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You can be forgiven for missing out on the first two games of Spring Training for the Giants. Unless you were right on top of your MLB.tv account, you might not have known that Game 1 against the Angels was broadcast on their cable channel. The Giants won’t begin their TV broadcasts until March 1st, but because of the broadcasting crew, they’re always a great listen on the radio.
The Giants lost to the Angels 10-3 on Saturday and 9-5 yesterday to the Cubs. Who looked good?
You know you’ve been waiting for this pic.twitter.com/pA667wiKin
— Kerry Crowley (@KO_Crowley) February 23, 2019
Yeah, Pablo warmed up on Saturday. Later in the actual game, Turner Ward of the Angels had a pinch hit grand slam —
'You talk about launch angles ....'
— FOX Sports West (@FoxSportsWest) February 23, 2019
Pinch-hit GRAND SLAM by Taylor Ward @Angels | @Warrdyboy7 | #LAASpring pic.twitter.com/vM9G9LxtWR
— and Joey Bart got his first hit.
On Sunday, Joe Panik led off and went 3-for-3 with a home run. Brandon Belt hit a 2-run home run. Alen Hanson hit a home run. Joey Bart got another hit! Heliot Ramos’ brother Henry had a hit.
On the pitching side, Travis Bergen and Pat Venditte pitched scoreless innings on Saturday, Madison Bumgarner hit 93 mph with his fastball on Sunday. Tyler Beede was popping 96 mph fastballs and had a strikeout, Melvin Adon hit 101 with his fastball.
The bad?
Steven Okert had 5 unearned runs, Chris Stratton only gave up 2 runs but wasn’t really fooling anybody. Madison Bumgarner gave up 6 runs after the first inning and recorded no outs in the second. Adon’s 101 mph was hit for a home run on Sunday, and jumping back to Saturday, hard-throwing but erratic reliever Kieran Lovegrove walked his first two batters, gave up two hits, and allowed three runs. The only silver lining in that was his tweet:
Downside: Didn't get the results I was hoping for in the first game.
— Kieran Lovegrove (@Lovegrove19) February 24, 2019
Upside: I will forever be the first pitcher that Bochy pulled from a game in his final season
The Giants looked really bad on Saturday.
Joey Bart's first at-bat of the spring ends with a called third strike. The #SFGiants trail 7-0 in the seventh inning. They have one hit. It should have been ruled an error.
— Kerry Crowley (@KO_Crowley) February 23, 2019
A lot of that could be chalked up to sitting out two days because of weather conditions and they looked a lot better on Sunday. It’s still just Spring Training and the wins and losses don’t really matter, but it will be interesting to see what happens if the generally below average play persists. They were 19-16 in 2017 Spring Training (final record: 64-98) and 9-23 in 2008 (72-90), so, again, they could go 0-30 or whatever and we still wouldn’t necessarily know what kind of team we’ll get to start the regular season.
But, oh man, let’s hope it’s not something like 0-30 or 4-26.
Here’s the schedule for the rest of the week:
Monday, 2/25 (hey, that’s today!) - White Sox @ Giants, 12:05pm
Tuesday, 2/26 - Giants @ Reds, 12:05pm
Wednesday, 2/27 - Royals @ Giants, 12:05pm
Thursday, 2/28 - Giants @ Brewers, 12:05pm
Friday, March 1st - Reds @ Giants, 6:05pm** NBC Sports broadcast
Saturday, March 2nd - Giants @ Padres, 12:10pm
Sunday, March 3rd - Giants @ Rockies, 12:10pm