Locked On Giants – Daily Podcast On The San Francisco Giants

On today's Locked On Giants podcast, Ben Kaspick talks about the Tampa Bay Rays' win in World Series Game 2 against the Los Angeles Dodgers. The Dodgers dominated and looked like the superior team in Game 1, but the Rays answered back emphatically in Game 2. Brandon Lowe set the tone early with a booming solo home run to the opposite field gap in the first inning. Lowe has struggled mightily this postseason, despite being the Rays' top offensive performer in the regular season. Lowe later hit his second home run of the game. If he gets hot, it could spell big trouble for the Dodgers. On the pitching side, Blake Snell rebounded after a shaky postseason thus far. He struck out nine in 4.2 innings, although he did allow a two-run homer to Chris Taylor in the fifth. Tony Gonsolin started for the Dodgers, and he was used in somewhat of an opener role. He only went 1.1 innings, and three of the six Dodgers relievers who followed Gonsolin allowed runs, including three earned runs allowed by Dustin May. Looking ahead to Game 3, the Dodgers have the advantage with their ace Walker Buehler against Charlie Morton, although Morton is excellent in his own right and could easily give the Dodgers some trouble.

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On today's Locked On Giants podcast, Ben Kaspick talks about the World Series and high praise for the Giants from a high ranking member of the Atlanta Braves. Alex Anthopoulos, the Braves' president of baseball operations, used to work for the Dodgers under Andrew Friedman and Farhan Zaidi. In a recent profile on Friedman in the LA Times, Anthopoulos spoke about what makes Friedman successful, and he mentioned Zaidi as well. He said that both executives come from organizations that don't have the luxury of discarding underperforming players, and so they have a commitment to making do with what they have and making their own players better. Anthopoulos said that's a big reason why the Dodgers have been so successful, and he said that he's seeing it with Zaidi's Giants now, too. Other organizations discard certain players (think Mike Yastrzemski and Alex Dickerson as examples), and the Giants have made those players better. Ben also discusses World Series Game 1, and he previews tonight's Game 2.

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On today's Locked On Giants podcast, Ben Kaspick predicts the next contracts for Kevin Gausman, Drew Smyly, and Tommy La Stella. The Giants would like to bring Gausman and Smyly back next year, but what will it cost? Ben discusses the possibility that Gausman and/or Smyly will be extended the one-year, $18.9M qualifying offer. It seems likely in Gausman's case, but unlikely for Smyly. He also talks about why contract statuses are important, and not just about owners' bank accounts. It's important for teams to have players with trade value, and only players signed at or below market value for the life of their contract have trade value. Ben predicts what Gausman and Smyly will ultimately command in free agency, factoring in the changes to the sport's economics due to Covid-19, and he also talks about what La Stella is likely to command. La Stella is a possible fit as a left-handed complementary player in the infield—a big need for the Giants in 2021 and beyond.

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On today's Locked On Giants podcast, host Ben Kaspick talks about the Dodgers winning NLCS Game 7 and going to their third World Series in four years. It's a tremendous accomplishment for this Dodgers team that has won eight consecutive division titles (and showed no sign of slowing down), but the pressure is on for LA to finally bring home its first title since 1988. The Dodgers were arguably cheated out of the 2017 championship by the Houston Astros, but there's no doubt that there is pressure on them to win this year. Each year the Dodgers have failed to win a title, it becomes even more amazing that the Giants were able to win three championships in a five-year period from 2010 to 2014.

This Dodgers team is one of the most talented teams ever assembled. They came back from 2-0 and 3-1 series deficits against the Braves. They have a ton of momentum entering the World Series against the Tampa Bay Rays, who beat the Astros in seven games to reach their second Fall Classic in franchise history. Their only other trip was in 2008, when they lost to the Philadelphia Phillies. The 2020 World Series promises to be a good one as it is a very compelling matchup. Both teams are excellent defensively, they can pitch, and they are just loaded with good baseball players. Will the Dodgers finally get over the hump? Or will the Rays shock the baseball world and stand as world championships for the first time in their history?

