San Francisco Giants’ Pitching Staff Takes Another Major Blow
With the San Francisco Giants set to start the regular season in under a week, they’ll have to find someone new to start opening day.
With the San Francisco Giants getting ready to head back home for the final series of Spring Training games, the bad news keeps on coming. A day after it was revealed that Jeff Samardzija would miss time because of a pectoral strain, staff ace Madison Bumgarner was hit on the pitching hand by a comebacker.
Bumgarner’s opening day assignment was right around the corner, and he just needed to get through one final tuneup start. He couldn’t do so, with a sharply-hit line drive off the bat of Whit Merrifield striking Bumgarner in his left hand as he put it up in front of his body to protect himself. He was immediately removed from the game, and news came afterward that his hand was fractured.
A season after hitting the disabled list for the first time in his career, Bumgarner is headed back there again. He will need to have surgery to insert pins into the fracture, and those pins won’t be removed for four to six weeks. He won’t be able to throw during that time. Depending on how long it takes to build his arm strength back up after the injury, he should miss two to three months.
More from Golden Gate Sports
- Raiders: Rookie stock report following Week 3 performance
- 49ers sign new long snapper amidst a flurry of roster moves
- Oakland Athletics win Game 2 of Wild Card round with late-inning drama
- 49ers: George Kittle and Deebo Samuel cleared to return to practice
- 49ers expected to place DE Dee Ford on injured reserve
The top of the rotation, which looked like it could be a strength with Bumgarner and Johnny Cueto returning to form and Samardzija holding down the middle, is suddenly down to only Cueto. The back-end, consisting of players like Chris Stratton, Ty Blach, and Derek Holland competing for jobs, is now the middle of the rotation.
Stratton looked great at the end of 2017 and has helped his standing with a strong performance this spring, but he was projected to be the fourth starter. With this pair of injuries, Stratton is now the de facto number two. Blach and Holland were fighting for the fifth and final rotation spot, but both now figure to be in the grouping. The final spot is probably going to a player that has already been sent down from camp.
Tyler Beede is still the team’s top pitching prospect, and being on the 40-man roster probably gives him the first crack at that last job. Beede is coming off a rough 2017 and a disappointing Spring Training campaign, but the Giants will need him to step up big time and live up to his prospect status.
A lot will have to go right for the Giants if they are going to stay afloat in what should again be an extremely competitive NL West. They’ll need Cueto to bounce back from a terrible season in 2017. They’ll need Stratton to show that the tail-end of 2017 wasn’t a fluke, and that he’s truly ready to take the next step. They’ll need Blach to pitch as he did early in 2017 after he took over for an injured Bumgarner. They’ll need Holland to prove he is back, healthy and ready to contribute again. And they’ll need a young pitcher to step up and hold things down at the back of the rotation.
Almost everything went wrong for the Giants en route to 98 losses in 2017, and 2018 doesn’t seem like it’s going to get off to a great start. The lineup should be much improved with the new additions up and down the order, but now the pitching staff has become the most pressing concern.
Next: Three Standouts from Game 29
Time will tell how things play out, but for now, the outlook isn’t great.