Giants likely to use ‘openers’ next year
LAS VEGAS — So, Giants fans, you wanted big changes in China Basin baseball? You’ve got them.
Pitching openers are likely coming to AT&T Park. Young starters who were rotation mainstays in 2018 might begin 2019 in the bullpen, or even at Triple-A, to manage their innings. Experienced position players used to playing every day might find themselves in more left-right platoons.
Nothing is set in stone, president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi said Tuesday, the second full day of the winter meetings, but given the nature of the rotation, which the Giants are trying to upgrade, all options are being considered.
“I think we’re going to have to develop a plan for the pitching staff that fits the personnel that
we have,” Zaidi said. “If we don’t have five guys that we can expect 34 starts and 200 innings from — and very few teams have that — thinking about some of these alternatives as a way to get through 27 outs every day is going to be a topic of discussion for us.”
Zaidi acknowledged that having relievers start and starters relieve places more pressure on the manager — in the Giants’ case, a traditional manager who likes to get as many innings as he can out of his starters.
Thus, the concept of openers will be a good barometer of Bruce Bochy’s willingness to change and view the game differently, which he promised he was willing to do.
To be a fly on the wall for some of those conversations.
They are not new to Zaidi. He had them with Dodgers manager Dave Roberts.
“When you’re talking about old school, new school, analytics, eye test, all that stuff, we had a lot of debates,” Roberts said Tuesday. He clarified them as good debates from which the Giants will benefit.
“Farhan taught me a ton,” Roberts said, predicting that Bochy and Zaidi will get along fine. Rumor had it that Roberts chafed at Zaidi’s meddling about lineups and pitching, but Roberts called that “an unfair judgment on Zaidi.”
As for Bochy and Zaidi, Roberts said, “The only reason they won’t see eye to eye is the height discrepancy. Not many people see eye to eye with Boch.”
The Dodgers did not use openers under Zaidi, but they had more rotation depth. Roberts also had a quicker hook.
The Giants’ rotation is not deep. Although they are searching for short- and long-term pitching options via trade or free agency, Zaidi is less optimistic that he can find pitchers than he can outfielders because everyone is looking for starters.
For now, the Giants have Madison Bumgarner and a lot of questions. Johnny Cueto will miss most or all of 2019 after Tommy John surgery. Jeff Samardzija’s shoulder might or might not allow him to take the ball every fifth day. After that comes a lot of youth.
Andrew Suarez and Dereck Rodriguez started 29 and 19 games, respectively, as rookies who were rushed to the majors as injury replacements. Chris Stratton has not been consistent in parts of three seasons. Any or all could start 2019 in the minors because innings are more easily managed there.
On the other hand, the Giants believe their bullpen is very deep, so why not thwart opponents by starting a lefty reliever one day, a righty another and summon starters in the middle innings? Or perhaps try to get eight innings out of two starters throwing four apiece?
“We’d be doing ourselves a disservice if we didn’t look at different ways of deploying these guys using openers,” Zaidi said, “having starters come out of the bullpen to take down two or three innings in the middle of games, having a little bit of an all-hands-on-deck mentality.”
And how might Bochy feel about that? He was not asked to comment Tuesday, but Zaidi said, “At the end of the day, everybody would take a win using less conventional methods than lose trying to overly extend a starter who isn’t equipped or best fit to make that 110-plus-pitch outing.”
Position players are not immune from change, either. Mainstays such as Brandon Belt, Brandon Crawford and others take pride in playing every day, but Zaidi views that as a misuse of resources. He would rather see backups be more involved, which happened in Los Angeles.
“I don’t think it’s an efficient use of a roster spot to have a guy who’s just a pinch-hitter-slash-team mascot,” he said.