Giants pitching is better than advertised, and here's what else I learned after three months away

New York Times

a day ago

DENVER — Welcome to this edition of San Francisco Giants takeaways, which has a definite emphasis on away.
As in, I've been away on leave for nearly three months. Roughly 40 percent of the season is in the books. And your beat reporter has seen a total of five games in person. (I planned to watch streaming telecasts here and there from Chile, where I spent most of my 12-week hiatus. But MLB.com was too smart to let my VPN get away with it.)
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When I left spring training in mid-March, I had a good feeling about the Giants' chances to be relevant this season. Robbie Ray, Camilo Doval and Randy Rodriguez struck me as three guys who were throwing the ball exceptionally well. Wilmer Flores appeared to have his legs under him again while swinging the bat. Logan Webb wasn't worrying about his Cactus League ERA. The pitching depth was looking like it might become the envy of the league.
Willy Adames was raking.
OK, not every spring impression hit the bull's-eye.
So here we are now. I've got all of five games to draw conclusions. Please forgive me for using the crayon pack that comes with the kids' menu, rather than the triple-decker Crayola box of 64 colors.
No matter how long I've covered baseball, I always feel out of touch after I take a series or two off. That's how quickly you can lose your feel for the team's pulse. Does the roster lack coverage somewhere? Is somebody dealing with a new, nagging injury? Has something happened that will necessitate the team adjusting its pitching plan for the next series? Did the vibes change?
I'm now returning after a three–month break. It's weird! But a baseball executive made an interesting point when I mentioned my predicament. He likened my circumstances to a special assignment scout who parachutes in and provides coverage of a team that they hadn't followed all season. Every impression is formed in a vacuum and not influenced by what happened a week or a month ago.
Unfamiliarity can be an advantage, in a sense. I'm not sure how true that is for a beat reporter, but I like the way it sounds. So we'll go with that. In the spirit of context-free impressions, here are a few takeaways after watching the Giants win five consecutive one-run games against the San Diego Padres and Atlanta Braves.
Now I understand why he's back in the closer role. It's not just the improved command and the streak of scoreless innings that lasted for nearly two months. He's competing so much better on the mound. He has a halfway decent pickoff move now. He slidesteps and varies his times to keep runners close. He's starting his delivery with five or six seconds on the pitch clock. This is not the Doval we saw, even when he made an All-Star team in 2023. It appears to me (and Statcast confirms) that his slider has a bit more horizontal movement as well.
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I assumed that Giants manager Bob Melvin made the change at closer because Ryan Walker was going through a rough patch. Now I understand that the move had at least as much to do with Doval's all-around competitive improvement on the mound.
Landen Roupp has a tremendous curveball. He's even shown the ability to command it to both sides of the plate, which is a rare skill. But he probably wasn't going to have consistent success in a big-league rotation if he threw the curve half the time. Even without his best stuff last Sunday, he showed the ability to mix pitches, navigate a lineup a few times and keep the Giants in the game.
It isn't only young pitchers who have to reinvent themselves. Former Cy Young Award winners do, too.
It was evident in the spring that Ray was super optimistic about his new changeup. It's also apparent by now that the changeup is making the rest of his pitches better as well.
Talk to veteran pitchers who've undergone Tommy John surgery, and many will tell you that it took extra time to recover that last bit of extension that is so important to their ability to finish pitches. That certainly appeared to be the case with Ray last season when he didn't know where the ball was going.
This season, Ray has mentioned several times in his postgame comments that the changeup is a pitch that forces him to get extended. It makes sense that throwing the changeup has led to good habits getting extended with the rest of his pitches as well.
And Webb? Well, he's one of just five major-league pitchers who've reached 100 strikeouts. He is consistently getting count leverage with an improved changeup. And with two strikes, he's not settling for a ground ball on a two-seamer. He's acknowledged that having Ray and Justin Verlander in his ear, singing the advantages of being a little less reliant on the BABIP gods, has influenced his emerging strikeout mentality on the mound. I've seen just one Webb start. However, it seems to be working, though.
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Of course, all of this reflects well on a pitching group headed by J.P. Martinez and Garvin Alston. For many years, the Giants had experienced hands (Dave Righetti, Brian Bannister, Bryan Price) running the pitching show. Martinez, in his first season heading a major-league department, sure looks equipped to make an impact in the role.
My return to the ballpark is also not the reason the Giants have won five consecutive games. However, it's always nice when people are happy to see you.
The Giants sent out the news release before 10 a.m. Wednesday (my first day back) that they had swapped out nearly a quarter of their position player group. They designated LaMonte Wade Jr. for assignment, signed Dom Smith to a one-year contract and brought up two other players (backup catcher Andrew Knizner, outfielder Daniel Johnson) who hadn't been with the team in spring training.
The news was that they were cutting ties with Wade, but the other moves were also subtly significant. By replacing Christian Koss with Johnson, the Giants give themselves a little more outfield coverage and make it easier for Melvin to ease up on slumping right fielder Mike Yastrzemski.
And by adding Smith to a first base group that also includes the recently returned Jerar Encarnacion, it'll be easier for Melvin to keep Flores as fresh and productive as possible — both to limit him to DH duty and to give him occasional days off where his bat can loom on the bench.
The Giants now have a little more contact ability on the bench, addressing what had to be viewed as a problem area.
Perhaps the roster pieces don't fit as perfectly as those of the 2021 Giants, but they seem to be a little more complementary following the changes. Just look at how they won Sunday's game against the Atlanta Braves, with two offensive contributions from Yastrzemski after he'd taken a handful of games off.
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The ballpark seems to be jumping. Attendance is up, and the crowds over the past five games were the loudest I can remember in a couple of seasons. Additionally, the massive lines of early arrivers on Sunday for the Hello Kitty jersey giveaway may have been the longest I've seen since the first Tim Lincecum bobblehead giveaway day. Who knew? I thought Hello Kitty had its moment when I was in the seventh grade.
(Top photo of Camilo Doval: Ezra Shaw / Getty Images)