San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
DeSclafani building an AllStar resume
PHOENIX — Some time Sunday, the Giants will find out which of their reserves and pitchers might be joining catcher Buster Posey in Denver next week for the AllStar Game.
But even if Brandon Crawford and Kevin Gausman are the only San Francisco players announced as AllStars, that doesn’t mean that’s it. More players, especially starting pitchers, are added to the rosters throughout the next week.
In fact, Gausman might be responsible for creating another space for a deserving teammate. Gausman is scheduled to start the final game before the break, which means he wouldn’t be available to pitch in the July 13 game. Who might be OK for an inning, considering he’ll be starting the day before? Giants teammate Anthony DeSclafani.
“I mean: DeSclafani has a chance,” said pitching coach Andrew Bailey, who noted that the NL’s top starter, Jacob deGrom, also is not expected to be available to pitch in the AllStar Game. “Tony’s been throwing the ball well.”
DeSclafani, who is the Giants’ Gausman 2.0, is 83 with a 2.91 ERA. Subtract one horrendous 10run outing against the Dodgers, and his ERA would be 2.00 — and just the fact his ERA is under 3.00 despite such a disaster of a day shows what an outstanding season he’s having.
Like Gausman last year, DeSclafani signed with the Giants this season with the idea of rejuvenating his career — he had a 7.22 ERA with the Reds in 2020. He’s just a step behind Gausman in terms of performance in the San Francisco rotation: In 16 starts going into Sunday’s finale at Arizona, DeSclafani has allowed more than three runs only that one time.
He’s thrown a leaguebest two shutouts. Opponents are batting just .203 against him. He’s among the top 14 in the league in most categories.
“I think if there is a trend for DeSclafani, probably all year, it’s really just being fearless in the strike zone,” manager Gabe Kapler said. “I just feel like he’s been kind of the same pitcher all year long: very consistent with his velocity, very consistent with the sharpness of his breaking ball. Yeah, the one outing against the Dodgers didn’t go well for him — outside of that, I think he’s been as steady as they come.”
That Dodgers start came May 23. Since then, he’s put up a 1.96 ERA in six starts. Maybe we can stop talking about that one blip? Maybe it won’t be held against him this week as extra pitchers are named? He would have the fourthbest ERA in the league without that game. And DeSclafani doesn’t even look at it as all that awful. He found some positives.
“It was important for me to remember that I was throwing the ball well up until that point, and a lot of the contact that happened in the game wasn’t necessarily hard,” he said. “So I had had to really keep doing the same thing that I was doing up until that point because I had been successful and it was working. It was unfortunate I’ve had a game like that, but if continue to do the things I do well, hopefully stuff will fall into place.”