Giants outpitch Cubs, continue to survive with a decimated rotation (2024)

SAN FRANCISCO — The ceremonial first pitch is almost always unremarkable for a regular-season Giants game. The team might hand the baseball to a bank executive or a longtime season-ticket holder or someone who got a little too sauced at a silent auction.

On Tuesday night, the Giants yielded the mound to someone who was less than a Bay Area celebrity but famous enough within the region — at least as famous as a personal injury attorney can get when they buy gobs of airtime and plaster their face on dozens of billboards. When the attorney flung a baseball to the plate, there was the smallest whoop of recognition from the crowd.

The way things have gone for Giants pitchers over the past month, it’s a wonder that the attorney didn’t walk off the mound with a sore arm and grounds to file suit.

Keaton Winn is on the injured list with nerve irritation in his balky elbow. Kyle Harrison is on the injured list with a sprained ankle sustained in the weight room. Alex Cobb’s rehab has been grounded more times than a launch sequence on a cloudy day. Logan Webb is still Logan Webb and Jordan Hicks remains on the active roster as well, although he slogged through his last start in St. Louis looking every bit like a pitcher who’d just surpassed his career high for innings in a season. There’s no charitable way to describe Blake Snell other than as a free-agent disaster who has been unable or unwilling (depending on your point of view) to grind through a groin injury. Robbie Ray is nearing the end of his long rehab schedule following Tommy John surgery and things are looking up, but when 60 percent of the Giants rotation is on the injured list, it’s hard not to stare at him like a watched pot.

It won’t be like this forever. The pitching plan all along was predicated on second-half reinforcements. But the Giants lost five consecutive games on their last road trip, they fell six games under .500, and with probable pitchers of TBA followed by TBA followed by TBA when they opened a home series against the Chicago Cubs on Monday, they appeared on the verge of getting decimated before reinforcements could arrive.

Has your major league rotation been in an accident? Do you know your rights? Do you have someone who will fight on your side?

Turns out the Giants do — especially in these first two home games against the Cubs. They leaned on a strength-in-numbers approach for the second consecutive night, winning 5-1 when after rookie Randy Rodríguez and right-hander Sean Hjelle limited the damage the first two times through the Cubs’ lineup and handed off the game to a talented group of high-leverage relievers. Matt Chapman drew a 13-pitch walk and scored in a two-run second inning and added a two-run single in a three-run eighth when the Giants opened the pressure valve and broke open a one-run game.

The Giants lead the major leagues in relief innings. They’ve played 80 games and used right-handers Ryan Walker and Tyler Rogers in exactly half of them. The two setup men lead the majors with 40 appearances and are on pace to become the first big-league relievers to throw in 80 games since Rogers and Cleveland’s Bryan Shaw did it in 2021.

The Giants have to expect that their bullpen will buckle in the second half if they keep putting more weight on it. Right now, they have no other choice. And right now, those relievers are responding.

“Everybody’s been ready in any situation down there,” said Hjelle, who lowered his ERA to 2.39 after throwing two scoreless innings. “Nobody’s been shying away from anything. It’s what we dream of doing, right? We want to grab the ball and pitch.”

When the TBA games keep coming one after another, though, there’s only so much security a manager can feel. The Giants needed Spencer Howard to morph into a strikeout machine while throwing 4 2/3 innings to bring Monday’s victory in for a safe landing, and without that contribution, the club wouldn’t have been able to deploy all their high-leverage arms on Tuesday.

They’ll hope for a similar swath of clean work from right-handed prospect Hayden Birdsong when he makes his major-league debut on Wednesday. Then they’ll hope for a little more stamina on Thursday from Hicks now that he’ll be pitching out of the Midwest swelter.

Rodríguez followed up Spencer’s effort with a tone-setting performance in which he used his slider in fastball counts and threw his changeups in the zone to coax one gnarly swing after another from the Cubs lineup. Rodríguez struck out five and didn’t allow an extra-base hit in 2 2/3 innings.

“I didn’t know he was going to give us that,” Giants manager Bob Melvin said. “We’ve seen him go from basically a fastball guy to a guy that now is throwing off-count sliders and he’s throwing changeups, too, which makes him more unpredictable. In the spring, he wasn’t able to do that. When you’re throwing 99-100 mph, and you’re cracking off a slider sometimes in off counts, that’s when you’ll see some bad swings.”

It might appear from afar that the Giants are deploying their pitching under Melvin exactly as they did under his predecessor, Gabe Kapler, complete with uncertain probables and short-notice announcements about which reliever would serve as an opener. But when the Giants nudged starters like Sean Manaea and Ross Stripling into bulk relief roles last season, it was because their front office and coaches believed it was the strategy that would get the most performance out of them.

The current patchwork operation isn’t about operationalization. It’s about survival.

“Obviously it’s not ideal, the spot we’re in with the rotation,” catcher Patrick Bailey said. “But we’ve got to make the most of it. One game at a time. Control what we can control.”

It helps to be at home where their ballpark and the chilly air can serve as an equalizer of sorts. Brett Wisely experienced that much when he smoked a ball at 105.7 mph and admired its flight, then sprinted to second base when his drive smacked off the brick arcade between the first and second archways. Wisely’s double in the eighth would’ve been a home run in 29 of 30 ballparks, according to Statcast.

“Just need to do more pushups, I guess,” Wisely said. “I don’t know what to tell you. Damn. It’s crazy. Worked out today and yesterday and still couldn’t hit it out there.”

It would be easy for Giants relievers to put more pressure on themselves to chew through innings. It would be easy for their hitters to put more pressure on themselves to score in ample quantities that might mitigate all the absenteeism in the rotation. But Chapman, who worked the Giants’ longest walk in 13 years (Andres Torres worked a 16-pitch walk in 2011) said he doesn’t see it that way.

The surest way to avoid panicking at times like these is to keep faith in the players lockering next to you.

“You’d like to have all five starters healthy and not have to grind the bullpen dudes,” Chapman said. “We’ve just got to find a way to navigate this while we’re banged up and trust that we’re up to the task.”

As for that 13-pitch walk? Chapman was informed that even Barry Bonds never drew a walk as a Giant when he saw that many pitches.

“Yeah, that’s because he usually got walked on four of them,” Chapman said with a laugh. “And I guarantee you he doesn’t foul off some of those pitches I fouled off tonight. He crushes those.”

Case closed there.

(Top photo of Giants pitcher Sean Hjelle: John Hefti / USA Today)

Andrew Baggarly is a senior writer for The Athletic and covers the San Francisco Giants. He has covered Major League Baseball for more than two decades, including the Giants since 2004 for the Oakland Tribune, San Jose Mercury News and Comcast SportsNet Bay Area. He is the author of two books that document the most successful era in franchise history: “A Band of Misfits: Tales of the 2010 San Francisco Giants” and “Giant Splash: Bondsian Blasts, World Series Parades and Other Thrilling Moments By the Bay.” Follow Andrew on Twitter @extrabaggs