Their records are nearly identical, but their checkbooks are worlds apart.
The San Francisco Giants and the Los Angeles Dodgers gave us the NL West title race of a lifetime in 2021, despite finding success in different ways.
The Dodgers went the superstar route, signing big-name free agents to stack a lineup that wouldn’t be out of place in an All-Star game. The Giants are gaining advantages in the margins, finding ways to improve the squad behind dozens of less splashy transactions.
Brian Murphy pointed this out to Andrew Baggarly, who joined the Murph and Mac Show Wednesday morning, and asked if this is what we can expect from the Farhan Zaidi vs Andrew Friedman arms race.
Short answer – no.
“I don’t think so,” Baggarly said. “I think that there will be opportunities for the Giants to go out and get an impact free agent that makes sense, or make a trade for someone that makes sense.
“If they could have made a trade for Jose Ramirez I think they would have. If Seiya Suzuki said, ‘Hey, San Francisco is where I want to go and not Chicago,’ and his wife likes San Francisco better and he likes San Francisco better, and there weren’t a lot of other off the field extenuating factors there, then I think they would have spent (the money on him).”
According to Spotrac, the Dodgers currently boast the most expensive roster in the major leagues, and will pay their players around $290 million dollars in combined 2022 salary. The Giants will pay their roster $157 million this year, just a tick over the league average.
Andrew Baggarly says if the Giants are going to make a big free-agent splash, it will come with an abundance of caution.
“I do think there will be times when The Giants will make a major expenditure on a free agent,” Baggarly said.
“I think it really has to make sense for them and check off all the boxes, and not something that they do because, ‘Hey, it’s gonna make us better but there are all these other costs associated with it.’”
Baggarly did gave the Giants credit for spending money in different, ‘hidden’ ways, such as paying for Luis González or Matthew Boyd to rehab.
“They are spending money in ways that frugal teams are not,” Baggarly said. “Obviously it’s not the flashy kind of expenditures. But I do think that that will be there in time.”
Listen to the full interview below. You can listen to every KNBR interview on our podcast page at knbr.com/podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.
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