Cactus League Opener

SF 6  TEX 1

The Giants played a good, crisp game to start their exhibition season. It's just the kind of game we hope to see a lot of from this young team. Highlights were many today. Jung Hoo Lee smoked the first pitch he saw for a line drive single. Landen Roupp got the start and threw two scoreless with three whiffs. Catcher Sam Huff hit a homer to give the Giants an early lead (veteran non-roster invitee Jake Lamb was on base). A Luis Matos RBI hit made it 3-0 in the 5th. Four Giants pitchers (NRIs Enny Romero, Kai-Wei Teng, Joel Peguero, and Cole Waites) kept the Rangers off the board with two hits, no walks, and five strikeouts. Raymond Burgos gave up a homer in the 7th but NRI Miguel Diaz put up a zero in the bottom of the 8th.

Then the fun started. Super-prospect Bryce Eldridge hit a monster homer to center with one out and one on to make it 5-1 Giants. It was the kind of moonshot everyone was hoping to see the 20-year old launch this spring. He struck out in his first at-bat but recovered from an 0-2 hole in the second at-bat to impress the crowd. And the announcers. Jon Miller and Duane Kuiper were pretty excited. After that Grant McCray hit a homer to left! I think we all want to see the speedster "serve notice" and make the squad. NRI Justin Garza finished up.

It was good to see Brett "Maverick" Wisley get two hits. Casey Schmitt added a knock as well. These guys are already on the 40-man roster (like Roupp, Matos, McCray, and Huff). Wisley, as a lefty hitter, has a good shot at a bench spot.

Logan Webb gets his first start tomorrow (Reds, 12:05 PT). Go Giants!

--M.C.

Full-squad workout

The schedule page on the Giants website says today is the first "full-squad" workout. And that the first Spring game will be on Saturday (against the Rangers).

What am I hoping for? That the Giants Youth Movement will take a step forward. Right now we have C Patrick Bailey (25) anchoring the defense. Up the middle is 2B Tyler Fitzgerald (27) and CF Jung Hoo Lee (26). LF Heliot Ramos (25) will flank Lee, with Luis Matos (23), Marco Luciano (23), Grant McCray (24), and Wade Meckler (24) in the wings.

The biggest prospect in the system is lefty slugging 1B Bryce Eldridge who is still only 20 years of age. Perhaps we'll see him later in the season if he lights it up at AAA. The same goes for the other big prospect, lefty pitcher Carson Whisenhunt (24). He is a likely late-season call-up, too. Both are non-roster invites to this year's camp. I hope they turn some heads this spring! By the way Eric Longenhagen at FanGraphs released his Top 100 Prospects list. Eldridge came in at #26 and Whisenhunt at #95.

On the pitching side there are certainly a lot of youngsters. Logan Webb is still only 28 and in his prime but he's a seasoned veteran at this point. A big step forward from lefty starter Kyle Harrison (23) will be huge for the club. The same goes for young righty starter Hayden Birdsong (23). Big expectations are out there for another young lefty, reliever Erik Miller (27), currently the only southpaw in the 'pen. Ryan Walker is 29, but only a third-year player, and Camilo Doval is still only 27. Sean Hjelle (27), Tristan Beck (28), Keaton Winn (27), and Randy Rodriguez (25) round out the choices.

That's a lot of upside!

The Giants didn't do much in the off-season. Getting Willy Adames was a no-brainer. They really needed a real shortstop. He will make a great tandem with 3B Matt Chapman. (Team defense was a serious problem last year.) And Justin Verlander will probably deliver a solid season. Buster Posey will be fielding Farhan Zaidi's team, for the most part. We aren't going to know what kind of PoBO Posey will be for a while as he has yet to construct a roster.

The Giants have wallowed in mediocrity since their fabulous 2021 NL West title. Yaz, Wilmer, Webb, Doval, Tyler Rogers, and Wade, Jr. are the only ones left from that team. It's time for some winning ways. Let's hope the Youth Movement pays off in 2025!

--M.C.

Projections

FanGraphs has released its projected standings and playoff odds for 2025. The Giants, as you might expect, are predicted to be a .500 (81-81) team!

The NL West will be dominated by the Dodgers, again no surprise there, and the second-best team is expected to be the Diamondbacks. That's not unreasonable given their two top starters and their quality lineup. What's interesting to Giants fans is that the Padres are looking vulnerable. The Giants have a real shot at third place.

 

 

Sorry for the poor picture. Click the links above to see the whole thing. Or click on the image to enlarge it.

Going from a .500 team to a playoff team will require at least five more wins. Ten would be better. Last year it took 86 wins (Tigers and Royals) in the AL and it took 89 wins (Mets and Braves) in the NL to make the cut.

