Giants release their 2020 schedule

The San Francisco Giants schedule is here! We now know all 60 games that the Giants are planning on playing, even though we still don’t know if they’ll actually play them.

MLB released the schedule for the abbreviated 2020 season on Monday afternoon, and we found out a lot. Here’s what we learned:

They open the season with a rivalry

It had already been rumored that the Giants would open the season by facing the Los Angeles Dodgers, which was their originally-scheduled opponent.

Now we know it’s true. The season starts on June 23, with an ESPN doubleheader: The New York Yankees at the Washington Nationals, followed by the Giants at the Dodgers.

The other 26 teams get started on June 24.

The Giants have a very difficult schedule

We already knew the Giants would have one of the toughest schedules in baseball, because they have to do three of the toughest things a team can do:

1. Play the Dodgers
2. Play the Houston Astros
3. Not play the Giants

But now we know the schedule makers made things even harder for the Giants. While it’s been known for a while that they would play the Dodgers (and every other NL West) team 10 times, it wasn’t known until today that the split between home and road games would be uneven.

And my goodness is it uneven. The Giants play the Dodgers seven times in Los Angeles, and just three times in the Bay Area. They also play the Astros three times, with all three games being in Houston.

An uphill climb just got steeper.

Bumgarner returns on Aug. 21

The Giants first face the Arizona Diamondbacks on Aug. 21, at the start of a three-game series at Oracle Park.

That means Madison Bumgarner will be back in San Francisco on Aug. 21. If Bumgarner is the Diamondbacks Opening Day starter, and if they hold a five-man rotation, and if he stays healthy — a lot of ifs — he would be in line to start that game.

Mondays are off days

The Giants get six off days this season, and four of them are on Mondays. The other two are on Thursdays.

That means you’ll get Giants baseball every Saturday and Sunday all season long.

The Giants are gonna sink or swim quickly

One downside of a 60-game season — without the once planned expanded playoffs — is that it won’t take long for a team to be completely out of the playoff picture. A bad stretch to start the season and a team could be out of the race just two weeks into the year.

That’s doubly true for the Giants. San Francisco opens up with a 20-game stretch that I’m guessing is one of the hardest stretches in all of baseball this year. In those first 20 games they have seven road games against the Dodgers and three road games against the Astros, plus three home games against the San Diego Padres.

The stretch also features a three-game home series against the Texas Rangers, and four road games at deadly Coors Field to face the Colorado Rockies.

By Aug. 12 we’ll know if we should write the Giants obituary or not.

Ending the year at home

The Giants have the benefit of having three road games against the Oakland A’s, which means they only have to travel for 27 games instead of 30.

Those three are at the end of the year, meaning the Giants end the season with 10 straight games in the Bay Area: three at the Coliseum, followed by a four-game series against the Rockies, and a three-game series against the Padres.

That’s a nice way to end the year if the Giants are in the postseason race. And it’s at least a stress-free way to conclude things if they’re not.

The Giants are not getting a bunch of respect

Normally the Giants end the year with a lot of games against the Dodgers, as the league pits the rivals against each other. Not this year. MLB realizes that the Giants aren’t likely to be an exciting team in the thick of the playoff race, and thus put their last game against the Dodgers on Aug. 27 — San Francisco’s 33rd game of the year.

And, just to add more salt in the wound of disrespect, the Giants were the only NL West team that MLB Network didn’t actually reveal the schedule for. It wasn’t deemed worthy of a spot on the hour-longe schedule special.

Here’s the full schedule if you want to start marking your calendar.