San Francisco Giants: Three Standout Players from the Cactus League Opener

Baseball is finally back, so here’s three standout players from the San Francisco Giants’ Cactus League opener against the Milwaukee Brewers on Friday.

The first Spring Training game has come and gone, with the San Francisco Giants dropping one to the Milwaukee Brewers, 6-5. It looked like the first exhibition game of the year: pitchers were working on some things, timing wasn’t quite there for a lot of hitters, and the defense was ugly. Oh boy, it was ugly.

The Giants committed six errors and had many more misplays than that, but they should start to look better as everyone settles in and gets more comfortable playing more. On the mound, though, the Giants received some strong performances from pitchers who are competing for jobs on the opening day roster.

With all that in mind, here’s three standout players from the Cactus League Opener.

1 – Ty Blach

Blach was the guy who got it all started on Friday, taking the mound to open the exhibition season, and he was impressive. He threw two innings while not allowing a run, giving up only a single to go with a pair of strikeouts.

More from Golden Gate Sports

For the most part, Blach looked the same as he always does when he’s on. He worked at his own pace (quick as a hiccup), stayed around the strikezone (he was seven-for-seven in throwing first-pitch strikes), and got plenty of soft contact to make life easy for the defense behind him.

But Blach, never known as a strikeout pitcher, punched out a pair in his two innings of work, and got a number of swings and misses along the way. It is the first day of the Cactus League and hitters are still going to be looking for their timing for a while, but that is something to keep an eye on. If Blach can raise his strikeout rate a bit, it’ll add another wrinkle to his game and make him that much better as a pitcher.

2 – Andrew Suarez

The southpaw Suarez was Blach’s piggyback, and he picked up right where Blach left off. The pitcher competing for a spot in the rotation struck out the side in the third inning, including punching out a pair of big league regulars in Jonathan Villar and Eric Thames, to work around a one-out error.

His second inning of work wasn’t as clean, but he still looked rather good. He allowed three hits in the fourth inning, but only one was hit with any authority behind it. The two other hits were dying quails that found grass in front of outfielders who were playing deep. He erased one hit by getting Travis Shaw to chase a pitch and ground into a double play, and ended the frame with an easy flyout to left field.

Suarez has a lot of competition in front of him, but he made one heck of a first impression on Friday.

3 – Alen Hanson

Sometimes, standing out isn’t a good thing. It isn’t in Alen Hanson’s case. The non-roster invitee had a rough day on Friday, both in the field and at the plate. He took over at second base midway through the game, and made a poor feed to shortstop Chase d’Arnaud on a potential double play ball in the seventh inning that led to an error and two runs scoring. He also couldn’t catch a fairly high, but still catchable, pickoff throw in the ninth inning, leading to another one across the plate.

At the plate in the bottom of the seventh, Hanson struck out swinging from the left side of the plate. To top it all off, his name was spelled incorrectly on the scoreboard during his at-bat (“Alen Hansen”).

Next: Blach, Duggar Get First Cracks

He did finish the day on a positive note, blooping a basehit into left-center field in the ninth inning. He’s got over a month to erase the memory of the earlier mistakes, but Friday wasn’t a great first impression.

Home/San Francisco Giants