Are the 2025 Giants ten games better than the 2024 team? I don't see it. A five game improvement looks possible with the addition of Adames and (we hope) bounce back years from Doval and Ray and continued improvement from Harrison, Fitzgerald, and Ramos.

The 2025 team is relying on internal solutions. The young corps needs to step up and contribute!

--M.C.

p.s. David Pinto at Baseball Musings had a post a while back with a proposal to re-arrange the divisions so more teams have a chance at the playoffs. It's a little rough, but it's a cool idea. It at least addresses some of the things Zo mentioned in his last post.

Upgrades

I think the Giants should sign free agent right-hander Jack Flaherty to a short-term deal. (I'll take almost anyone on a short-term deal.) He's going to give you 25-30 starts with above-average results. Flaherty's market is depressed and he needs to prove himself with a good year and then opt-out. Think Kevin Gausman and Carlos Rodon. (He's not as good as those guys, but that's okay.) It's never bad to have a surplus of starting pitchers.

Right now the Giants are expecting the kind of performance I described for Flaherty from four guys: Ray, Verlander, Hicks, and Harrison. How many of those guys are going to deliver 2+ WAR? Ray did it last in 2022, Verlander in 2023, and neither Hicks nor Harrison pulled it off last year. After that they have a nice group of youngsters—by definition unproven—like Roupp, Birdsong, Black, Rodriguez, etc. I like this group of hurlers but there's a heapin' pile of uncertainty there! Even Flaherty, an eight-year veteran, has exhibited big swings in seasonal WAR totals. There are red flags with him, like declining velocity, but he'd be relatively cheap. He's not going to get the multi-year deal he wanted. And San Francisco is a great place for pitchers.

Really all of this is to say I'd like to see one more starting pitcher added to the mix. I don't believe free agent veterans "block" prospects and young players. It's a performance-oriented workplace. If you deliver the goods you get to play. If the youngsters want time on the field then they have to shine on the field. Am I right? And it's just money. The Giants have plenty. They can afford to take a risk on a veteran pitcher because they need the depth to compete with the other teams in the NL West.

I think they need another position player/DH type for some more thump in the lineup. Or at least some more competition in Spring Training. Somebody like Randal Grichuk is a free agent and he's actually been linked to the Giants. Austin Hays, Tommy Pham, Jorge Polanco, and Paul DeJong are other examples of low-cost free agent players available at this point. Alex Bregman, Ha-Seong Kim, and Pete Alonso are the "big names" left on the board. None would be a fit. Bregman because of length and cost, Kim because Adames and Fitzgerald are already at SS an 2B, and Alonso because he's too limited, and they have Wade and Flores as a platoon pair.

These aren't exciting propositions. We aren't buying a new car, just getting some upgrades on the old one. Right now the Giants look like they've looked for the last three seasons: fair-to-middling with an outside shot at being good enough to get a post-season berth. A couple of breakout seasons from the youth brigade and it's a different story. I know we'd all like to see that!

--M.C.

Baseball, We Have a Problem

Roki Sasaki decided to sign a MLB contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers, because, of course he did.  Just like the last best pitcher available, Yamamoto, and that other pitcher, Snell.  Oh, and Ohtani.  Not to forget Betts, Freeman and all the other stars.  And thus, baseball gets to be a little less of a game and more of a race between merger and acquisition specialists to see who wins.  The game becomes incidental. And that's a problem, because while some Angelenos, even if they can no longer afford to go to a game, may think it's fine to watch their team pile up superstars and, maybe, trophies for years, they might not notice one-time fans of the sport slowly slipping away.

I see the sport devolving into a few oligarchs, the Mets, the Yankees, and the Dodgers, and a few teams who can make a splash on occasion, and maybe win it all, like Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston, and probably San Francisco, but not sustain the level of investment that it takes to do this year in and year out.  Then there are the teams that are willing to spend money, but have to be selective, like Arizona, and St. Louis.  Below them are the teams that don't really stand a chance.  Sure, they might sneak into an expanded playoff format on occasion, but unless luck plays a much larger part than anyone who ever reads statistics imagines,  they aren't going to win.  Finally, at the bottom are teams that don't care about winning, they exist as developmental and feeder teams for other clubs and are making money from revenue sharing, like the A's and Rockies.

