Baseball is back!

After a busy finish to the offseason, that included the signing of potential fifth starter Aaron Sanchez, the Giants officially kicked off their spring training schedule with a game against the Angels. 

It felt like a special exhibition opener for a couple different reasons.

For the first time in nearly a year, the team got to play in front of their fans again, as roughly 1,000 people were able to gather at Scottsdale Stadium to watch Giants baseball live. Also happening for the first time in nearly a year, manager Gabe Kapler got the opportunity to pencil in Buster Posey to the starting lineup. And just like that, we finally have actual on-field baseball to talk about again!

First off, getting Posey back in the lineup was a victory in itself. I talked a little bit in the previous post at just how much of an improvement the Giants lineup could be getting if Posey's year off maybe refreshed his bat. Catcher was the team's biggest offensive inconsistency in 2020, and if the Giants can get something along the lines of Buster's career norm, this lineup will be much deeper and tougher to face. On Sunday, Kap had him hitting second, which is a spot that I think the veteran can really thrive in. He's patient, he puts the ball in play and he uses the right side of the field, all good quality's of a second place hitter. Maybe more importantly though, I feel like taking some of the run-producing pressure off Buster, especially early on in the year, might pay a huge dividends. The Giants have some guys in their lineup who are coming off nice seasons in 2020 and they don't necessarily need Posey to be hitting in the heart of their order. Of course if his power returns and he's producing like he was 4-5 seasons back, then they could always switch things around, but I like the idea of starting him in the 2-hole on most nights.

Aside from Buster's triumphant return, in which he raked a line-drive single to right field in the third inning for the Giants first hit of the spring, they didn't have too much going on offensively. Wilmer Flores hit the ball pretty hard and almost drove one out of the park, but if it hadn't been for Jo Adell mis-reading the ball and falling in route to it, it most likely would have ended up a deep fly out. The Giants had runners in scoring position often early in the game when a lot of their regulars were in there but ended up going just 1-6 in those situations with that one hit being Flores' double. Lamonte Wade had a couple of nice at-bats though, and ended up with a sac fly to drive in Dickerson following the Flores double, but that was as far as the Giants' offense went.

They were able to get a couple of their highly touted prospects into the game, as last years first-round pick, Patrick Bailey, got a couple of hit-less at-bats. Marco Luciano, who's had all eyes on him this spring, also got some action at shortstop after Dubon left the game, but he only got up once and hit a weak grounder to short.

All in all, not much to say about the offensive output, but it's just day one. The pitching however, didn't look too bad.

Zach Littell and Jay Jackson, who are in camp as NRI's and are not considered favorites to stick on the opening day roster, each gave up runs. Jackson was especially wild, which has been his downfall his whole career. I was very impressed with James Sherfy and Sam Wolff, however. Sherfy was probably the highlight of all of the pitching performances Sunday, as he had his slider working and he was missing bats with relative ease. Again it was at a point in the game where none of the Angels projected starters who did play were still out there, but it was impressive nonetheless. The right-hander had great success in two short stints with the D-Backs in 2017/18 in which he displayed an ability to be very tough to hit and it's easy to see why that's the case when he's on. We still have the whole spring ahead of us but Sherfy definitely opened some eyes with his performance. Both he and Sam Wolff each recorded a pair of strikeouts while throwing the only perfect innings of the afternoon for San Francisco.

It was a pretty standard spring opener, but again, it was a special one for the Giants and it was cool to watch them play again. It seems like it's been forever since Austin Slater took that bogus strike three call at the end of September. Most importantly though, it was a good indicator of baseball getting back to normal in 2021. I can't wait to see these new starting pitchers get their springs underway!