Bright spots emerge in first victory

After a couple of un-inspiring performances by both the offense and pretty much every arm to take the mound, the Giants got into the win column for the first time in 2020. While there still haven't been any earth shattering performances three days into this accelerated season, at least a couple glimmerings poked through on Saturday.

First and foremost, even with each league expanding to 8 playoff teams, the Giants are nowhere near the top-8 in the NL. And since this season is a short one, they should really waste no time in getting the younger players out there to see what they can do during this 2-month tryout/experiment for 2021.

That being said, I was very excited to see 23 year-old Logan Webb take the mound in LA Saturday. Without Tyler Beede and with Gabe Kapler insisting on trotting out lesser veteran arms to eat up the bulk of the innings early on, Webb is easily the most interesting pitcher on the roster, in my opinion of course. I'll always enjoy watching Johnny Cueto pitch and Jeff Samardzija has been pretty steady throughout his tenure here, but those two guys are well into their 30's and probably won't be on the roster by the time the Giants are relevant again.

So, Webb was indeed under my microscope Saturday, as I'm sure I wasn't the only one, and he really did look well. Unfortunately he allowed a hit leading off the fifth inning of a 5-1 lead, and was heading into the strength of the Dodgers batting order, so it's understandable why Kapler chose to remove him at that moment. However, I would have liked to see the kid get a chance to pitch out of it. His stuff looked good, and although he gave up a few more base hits than would be ideal, he did a good job pitching out of it. His box score doesn't look quite as good as his performance showed, as he ended up with 4 IP, 6 H, 1 BB and 2 K's as his pitch count dipped just into the 70's. There wasn't much loud contact off the Dodger bats though and he had pretty good command of his stuff with his fastball sitting in the mid-90's consistently. A couple sporadic bouts of wildness, but got it back under control quickly. It's too bad he couldn't squeeze through that fifth though as he would have been in line for a victory and something tells me victories will be hard to come by this year, especially for the guys starting games. Kapler showed even with Johnny Cueto that he's not gonna be pushing any starter too deep, especially early on. Cueto was dealing in the opener and he too was yanked after just 4 innings of work.

As far as the other areas of the team, the defense looked solid, backing up Webb well and took advantage of a couple double plays to help get the youngster out of trouble. The bullpen also looked decent in his relief. However, I'm not at all sold on Tyler Rodgers as I feel even with that submarine delivery, the guys stuff is just too slow and too hittable for this level. Caleb Baragar and Shaun Anderson, however, looked very strong and were arguably the reason why the Giants were able to hold the Dodgers off. Baragar came in to relieve Webb and all he did was throw up 2 perfect innings, mowing through the heart of the Dodgers order in the process. He definitely earned my interest with his impressive MLB debut. Shaun Anderson is another arm that I'm very curious about this year and hope to see him get every opportunity to show his worth. In fact, after him striking out the side in the 7th, I would like to see him being used in higher leverage relief situations and possibly even given some save chances. Trevor Gott got the first Giants save attempt of the season and came through, although he made it interesting by allowing a big fly to Will Smith to bring the Dodgers to within a run.

As far as the bats are concerned, they definitely have been missing Brandon Belt, Evan Longoria and Buster Posey so far. Although the Giants offense was never expected to be a juggernaut, missing your projected 3-4-5 hitters just makes things exponentially tougher. They barely squeaked out two runs over the first two ballgames, but they got things going a bit on Saturday. As I stated at the top of this post, this year should be focused on players who could help this team next year and beyond. One of those guys is Mike Yastrzemski and he has looked very good through three games and just missed knocking one out Saturday afternoon (just hooked it foul down the line). Aside from Yaz, Austin Slater reached base three times out of the leadoff spot, and I really hope he's trotted out there more often over Joe McCarthy. I also would like to see 26 year-old Jaylin Davis get much more of a look moving forward as he's hit the ball well in his first 2 starts of the season, including an opposite field home run off Ross Stripling Friday night. Davis will rack up the k's at the plate but if he can manage a decent average and can pop one out every 4-5 games or so, he'd be well worth starting on a regular basis. 

Last but not least, Wilmer Flores looks like he may have some real value this year, and maybe one of the Giants most valuable trade chips come next month. His ability to play all over the diamond, his relatively cheap price tag and his ability to hit could make him enticing to competitors especially this year with more teams entering the playoff mix. 

Things have pretty much gone as expected through the first weekend of the season. Very little offense and some up-and-down pitching performances seem to be the theme thus far. Right now I'm looking forward to early August when the Giants may start bringing up prospects from their summer camp to get an extended look without losing a year of contract control. One of those guys is obviously Joey Bart as he would unquestionably be the most exciting thing about this season if/when he does arrive. 

Despite the low expectations though, I, and I'm sure many other Giants fans, am extremely psyched that baseball is back though. It's been the strangest summer probably in my lifetime thus far, so it's good to get some semblance of normalcy back! I don't care if the Giants continue to go 1-59 over the next few months, we have baseball to watch, analyze and lean on and even in an expected down year, there could be a lot of things that transpire this summer that impact what next season and beyond hold for this organization!