© Sergio Estrada | 2021 Aug 13
The 2021 season has largely been a season without hiccups for the Giants. Though there have been injury woes throughout, San Francisco’s play on the field has been consistent, holding onto the best record in baseball for nearly the entire season.
Doubt is now starting to creep in, however. The Giants pitching staff is dealing with health issues at possibly the worst time, right in the middle of a homestand vs. the Brewers and Dodgers. Anthony DeSclafani is trying to pitch through an ankle issue, Alex Wood is on the Injured List with COVID and Johnny Cueto is getting over both injury and illness and was knocked around in Tuesday’s loss.
Meanwhile the Dodgers have continued to nip at the Giants’ heels, cutting San Francisco’s lead in the NL West to a half game just two days before a massive series between the two teams at Oracle Park.
At the moment, the Giants have exactly two starters — Logan Webb and Kevin Gausman — who they can feel confident will give a quality start. What does that mean as we head down the home stretch? According to Giants beat writer Kerry Crowley, it means the Giants are going to tweak their strategy when it comes to starting pitching.
“I think that we’re really going to start to see the Giants in the month of September adopt the Tampa Bay Rays pitching strategy, which is three to four innings here and there for your bulk guys,” Crowley said on KNBR Wednesday. “DeSclafani might be classified as one if his ankle begins to bother him. Second time through the order pushing off, that persistent motion coming off the mound. Sammy Long could be one of those guys, it wouldn’t shock me to see Kervin Castro, who hasn’t made his major league debut yet, a 22-year-old who spent the entire season in Triple-A Sacramento, wouldn’t shock me to see him activated today and used as a bulk guy. (Jose) Quintana looks like he can go two to three innings at a time. Jarlin Garcia, Jose Alverez, Zach Littell, they can all be multi-inning pitchers in the month of September.”
The Giants have employed this strategy, on Tuesday they were forced into it, in both loses to the Brewers this week. Though it hasn’t led to victories, there have been encouraging signs, like Quintana’s 3.1 scoreless innings on Tuesday and Jarlin Garcia’s 3.2 scoreless on Monday.
“I reallly don’t think we are going to see much tradition from this Giants starting rotation in their approach to covering the innings. I think it’s going to be piggybacking starters. Picking days where Long can pitch behind DiSclafani, and just go day to day. We’ve seen the Dodgers and Padres have a ton of bullpen games, now in the month of September it’s going to be the Giants’ turn. Especially with Alex Wood out, they are going to have to figure out who can get them two or three innings at a time, and get to those back end guys in Tyler Rogers, Dominic Leone and Jake McGee.
“It’s probably not what fans want to hear but that’s really the reality from a depth standpoint.”
The next two games vs. the Brewers will feature Webb and Gausman. DeSclafani is set to pitch vs. the Dodgers on Friday, and it’s anybody’s guess who we’ll see on Saturday and Sunday. It’s quite possible the Giants use the opener strategy in all three of those games.