Prospect Harrison struggles in debut
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — All of the San Francisco Giants’ most fascinating stories of the spring converged Wednesday at Scottsdale Stadium.
• Top prospect Kyle Harrison made his spring debut and allowed three hits, a walk and two runs in his inning of work in the Giants’ 8-5 loss to Arizona.
“I really liked how the changeup was looking, and I felt like I was able to throw a decent amount of strikes in advantage counts, but the two-strike execution could have been better,” said Harrison, a De La Salle-Concord alum who will open the season at Triple-A Sacramento. “We’ll get back to work on it.”
Manager Gabe Kapler didn’t think there was any need to get too nitpicky about Harrison’s outing, saying, “This league is really challenging — the guys are disciplined and make good decisions at the plate. It’s going to be more challenging to get called strikes here, and swings and misses are harder to come by, but I thought he did a nice job.”
• Two-way player Ronald Guzmán, formerly the Rangers’ first baseman, was throwing 97 mph, struck out the first batter he faced as a member of the Giants and gave up a homer.
“One, he throws fuzz. It was really hard,” catcher Blake Sabol said. “It was cool — he was shaking off to try out his whole arsenal, and his slider is electric. If you would have told me that he hasn’t been pitching for the last five years, I’d be like ‘no chance,’ but I looked him up and he was playing for the Rangers in the big leagues and just cranking homers, and now he can do both. It’s really exciting stuff.”
“It was awesome,” Kapler said. “Really impressive.”
• Sabol, a Rule-5 addition, hit his second homer of the spring. He’s 4-for-7. After striking out in his first at-bat, Sabol wound up with a lefty-lefty matchup in the eighth and drew a walk against Sam Clay, then banged a two-run homer in the ninth.
“The rain started falling, so I was like, ‘Oh, no, I hope my glasses don’t get all fogged up or wet and stuff,’ ” Sabol said. “But I was happy because with that left-left matchup, I was able to lock back into my approach and stay up in the zone and that carried over into my last at-bat. I got down 0-2 pretty quick but tried to stay with my approach and fought some pitches off until he left one up.”
• Brett Auerbach, who plays multiple positions, returned from an elbow injury much quicker than usual and homered in the eighth.
“I missed a month of baseball activity, so I definitely felt a little rusty,” said Auerbach, who was one of the standouts last spring with his ability to catch. “But once I got out there playing, the adrenaline just took over.”
Wynns catches fire with a homer, steal
It was a good day for catchers at the plate: Austin Wynns, who — like Sabol — is one of the four men in the hunt for the two bigleague roster spots, was the second designated hitter of the day. He homered and stole a base.
Roberto Pérez, in camp as a nonroster invitee, made his first appearance of the spring and struck out in his only at-bat.