In his first fill-in performance as the Giants’ closer, Hunter Strickland looked the part and then some in San Francisco’s 1-0 Opening Day victory over the Dodgers. Boasting a new-and-improved hard slider, Strickland got three consecutive outs after giving up a lead-off single to Matt Kemp for his first save of the season.
Strickland, 29, is coming off a terrific spring in which he didn’t give up a single run in eight appearances. Still, he never expected to get the ninth inning call on Opening Day, until news broke on Thursday that Giants closer Mark Melancon would once again be headed to the disabled list as he struggles to recover from right forearm surgery this offseason.
But Strickland’s performance seemed to indicate that the Giants are capable of making up for Melancon’s absence, at least more so than they are for the absences of key rotation pieces like Madison Bumgarner and Jeff Samardzija. Giants beat writer Andrew Baggarly went even a step further when he joined Gary & Larry on Friday, saying that he wouldn’t be surprised if Strickland held onto the ninth-inning job all year, and that Giants fans should stop thinking of Melancon as their closer of the future.
“They way I wrote it yesterday was, it can be devastating when you think about these guys opening the season without their No. 1 Bumgarner, without their No. 3 Samardzija, and without their closer,” Baggarly said. “An easy way to ease the pain? Stop thinking that you’ve lost your closer. Stop thinking of Mark Melancon as the closer. Forget the fact he’s making $62 million, forget the fact he’s been on All-Star teams. He hasn’t been ready in two years now and even if he does come back and he can flush out this inflammation, there’s so much mystery over when he can be right, how perfect he has to be to pitch, can he go on back-to-back days.
“You can’t script when you’re going to have save situations and frankly, if you watched Hunter Strickland pitch all spring, he looks ready. As much as he’s got some baggage in his career that he has to overcome, he looks like he’s got the stuff and the mentality. And Bruce Bochy did not equivocate. He said ‘Hunter Strickland is our closer. He’s going to be our closer moving forward until we get Mark back.’ But I’ll tell you what, I wouldn’t be surprised if Strickland just holds onto this job and keeps it all year, and they just treat Melancon as, if he can contribute something down the stretch that’ll be great, but to be on pins and needles of ‘we just have to get by until we get our closer back,’ no. Just forget about that. Just say mentally Strickland is our closer and if he fails at some point there are other people that can take over — maybe a (Sam) Dyson when he gets his sinker straightened out — but that might be the easiest way for these guys to mentally get past it.”
Listen to the full interview below. To hear Baggs on Strickland / Melancon, skip to to 3:10