GIANTS POSTCAST: Devers and Koss CRUSH TWO HOMERS A Piece in Win Over Mets

0:00This is the Lockdown Podcast Network celebrating 10 years of your team every day. Today's episode is brought to you by the Dell XPS. I'm Wes Goldberg from Lockdown NBA Daily and Lockdown Heat. So what does it feel like to have a better laptop like the Dell XPS powered by Intel Core? With a premium design that's thin and light, it feels smooth. With a responsive touch screen, it feels fast and precise. And with long lasting battery life, it feels like non-stop energy with a laptop that can keep up. Built for those who want better, the Dell XPS. Built for you. Yo, what's up everyone and welcome back to the Lockdown Giant Sposcast.

1:04I'm your host Eric Triple E Engle. Thanks for joining us today and for every giant sposcast here on the Lockdown Sports Network. And today, the giants took down the New York Metz. Thanks in large part to the four home runs that Raphael Devers and Christian Koss combined to hit today at City Field in the 9-3 win. Devers, oh, excuse me, 9-5. The Metz attacked on a couple runs there in that 9th inning. And Raphael Devers really has been on a terror lately and continues to show you why he's got the potential to be one of the best power bats in the league every single year. Trade deadline, acquisition, Anthony Molina continues to impress on the mound. And today he tossed five innings while surrendering only two unearned runs on one hit. And ultimately, this is a guy who I think is buying himself some a little bit longer of a look as a guy who might be a factor in next year's starting rotation. We'll break it all down. But first, I want to thank all of you for watching us on the Lockdown Giants YouTube channel. If you aren't already subscribed, please hit that subscribe button right now.

2:05Thanks also for listening on the Lockdown Giants podcast feed. However, you're getting the show, we appreciate it. Make sure to check out the Lockdown Giants Daily Show for more in depth coverage. Today's episode is brought to you by Fandool College football Saturdays are already packed with reasons to get excited. And this season, Fandool is giving fans even more ways to get in on every matchup, join all the action at Fandool.com. And today's game, pretty exciting. I mean, a lot of runs scored the meds making it a little closer, I think, than we would have liked there at the end with the two runs that they scored in that ninth inning. The Giants, we know the adventure that the ninth inning has been all season long. And that's going to be, I mean, that's got to be at the top of the list of things to address in the offseason along with filling out the rest of the starting pitching staff. And that's where I want to start with today's starting pitcher Anthony Molina. And in this guy, since the Giants acquired him, all he has done is shove. He is three and O picks up his third win in a Giants uniform. And man, he had his first outing against a in a Giants uniform against the Reds back

3:11on August 25th. And he went four and a third innings. He only gave up one hit and he only struck out one, but only walked one as well. Then his next game came against the Braves, his former squad. He went five innings. He did give up six hits, but he only gave up three runs and he struck out six as well. Didn't walk anybody. And then today's game profiles very similar leads to how those other games did. He goes five innings, only gave up one hit, gave up two runs, although none of them were earned. Did walk one guy and struck out six. I mean, ultimately Anthony Molina, since he has been with the Giants, he just doesn't walk guys. He has two total walks and he's got 13 total strikeouts. That's an amazing, amazing ratio. And I know it's only three starts, it's only three outings. It's a microcosm of what this guy's career with the Giants will hopefully be. But this is all very good science, right? Like you look at the way that he profiles as a pitcher and he's a guy who's going to fill up that strike zone.

4:11He doesn't walk very many guys like at all. I mean, his walk rate, it's one of the best in all of baseball, it's only 3.6%. That's incredible. Like you are so locked in as a pitcher that you're just able to fill up the strikes on the way that this guy is. And also, he's able to get a decent amount of swing and miss, even though he's living in that strike zone. He doesn't get a lot of strikeouts. I mean, six was a lot for him to get today, but he doesn't profile as a guy who typically strikes out a ton of guys. He does get swing and miss, but because he is in that strike zone so much, a lot of guys are going to hit those pitches in the strike zone. He commands the corners pretty well. He gets guys to swing at pitches that they really don't want to swing at pitches that are not good pitches to hit, but are still strikes. And that's where Anthony Molina has shined for the Giants this year. Overall, this season, the ERA, nice and sparkly 2.79 for Anthony Molina. I mean, what more could you want from the guy? Like, I know that we didn't really have a whole lot of expectations for this guy, especially

