This story was excerpted from Maria Guardado’s Giants Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

By now, Giants president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi has become used to answering the same question nearly every offseason: How does he see his club stacking up in the National League West, especially now that the rival Dodgers have added more talent to their star-studded roster?

Dethroning the Dodgers, who have won the division in 10 of the past 11 years, feels unrealistic considering they now employ two-way superstar Shohei Ohtani and are still working to fill holes in their starting rotation. But the Giants will also have to contend with the rising D-backs, who are coming off an impressive run to the World Series, and the Padres, who remain formidable even after trading Juan Soto to the Yankees.

Where does that leave the Giants?

“Our ambition every year is to win the division,” Zaidi said, brushing off the notion that San Francisco will be resigned to compete for an NL Wild Card spot next year. “That’s always the goal. We sort of want players who want to take on that challenge, who know where we are and know what we’re trying to get to and embrace that challenge. I understand the question. We obviously respect all the teams in our division and know it’s a tough division, but we’re not conceding anything.”

The Giants took their first step toward charting their path back to relevancy by signing KBO star Jung Hoo Lee to a six-year, $113 million deal, the longest free-agent contract for a position player in franchise history. In Lee, San Francisco landed a true center fielder who is expected to help stabilize the defense and bring some much-needed speed and athleticism to the roster.

Still, the Giants know there’s still work to be done if they want to keep up with their division rivals in 2024. After missing out on Ohtani, Zaidi said the club plans to put a greater emphasis on run prevention and try to double down on pitching and defense this offseason.

“We’re going to look for athleticism up the middle of the diamond,” Zaidi said. “Look for players, whether it’s by trade or by free agency, who will put our players in their best defensive spots and really support our pitching staff, which we’ve talked about as the strength of our team. The fact that we have a staff that throws a ton of strikes and gets a lot of ground balls -- if we can put a good defense behind that group, I think we have the chance to be really good next year.”

Zaidi said adding another starting pitcher is “still very high on our list,” with Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Blake Snell, Jordan Montgomery and Shota Imanaga among San Francisco’s potential free-agent targets. The Dodgers were reportedly close to landing Tyler Glasnow from the Rays on Friday, though several other frontline starters -- including the Brewers’ Corbin Burnes and the White Sox Dylan Cease -- remain available on the trade market.

The Giants would also like to bring in more shortstop depth, though Zaidi said he hopes to pursue versatile players who can move around and not block prospects Marco Luciano and Casey Schmitt from receiving extended opportunities in the Majors.

While the Giants collapsed down the stretch and staggered to a disappointing fourth-place finish in the NL West in 2023, Zaidi believes the club isn’t that far off from returning to the playoffs.

“When we left on the last road trip [in September], we were in a playoff spot,” Zaidi said. “If the last couple of weeks had gone differently, I think the general sentiments about our standing would be very different. What happened, happened. I’m not disregarding that. But I think we were pretty close to having a season people would have been excited about.

“There’s a lot of good, competitive teams in our division. I sort of view us as kind of being right in there. It’s a big offseason for us. We’re also building on a foundation where if we had sort of been able to keep things together down the stretch, we would be feeling a lot more positively about our season.”