San Francisco Giants Three Standouts: Game 28, 3-21
The San Francisco Giants knocked off the Diamondbacks, 14-0, on Wednesday, getting great performances from all around the diamond.
The San Francisco Giants handled their business on Wednesday night, beating up on the Arizona Diamondbacks by a final score of 14-0. The lineup banged out hit after hit against a less-than-stellar opposing pitching staff, and the pitching staff held a D’Backs’ lineup that featured a lot of regulars off the board with only seven hits.
Here are three Giants who stood out on Wednesday:
1 – Dereck Rodriguez
With Jeff Samardzija starting in a minor league game to hide him from a divisional opponent, Dereck Rodriguez was brought over from minor league camp to start on Wednesday. He had already been re-assigned this spring, but Rodriguez showed that he certainly has some potential in his young right arm.
The son of a Hall of Famer faced most of the Diamondbacks’ regulars in his spot start, but he was in total control despite the vast experience differential. Rodriguez allowed a double to start the ballgame, but picked the runner off trying to take third later in the inning. He added a strikeout of Jarrod Dyson, and even got Paul Goldschmidt to ground out weakly.
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Rodriguez’s best offering on the day was his changeup, a pitch that got a number of swing and misses throughout his three innings of work. He even got Arizona catcher Alex Avila to swing through three changeups for his second strikeout of the evening. Rodriguez is likely heading to Double-A to start the season, but his three shutout inning performance against the Diamondbacks is a great confidence builder as the season prepares to start.
2 – Buster Posey
Posey continued his red-hot spring on Wednesday night, collecting three hits in four at-bats while driving in one run and scoring another.
The Giants’ All-Star catcher certainly wasn’t facing Arizona’s top-line pitchers, with mostly lower-level minor leaguers taking the mound for the Diamondbacks. But Posey retained the approach that has made him one of the toughest outs in baseball over the years. He hit the ball to all fields, shooting a double through the right-center gap in his first at-bat, hit a groundball up the middle in the fifth inning, and pulled an RBI single to left in the sixth.
Posey is having an outstanding spring, owning a .545/.565/.864 slash-line, albeit in only nine games. He’s been slow-played this Cactus League schedule, as has just about every other regular, but he seems to be locked in every time he enters the box.
3 – Sam Dyson
Dyson has had a rough go of things in the Cactus League, and he wasn’t perfect in his one inning of work on Wednesday, but it was rather encouraging. He started the inning by allowing a double down the line to Daniel Descalso, then froze Yasmany Tomas with a sinker at 95 miles per hour on the outside corner.
After a one-out walk, Dyson got his Dyson counterpart (Jarrod) to ground into a fielder’s choice, then finished his inning with a bang. He threw an 0-2 sinker, this one at 94, right through Goldschmidt’s bat to end the threat.
Next: Three Standouts from Game 26
Dyson is clearly not right, and doesn’t really look ready for the regular season. There are some things to work on, but this was an encouraging start toward building him back on. The weapons are certainly still there, it’s just on Dyson (and the coaching staff) to get it right.