For now, Giants starting rotation is all right, while bullpen leans to the left

SaOTTSbALc, ARiZ. >> With southpaw Alex Wood currently sidelined due to a back injury, the Giants’ top five starting pitchers are all right-handed.

Johnny Cueto, Kevin Gausman, Anthony DeSclafani, Aaron Sanchez and Logan Webb all bring different strengths to the table, but regardless of whether Cueto is using his finesse to fool hitters or Gausman is attempting to overpower opponents, the Giants should be able to

keep batters off balance in the middle innings when they change pitchers.

Aside from having a rotation loaded up with righties, they have a bullpen

filled with lefties.

“It definitely is unique,” catcher Curt Casali said this week. “I’m not used to having this many left-handed options, and I have to flip my brain around to make sure that they’re in the right spot to succeed. In today’s game you see a lot of right- handers that throw hard and I think average pitch- ers are normally righthanded, but it’s interesting to see we’ve stockpiled a lot of lefties.”

The Giants signed vet- eran left-handers Jake McGee, a top closer candidate, and José Álvarez, a reliever who pitched under Kapler in Philadelphia, to fortify a bullpen that already included Jarlín García, Sam Selman, Wandy Peralta and Caleb Baragar.

Not all of those pitchers will open the season in the majors as Selman, Peralta and Baragar all have a minor league option available, but Kapler acknowledged his ideal bullpen mix would feature four lefties and four righties.

“We are a little bit leftheavy, I don’t think that’s a secret,” Kapler said. “I think that’s a good thing for us. There’s a lot of deadly lefthanded hitters in our division and across baseball and many of them hit in the middle of the lineup.”

Giants pitchers are well aware of how the staff is shaping up and think that by providing different looks to hitters over the course of a game, they’ll have a better chance of putting teams away in the late innings.

“I think bringing in a lefty after a righty has always been kind of tough on hitters. So especially some guys that can kind of sink the ball coming in after some guys that can throw up in the zone, I think it plays pretty well together.”

Regardless of what the Giants’ rotation and bullpen mix looks like as the season evolves, the team anticipates having one pitcher who will surely provide a challenging arm angle for hitters: Righty Tyler Rogers, whose submarine-style windup is viewed as a rare weapon.

POSEY STUDY >> Can Giants catcher Buster Posey turn back the clock?

That’s one of the key questions that will help determine how successful the Giants can be in a 2021 season that promises to be fascinating.

Prior to his decision to sit out the 2020 season, Posey appeared to be healthy and on track to regain some of the power and consistency that had been zapped from his swing in the year following his 2018 hip surgery. A look at his 2019 Statcast numbers reveals Posey was a below-average hitter in several respects as his average exit velocity and hard hit% ranked in the 35thpercentile in the majors while his barrel% ranked in the 21st percentile.

In welcoming Posey back to a starting role this season, the Giants expect him to look much more like the version they saw during All-Star campaigns in 2017 and during the first half of 2018, before the hip became a more serious issue.

What exactly would a Posey who hits like he did at ages 30 and 31 look like this year?

Statcast data from 2017 and 2018 shows he would be among the toughest players in the league to strike out, as his K% and whiff rates were among the lowest of any major leaguer in each of those two seasons. The Giants don’t expect to see Posey hit like he did in his prime, but they’re confident he can produce league-average exit velocities and find the barrel at a much higher rate than he did in 2019 when he had spent the previous offseason rehabbing.

You’ll likely never see Posey hit a ball 110 miles per hour, but he is capable of driving the ball from gap-to-gap and as Giants fans have seen, poking singles over the second baseman’s head into right-center field.

What does that look like practically? ZIPS projections anticipate Posey to bat .267 with six home runs and 45 RBIs. Not the type of production the Giants are expecting, but projections don’t tend to expect much from many of their hitters.

SURGERY FOR BULLPEN CANDIDATE >> Giants righthander Dedniel Nunez will undergo Tommy John surgery to repair the ulnar collateral ligament in his elbow, Giants manager Gabe Kapler announced Friday.

Nunez, 24, was diagnosed with a UCL sprain and officially placed on the 60-day injured list Thursday. After receiving a second opinion, Nunez chose to have surgery.

The Giants selected Núñez in the Major League phase of the 2020 Rule 5 draft in December after he spent three years in the New York Mets organization.