5:15this year to contribute to this team. And I think in these three starts, or two starts and a piggyback, but basically three starts, the E is shown that he's a guy who deserves a little bit longer of a look in as far as how he could potentially pertain to next year's staff. I mean, you have no solutions right now. If you are the Giants for your pitching staff next season, the free agent class is absolutely awful. You've got to find some answers from within. Sure, the Giants, there will be moves to made, whether it's a fringe signing that's going to help the team or a trade that you can go out and get. And it may be add, you know, a higher end arm to this rotation. That would be nice, but you need answers from within. Like one move that the Giants go out and make a free agency or one trade that they make isn't going to fix this team. It's going to need to be internal development that really saves this team from being bottom feeders like they've been all year long. And Molina, he's a guy who could be interesting. He's a guy who could punch above his weight a little bit.

6:17And ultimately his metrics, I mean, like I said, the fastball, it plays really, really really well. I mean, today he threw that fastball about 40% of the time, 48%, 44 times he threw that fastball today, 51% of his total pitches in today's outing through 19 curve balls, 16 changeups and eight sliders as well. The average exit Velo on his pitches today, just 86 miles an hour, which is exactly what I was getting at earlier when I was saying this guy lives in the strike zone, but it's not necessarily like he's just throwing pitches right down the middle, right? Like, it couldn't be more different from a guy like Landon Rube, who we've seen struggle very, very, very mildly with even just throwing like borderline strikes. Like, we just need the guy to get close to the zone. And it seems like with Landon Rube, he's either throwing it right down the middle or he's missing by a foot. And with Anthony Molina, it's the exact opposite. He avoids the middle at all costs. And he's not missing outside of the strike zone really unless he wants to.

7:17Like he's trying to get guys to go out and chase sometimes. But this guy is someone who, like I said, he loves to throw strikes, fill up the zone. So one thing that he could have improved on today, first pitch strikes. He was pitching from behind in the count a little bit more often than he should have had to. Only eight of his 18 first pitches were strikes. You'd like to see that get a little bit better. The one thing that this guy has yet to show us is that he can face and order a third time through. The giants have been very hesitant to let him do that. He's usually only facing the same lineup twice before he's getting pulled in with the way that his secondary pitches profile. I don't think that's a terrible decision. I mean, against right handers, we know that he is going to use that fastball. He's going to use it against both lefties and righties. But really, I mean, like today, for instance, 63% of the time he was throwing that fastball to righties, only 44% of the time to lefties. And the curveball, only 7% of the time to right handed hitters, but to lefties, 33% of the

8:18time he was throwing that curveball. So you're going to see the off speed stuff a lot more against lefties than against righties, which makes sense. I think lefties are going to see that fastball out of his hand a lot better. But it's, I mean, that fastball's got life. It's got some movement. It's got some deception to it. And they plays it about 96 miles an hour. I mean, for him to be able to locate that pitch the way he does it makes him really, really, really effective. If that changeup can develop as his second best pitch and you can mix in that curveball sometimes. Well, I think that he can be a guy who is pretty close to being a starting pitcher, honestly. You want him to stretch out a little bit more. I think because the pitch count, we have not really seen him run that up like too, too much. Today, he had 87 pitches today, which is, I mean, you'd like to see him get over 90 before the end of the year, 55 of those go for strikes. But ultimately, this is a guy who, I mean, he can give you five innings. You know that? And you want to be able to say that this is a guy who can develop the secondary pitches,

