NAPA — Around three o’clock on Friday afternoon, Roki Sasaki announced he was signing with the Los Angeles Dodgers. Less than 24 hours later, the San Francisco Giants hosted the first leg of their FanFest Tour in Napa to garner excitement for the coming season.
Talk about timing.
“At the end of the day, he chose that team,” left-hander Kyle Harrison told this news organization. “That’s the way you have to look at it. I think that’s probably where he thought he was going to get better after going through all those processes. … Maybe he found that was the best fit along with some other guys he knew on the team. I don’t know. We have to beat the Dodgers, though, so I could care less about that.”
For the Giants, Sasaki’s decision to join the Dodgers especially stings because San Francisco’s brass wasn’t shy about expressing its interest.
At the Winter Meetings, president of baseball operations Buster Posey and general manager Zack Minasian both had raving review for “The Monster of the Reiwa Era.” Posey, in particular, described the possibility of Sasaki pitching for the Giants in the playoffs in front of a raucous Oracle Park. Those hopes were dashed, though, when Minasian revealed during Justin Verlander’s introductory press conference that the Giants were out of the running. Days later, Sasaki declared he was bound for Southern California.
Los Angeles, unsurprisingly, isn’t just the heavy favorite to win the NL West, but to become the first back-to-back champions since the New York Yankees. For the Giants who attended Saturday’s FanFest, they’re not looking at this season as a foregone conclusion.
“Nothing’s guaranteed,” third baseman Matt Chapman told this news organization. “You have to go out there and do it. On paper, your team can look great. It can be all these things. Obviously, they’re probably the favorites, but that doesn’t change anything for us. That doesn’t change our goals. Our goals are to win the division. Our goals are to make the playoffs. So, regardless of who the Dodgers add or what other teams in our division keep improving — the Diamondbacks got better, the Padres are good — this is a tough division with four teams that are really trying to win.
“It doesn’t matter to us. We have to take care of our business.”
Sasaki’s decision to join the defending World Series champions embittered countless baseball fans, generally, and Giants fans, specifically. Some fans went as far as to compare Sasaki signing with the Dodgers to Kevin Durant joining the Golden State Warriors in 2017.
The Dodgers now boast one of baseball’s most talented rotations with Sasaki in the fold, a unit that will also feature Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow with Tony Gonsolin, Dustin May and Landon Knack in the mix. Clayton Kershaw is still a free agent and recovering from offseason surgeries, but he’ll likely be along for the ride as well. That rotation compliments a lineup that features anchored by three MVPs (and likely Hall of Famers) in Ohtani, Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman, as well as All-Stars Teoscar Hernández, Will Smith and Max Muncy and newly-signed super utility man Hyeseong Kim.
“When you come to this division, you already know what it’s going to be,” Hicks told this news organization. “At the end of the day, I don’t think it’s a foregone conclusion. It’s baseball. You battle every single day. You can beat any starting pitcher. They definitely have a good starting rotation on paper. … It seems like he has a really electric arm and good splitter, good fastball.
“They’re going to have a good rotation. It’s going to be a tough matchup, but I think our hitters will be well-prepared, and hopefully, we can catch them on a World Series slump and then go get our ring this year. You can’t count us out against anybody.”
