San Francisco Giants 3 Up, 3 Down: Opening Week
The San Francisco Giants opened the season with a pretty disappointing series in Arizona, and there’s plenty of positives and negatives to take away.
For the start of the new season, this is something I will do after each San Francisco Giants’ series. These articles will take three positive things (3 Up) and three negative things (3 Down) from the games.
3 UP
1 – Madison Bumgarner‘s Opening Day Antics
The San Francisco Giants sent their ace on Opening Day, and he delivered on both sides of the ball. Not only did he become the first pitcher to ever go deep twice at the plate on Opening Day, he also struck out 11 Diamondbacks on less than 90 pitches.
He was working on a perfect game for a while, but things got away from him a little bit in the sixth inning. He got his command back and was able to get through seven, but manager Bruce Bochy didn’t want to push him too far in his first outing of the year. His effort was for naught, as the bullpen let the lead get away and Bumgarner was left without a decision.
There’s plenty of reason to be optimistic about Bumgarner going forward. He pitched extremely well in his first start, and was lighting up the radar gun in a way he hasn’t done in a few years. He hit 95 on occasion, and was sitting comfortably at 93 and 94 throughout the day. He’s also now the Giants’ all-time leader in home runs hit by a pitcher with 16 longballs, and looks ready to destroy his career high of five, hit in 2015.
2 – The Lineup Put Together A Lot of Good At-Bats
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It didn’t always end in great results, but the Giants’ lineup put together some great at-bats through the entire season. There were multiple points last season when the lineup would get into the swing mode and be aggressive when the time wasn’t exactly calling for it, but they did a great job of working the count and not allowing opposing pitchers to have quick at-bats and innings in Arizona.
The lineup took 17 walks in the four-game series, led by Buster Posey‘s four and Brandon Belt‘s three. They made Diamondbacks’ pitchers throw 18.3 pitches per inning, well above the commonly-accepted 15 per inning. Giants’ hitters saw at least four pitches in 58.5 percent of their plate appearances during the series, and saw five or more pitches in 43.3 percent.
There were also plenty of line drives, which is particularly reassuring to see coming off Hunter Pence‘s bat after a really rough spring. He picked up six hits in 18 at-bats, and even most of his outs were loud off the bat. Posey was also squaring up the ball well despite some rough luck in the first two games, but he had four hits in the final two games.
3 – Joe Panik Looks Like Joe Panik Again
A solid Spring Training made for high hopes regarding Giants’ second baseman Joe Panik, and he carried that over into the first series of the season. After a terrible 2016 season marred by a concussion and bad luck, Panik had five hits against Arizona, including a double and a triple, and was shooting line drives all over the field during the series.
He also got off to a great start defending his first Gold Glove as well. He made a couple really nice plays diving to his right, and was ranging well to both his right and left. It’s probably too early to say definitively that Panik is back, but it’s really difficult to not be excited about what we saw from him in the season’s opening series.