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On today's Locked On Giants podcast, Ben Kaspick continues to break down the Giants' preseason FanGraphs projections and compares them to what actually transpired in 2020. Over the last few days, Ben has looked at the FanGraphs projections for the Giants at every position on the diamond and compared them to San Francisco's actual results. At almost every single position, the projections ended up selling the Giants short. Ben warned prior to the season that the projections seemed overly pessimistic for various reasons and that the Giants could easily outperform them, and that's exactly what came to pass. On today's episode, he looks at the preseason projections for Giants starting pitchers and relief pitchers and compares them to actual results. Will the theme of the projections underestimating the Giants continue?

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On today's Locked On Giants, Ben Kaspick talks about the San Francisco Giants' FanGraphs preseason projections at catcher, left field, center field, and right field and compares them to what actually transpired. On yesterday's show, Ben looked at the projections and actual performance at first base, second base, third base, and shortstop. The theme that has emerged thus far is that the Giants exceeded expectations by a mile. The FanGraphs projections were often wrong about who would receive playing time, and they also proved to be inaccurate at projection individual performances. Pessimistic preseason projections for Alex Dickerson, Darin Ruf, Mike Yastrzemski, and Austin Slater fueled underwhelming overall projections in the outfield. However, those players vastly exceeded their projections and the Giants ended up with some of the better outfield performance in the game. Yastrzemski emerged as a legitimate MVP candidate and Dickerson, Ruf, and Slater were superb in mostly platoon roles.

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On today's Locked On Giants, Ben Kaspick looks back on FanGraphs preseason positional power rankings, which included projections for every team at every position, and how those compared to what actually happened. Prior to the start of the 2020 season, FanGraphs went position by position projecting performance for every team. Pretty much across the board, those projections were pessimistic about the Giants. Ben actually went through these position by position as they were released prior to the 2020 season, and he frequently said that the projections were overly pessimistic about Giants position players. Today, Ben goes back to look at these projections for 1B, 2B, 3B, and SS, and compares them to the actual performance the Giants got at those positions. Over and over, Giants position players were projected to be bad but ended up being either average or well above average.

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On today's Locked On Giants podcast, Ben Kaspick talks about the 2020 MLB postseason. He goes back and reviews the predictions he made prior to the postseason and sees where things went right and where things went wrong. His National League bracket is still perfectly intact, but things fell apart to an extent on the American League side. He's correctly predicted every outcome in the NL thus far, and ultimately has the Dodgers going to and winning the World Series against the Tampa Bay Rays. The Rays are very much still alive in the AL, but the rest of Ben's bracket in the Junior Circuit is a mess. He incorrectly had the Indians beating the Yankees, the Twins beating the Astros, and the White Sox beating the A's.

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On today's Locked On Giants podcast, Ben Kaspick discusses the Giants' upcoming offseason and its key dates and deadlines. For five days after the World Series ends, the Giants will have exclusive negotiating rights with their own free agents: Kevin Gausman, Drew Smyly, Tony Watson, and Trevor Cahill. Once five days are up, they must have decided whether or not to extend any of their free agents the qualifying offer, valued at one year and $18.9 million. Gausman and Smyly are possibilities to be extended the offer. The player(s) then have 15 days to decide whether or not to accept the offer. Also five days after the World Series ends, the Giants must add six players back to their 40-man roster who were either on the 60-day injured list or the restricted list. That could cause a roster crunch and may force the Giants to make some DFAs. They will have five catchers on the 40-man at that point in time, so a catcher may be designated.

As we move into late November, the Giants must also choose which prospects to add to the 40-man roster to protect them from the Rule 5 Draft in early December. They have a few prospects in their Top 30 who are eligible for the Rule 5 Draft and will need to be added to the 40-man roster in order to be protected. They'll also have to decide which players eligible for arbitration to be tendered contracts. The Giants have several arbitration eligible players, and a few seem to be non-tender candidates. Those decisions need to be made by December 2nd.

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On today's Locked On Giants podcast, Ben Kaspick answers questions from listeners about a range of topics related to the San Francisco Giants. Among the questions asked and answered are: What’s your dream offseason for the Giants? What kind of moves (or lack thereof) would they have to make for you to feel like they’ve kept on track to make the postseason next year given their current trajectory? What potential moves could hold them back? What do you think of the KBO's Ha-Seong Kim? In a normal year, a player like George Springer might command 4-5 years, upwards of $100 million. How do you think the pandemic will affect contract expectations for these free agents, and do you think the Giants are in a position to take advantage of that?

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