Major League Baseball probably doesn't care, but it should.  Tickets are expensive, but the better teams seem to sell tickets fairly well.  I spend money on entertainment of various sorts, but a fundamental principle of sports is that the outcome is not pre-determined.  And as soon as that premise, real or imagined, slips away, there is no point in bothering to observe the sport any more.  Or, to put it more accurately, as soon as that premise appears to be no longer valid, there is no sport anymore.  And it seems to me that, thanks to LA co-opting the WBC Championship team, that premise is definitely open to question.  I think the Giants have an interesting team of young players (finally).  But I'm thinking we could all save time by just giving LA the NL West title right now.  I will certainly be watching less.  And for someone raised as a baseball fan from my earliest memories, that's saying something.  Baseball should address these inequalities that are becoming more and more prevalent, or they will become a minor sport. 

The 2025 Giants: starting pitching

It all starts with Logan Webb, of course. He's penciled in for 4+ WAR and if he doesn't do that then the Giants are in a world of hurt. He's started 33 games in back-to-back seasons while throwing 200+ innings in both. He gets guys to hit it on the ground, keeps the ball in the yard, and doesn't give away freebies. He's one of the best pitchers in the game. He's 28 and signed through 2028.

The next guy in line is Robbie Ray. He's probably the most important person on this list! The Giants need something from Ray. They need length. He needs to start lots of games and throw lots of innings. He made 32 starts in both 2021 (193 IP) and 2022 (189 IP) before his surgery. He's 33 now and won't likely top those numbers ever again but he should be healthy and able to pitch a full season. FanGraphs projects him for 28 starts and 161 IP with a 3.95 ERA (his career mark is 3.98). That's about 2 WAR. Ray is a high-K pitcher but struggles a bit with the long ball. If he can keep his walks down he can stay in games and give the Giants some quality innings.

Kyle Harrison and Jordan Hicks fill the next two spots. Both are hard to project. Harrison is only 23. He was one of the top lefty prospects in MLB when he made his debut. We saw some flashes of that talent in an up-and-down year for the youngster (24 starts, 4.56 ERA). He gave up too many hits and too many long balls but he has the strikeout stuff to succeed. With more experience and maturity he has a good chance to evolve into a top starter. There's lots of upside with Harrison. Hicks suffered a Tale of Two Seasons last year. He was very effective as a starter early on, then struggled badly and was used in relief. He's the perfect swingman—think Yusmeiro Petit—but it seems guys don't like that role. Hicks threw a career-high 109-2/3 IP in 2024. Can we expect him to push that up to 150? Hard to know.

So it is easy to see why the Giants pursued Corbin Burnes and ultimately signed Justin Verlander. Last year the starters didn't get it done and the bullpen got over-worked. They need innings! Lots more innings from the rotation.

The Giants have a pool of guys who could have filled the fifth starter spot and may ultimately do that before the season is out. Hayden Birdsong is the obvious leading candidate—he had 16 starts last year and showed some real potential. Keaton Winn had 12 starts and Mason Black had 8 starts. There's Landen Roupp and Tristan Beck in the mix. There are the three young Carsons in the high minors: Ragsdale, Seymour, and Whisenhunt. It feels like there is a lot of pitching talent in the organization right now and that bodes well for the future.

--M.C.

Justin Verlander

So for half as much money as the Diamondbacks are paying Corbin Burnes the Giants will take a flyer on 42-year old no-doubt-future-HOFer Justin Verlander. He had a 5.48 ERA in 17 starts (90-1/3 IP) last season. You can see this as a desperation move. Buster and The Gang lost out on Burnes and they went to Ye Olde Vintage Shoppe and came back with JV. Hey, it's MLB economics, an entire discipline in itself, who can understand what things cost anymore?

Or, you can see this as an upgrade on Robbie Ray. No disrespect to Robbie, a former Cy Young awardee himself, but this is his role. Dispenser of Leadership and Veteran Savvy Clutchness. Showing the bevy of young arms how to be a major leaguer. Ray, I should note, is getting $25M both this year and next. (Once again it is that goofy Baseball Econ 101.) Both guys will probably put up 2+ WAR and be solid #3-starter types. Alex Cobb put up back-to-back 2.5 WAR seasons with the Giants. Maybe Verlander captures a little of that gritty old-guy-in-a-new-place magic and gives the team a couple dozen starts.

I expected something along these lines when the Burnes thing didn't happen. This is the kind of thing, once again, that the Giants have to do. They can afford to blow $15M! The Dodgers do it all the time. The Giants have to plug the holes and they can't be afraid to make a choice and go forward. The worst outcome is that some young pitchers will have to work a little harder to prove they should push aside established veterans. That's got to make them better players! If they have any brains at all they'll realize having a real superstar in their midst will only help them. Verlander's reputation is that he's "not an asshole" despite his stature in the game and is an approachable teammate. He's got to know as much about pitching as anyone does, don't you think?

Go Giants!

--M.C.