9:18but we just haven't quite seen it come to fruition yet. He's only been here for a cup of coffee. So over this offseason, the two main things that we need to see from Melina get stretched out a little bit more work on those secondary pitches because as I've said on this show, countless, countless, countless times. If you don't have a third pitch, a second pitch and a third pitch that you can, you can go to and rely on in some situations, I don't know how you get through a batting order three times. If you got one pitch, you got one time through the order. You got two pitches, you got two times through the order. You got three. Well, then you can get three plus times through the order. And that's what Melina needs to work on. But ultimately, for his efforts today, he does receive his third win in a Giants uniform. He has three in a, as I said, a 279 ERA on the day. It's only mistake, really. He gave up a home run and I mean, you should have been out of that in and already. There was an error that caused that inning to continue, which allowed that, that to even happen in the first place. It shouldn't have even, shouldn't have even got there. But if you hit any Melina, should have had a nice zero goose egg up there today and runs

10:20surrendered. But instead, he goes with the zero for earned runs and only gives up two actual runs. As I said, one hit today or that Melina gave up against the men's. We got to take a quick break here on the other side. We got to get into the Giants offense. Raffi Devers, Christian Koss and more. That's what's coming up next here on the Lockdown Giants postcast. Today's show is brought to you by Amazon and a big thank you to our friends at Amazon for this limited break. This back to school season spent less on your kids with Amazon. We all know how back, how crazy the back to school shopping experience can be. It starts with a few items on the list than suddenly you're shopping for supplies, clothes, lunch gear, tech, and about 10 other things you didn't see coming. It adds up and fast. Like when your kids definition of need for back to school shopping is a lot different than your definition of need. Now the list keeps getting longer every time they look at it. Explaining the need versus want can undram this time of year has just become a part of

11:21the annual process. Or when the teacher's supply list arrives and somehow every item feels completely reasonable on its own. But when you add everything together and realize just how much stuff you're spending on one kid for the school, you're it can make your head spin. So remember, with Amazon's low back to school prices, just spend less on your kids because every dollar you don't spend on them is a dollar you haven't spent on them. Drop back to school at Amazon and spend less on your kids. Welcome back to the Lockdown Giants Postcast. I'm your host Eric triple E. Engle and today the Giants get a nice win over the Mets. Nine to five and as we talked about in the first half of the show Anthony Molina pitched really, really well. The ninth inning in adventure for sure. Not really what you wanted to see from Jason Foley in that moment. But ultimately I think Dylan Smith has been a guy who's given you some consistency there. He's a guy who I think can profile well as a set up man for next year.

12:21I do not want to enter next year with Dylan Smith as like a guy competing for the closer role or something like that. Like he's he's an okay option. He's a young guy. He's got a lot of talent and potential. But I just don't think he has the mental for that night. I just want a guy who has like wipe out wipe out dominant stuff super high Velo like kind of how Camilo D'Aval was but like a guy with with a little bit more like mental fortitude than what Camilo D'Aval had. That would be the ideal closer. We have seen it Sergio Rolma Brian Wilson. That's the ideal closer right. So when I look at Dylan Smith, he had the fastball high in the zone. It's nice. But it's just not it's not quite as dominant as I want him to be right for for a guy in that role. Randy Rodriguez before that injury, I think he did qualify as a guy who was that dominant with that type of stuff. We just have to hope that he is that same level when he comes back from Tommy John hopefully next year or early next year. We hope. But we'll see how that goes.

13:21Ultimately the giants offensively today, you got a lot of production from two different guys. It wasn't just the two of them as the giants as a total had 10 hits. And yet a couple guys with multi hit games like Grant McCray and Christian costs and Raffi Devers, but really Christian costs. Raffi Devers the two guys at the middle of the giants run production today. Each of these guys had multi hits and each of these guys had three ribbies and both hits that these guys picked up today for each of them home runs for total home runs, five total home runs for the giants. Grant McCray added one in that ninth inning. And I mean, what a what a what a power production, what a show of power by this giants team. I mean, you get that many home runs in one game. You should certainly win and oh, I mean, six. What am I forgetting about the Sabe? But Sabe also had one. But long balls just come in courtesy of everybody in this giant's order today, man. It felt like it was never ending six home runs for the giants today in total.

