4/3 Gamethread: Giants @ White Sox

Time for more day baseball, San Francisco Giants fans, as the Giants are staying in the American League for their second series of the season and taking on the Chicago White Sox.

For the Giants it’s the return right-handed pitcher Anthony DeSclafani. It’s easy to forget how good DeSclafani was in 2021, his first year with the Giants. His rough 2022 — in which he made five bad, injury-riddled starts before being shut down for the year — is the most recent memory we have of him. But the year before, DeSclafani had a 3.17 ERA, a 3.62 FIP, and 152 strikeouts to just 42 walks in 167.2 innings, while leading the Majors with a pair of shutouts. If you remove the starts he made against the Los Angeles Dodgers, DeSclafani was pitching at a level that earns Cy Young votes. That version of him would go a huge way towards the Giants having a good season.

On the other side is righty Michael Kopech, who is coming off of a reverse-Alex Cobb season, in which he had a 3.54 ERA but a 4.49 FIP (the year before he was the opposite: 3.50 ERA, 2.97 FIP). Kopech issued 4.3 walks per nine innings last year, so the Giants will have some opportunities to get on base.

Game #4

Who: San Francisco Giants (1-2) vs. Chicago White Sox (2-2)

Where: Guaranteed Rate Field, Chicago, Illinois

When: 12:10 p.m. PT

Regional broadcast: NBC Sports Bay Area (available on fuboTV)

National broadcast: n/a

Radio: KNBR 680 AM/104.5 FM, KSFN 1510