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Tuesday BP: Pitcher usage and velo

Which pitchers have the Giants used, and how does their velocity look?

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San Francisco Giants Summer Workouts Photo by Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images

Hello and happy Tuesday.

Because active rosters allowed for 30 players to start the year, and because most starting pitcher’s arms aren’t fully up to speed, the San Francisco Giants packed 16 pitchers in their duffel bag when they headed to Los Angeles. There’s only so much we can learn from four games, but it did start to tell us something about how Gabe Kapler plans on using pitchers this year (if the season continues).

Here’s how many appearances each pitcher made in the four-game series, with their total innings in parenthesis:

3 appearances: Rico Garcia (2.0) and Tyler Rogers (2.0)

2 appearances: Drew Smyly (4.1), Wandy Peralta (2.1), Trevor Gott (2.0), Shaun Anderson (2.0), and Sam Coonrod (1.2)

1 appearance: Johnny Cueto (4.0), Logan Webb (4.0), Kevin Gausman (4.0), Caleb Baragar (2.0), Tyler Anderson (1.2), Conner Menez (1.0), Tony Watson (0.2), and Dany Jimenez (0.1)

0 appearances: Jeff Samardzija

There have also been some interesting (and admittedly very small sample size) trends with velocity from the Giants pitchers. Twitter user @giantsprospects (whom I cannot recommend following strongly enough) put together a graph comparing 4-seam fastball velocity from 2019 to 2020, with data from Brooks Baseball.

A lot of the players with drops in velocity have been recovering from injuries, which might explain the decrease. But there are more players with a velo boost, and while some of that may be due to those players being fully healthy after hampered 2019s, it’s pretty promising data.


Did Barry Bonds hit a home run today?

He did, but just one.

July 28, 1996: Against the Atlanta Braves, Bonds hit a 2-run home run in the 5th inning off of John Smoltz, scoring Matt Williams. It gave the Giants a 5-1 lead, and they would win 10-3. It was his 27th homer of the year.


Giants links

Have a great Tuesday, everyone.