9 starts in 2025 and a 4.81 ERA over his final 12. He could’ve simply backslid into old habits as the season wore on and he got tired — and he might’ve been very tired as he did miss some time on paternity leave. Or… he did what Jordan Hicks did: got off to a great start and then faded away. The Giants will pay a lot of money to find out. Though, they did get to see him twice in 2025: once with the White Sox and again with the Rays. In two starts, he allowed zero runs in 12 innings, with 11 strikeouts and 1 walk.

The $11 million AAV is more than I would’ve expected, but with the Rays reportedly showing interest in bringing him back and the Giants being blindsided by the cost of Cody Ponce, it seems pretty clear that they decided to make sure they got the guy they really wanted. What’s really interesting here is that he started the season on Texas’s Triple-A roster, was released, then picked up by the White Sox in May and pitched well enough for them to get traded to the Rays at the deadline.

The Texas situation might suggest a bit of a connection with senior advisor Bruce Bochy, but he’s an Oklahoma kid who played for the Oklahoma Sooners and so I think Frank Anderson’s Oklahoma ties had maybe even more to do with this than anything else (he was the head coach of Oklahoma State when Houser was a star for OU).

One last bit of biographical news: he’s one of three active players who are members of the Cherokee Nation. Ryan Helsley and Jon Gray are the others.

The Giants have solidified their rotation with a great #5 or solid #4 talent with 3rd starter upside. In doing so, they might have spent the amount allocated for free agency this offseason. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re done adding. Bring on the trades!