14:23That's a whole lot of that's a whole lot of run production via the log ball. And while that's not going to be something you see every night out of his giants team, it's definitely something that you're seeing from a few devers pretty much every night as of late. Raffi Devers over his last 12 games has been unreal really since the start of the of the red series. So I guess including today that would be his last 13 games. He's batting 420. It's a pretty nice number. It tripple he likes that number a lot. He hits nine home runs 21 ribbies and 19 or 16 runs scored in his last 13 games. That is an insane level of production by Rafael Devers. And as as one of our viewers is asking in the chat, does anyone still want to send Raffi Devers out of here? Austin our guy in the chat saying anyone still think Raffi needs to go, man. But I don't I know that a lot of people were clamoring for this guy to get shipped off at the trade deadline.

15:24And we talked about it on this show and I kind of came to the same conclusion every time, which is even when Raffi was as bad as he as he was in April and and all that. I mean, it's a logical to trade a guy like this one with this type of contract because you're never going to get equal value back. But too, you're not ever going to be able to go sign a guy like this in free agency. If you're the San Francisco Giants, you have shown with this ownership group at least that you're not willing to overspend as much as you're going to need to to get a star like that to want to come play here in San Francisco. Power hitters just don't want to come here. That is what we've known for. I mean, what like a decade now? What's the last time the Giants actually signed a legit power hitter in free agency? It's been a while. Raffi Devers, you acquired him via trade and that's the only way you're getting a guy of that caliber in this building. And now that he's here, you want to ship him off, it just doesn't make sense. It just doesn't make sense. So Raffi Devers ultimately doing what you thought, really what you hoped that he was going

16:27to do at the end of this season because we said it all year long, right? He's got the numbers on the back of the baseball card and every year, he's probably going to get those numbers, right? Like he's going to get those home runs. He's going to get those RBI's. OPS is going to look nice. I need these things to come at more important times of the year than after the Giants are already completely out of the playoff race. I need this to happen when the game still count, when things still matter for the Giants and they're still playing for something other than moral victories. Because at this point, it's all this really is. It's a moral victory. Yeah, they get a win on, you know, and they get one in the win column today, which is nice. Like one step closer to avoiding 100 losses, which by the way, I think we can, we can start to put that to bed. It looks like the Giants are going to be able to completely avoid that. I mean, it would have to be a catastrophic meltdown. They'd have to win less than 62 games or less than 63 games in order to have 100 losses. You got 59 wins. So if the Giants do lose 100 games, I mean, that's going to be a whole another secondary issue

17:33for this team, the way that just falling apart to end the season like that would be catastrophic. But you like to see that the Giants are starting to do some positive things at the dish. You like to see the impact that I think Devers is having on the rest of the order. I think a lot of other guys are starting to hit better because of Rafi. I mean, we talked about this with Bryce and his development the other day. Bryce had another double today. Ultimately, Rafi, hit and good in the middle of this order means the rest of these guys in this order are going to start hitting good. It's contagious. And when Rafi's going, he's a straw that starts the drink and need him to be the guy to help push this along. Christian Coss, a couple big home runs for him today as well. Multi home run day for Christian Coss, we cannot shrug that off. It was his, he hit his third of the season today, his second third home run of the season. So you love to see that. I mean, it triples this home run total for the year in one day. So shout out Christian Coss, shout out Rafi Devers, shout out. And also a Veece Besabe for also getting in on the home run party and Grant McCray as

18:37well. So all the time we got for you guys here on the Lockdown Giants Postcast today. The Giants get a nice nine to five win over the New York Mets and everyone home happy. So all the time we got for you guys today, we'll be back at it tomorrow as the Giants finish up this series against the Mets out there at City Field. Make sure you're tuning in to the Lockdown Giants Postcast. Until then, we'll see you next time. Peace. Thank you for making Lockdown your first listen every day. For your second listen, find the all night Lockdown MLB Game Night. Every game, every night until a World Series champion is crowned. Get local analysis on a national scale. Find MLB Game Night on Lockdown MLB on YouTube or wherever you listen to podcasts.