It’s spring training for all of us. I was listening to Saturday’s Cactus League opener on KNBR, and when the Kars4kids commercial came on, it took me five seconds to get to the volume knob. By the All-Star break, I’ll get that down to less than a half-second. So the headline is an attempt to be cheeky. The first 5,044 things we can learn about the first exhibition game of the year is that we can’t learn anything from a single exhibition game.
But maybe there’s one thing we can learn, and two things we can remember? Or two things we can learn, and one thing we can … aw, heck, let’s just call these “notes.” Maybe even “observations” or “stray thoughts.”
Hayden Birdsong’s fastball sneaks up on people
While I’ve seen videos of Hayden Birdsong before, the video from the Cubs broadcast spoke to me. Just over a year ago, I was writing about him as an under-the-radar prospect worth following, but I hedged my bets because he had just 11 professional innings. Now he’s someone with Double-A experience who has a legitimate shot to make his major-league debut this season. How does something like this happen? With a fastball that sneaks up on folks:
The batter (Pablo Aliendo) took another fastball, this time on the outside corner, for strike two. And when you have someone that worried about your fastball, you leave them vulnerable to one of these:
There’s a non-zero chance that will be the worst swing of Aliendo’s life. Now, we shouldn’t be that impressed that he did that to a 22-year-old catcher who was in Double-A last season, and we can’t possibly expect him to do it against, say, Paul Goldschmidt in the immediate future. But it’s a fastball that makes hitters swing different, whether it’s thrown or not. There wasn’t any StatCast data available on the game, but Keith Law describes his fastball as “touching 98” in his writeup of Birdsong as the Giants’ No. 10 prospect, and that tracks.
Maybe it’ll translate to major-league success, or maybe it won’t. All I know is something like a bird within this fastball sings.
Just before the game, it was announced Luciano was scratched from the starting lineup because of hamstring tightness.
Ah. Well.
Again, it’s the first day of spring training. Birds chirping. A temperate, sunny day. Baseball was played and beers were served. Don’t dwell on the negative stuff. And don’t forget that if there’s ever one game out of the entire calendar year where even the slightest twinge, tweak or twang is best left untested, it’s the first game of spring training. Get out of here thinking that it means something.
It’s just that Luciano missed the start of last spring with back problems, and sometimes those suckers can lead to hamstring (and calf) problems. That doesn’t mean this latest tweak is anything other than, “Hey, Skip, might want to wait a day with this,” in the same way that a batter’s two-homer day in a spring game doesn’t mean that he’s guaranteed an All-Star spot.
But if the Giants aren’t necessarily committed to Luciano as their shortstop, they’re sure fooling the rest of us. The alternatives are both numerous and curious, although Otto López hit a booming home run in the ninth inning of Saturday’s game. Casey Schmitt was the immediate replacement for Luciano in the lineup, which doesn’t have to mean a danged thing, but it’s definitely one way they could pivot.
At the risk of spoiling my annual best case/worst case series of articles, Luciano’s latent potential is a huge part of the best-case scenario. There are a lot of ways it can go wrong. There are fewer ways that it can go right, at least in 2024. But there are ways that it can go spectacularly right — ways that can define the season for years to come. Do you remember the 2024 season? Oh, sure, that’s the year that Marco Luciano went goofy and morphed into an All-Star.
The bigger issue is that the Giants don’t have a super-comfortable backup plan at shortstop. There are rumors that they’re interested in Kiké Hernández, but he’s definitely not a shortstop anymore, if he ever was. He’d be an iffy second baseman, pushing Thairo Estrada to short, unless he’s a healthier Austin Slater, pushing either or both of Luis Matos and Heliot Ramos back to Triple-A Sacramento. There are lots of things that Hernández can do, from annoying Madison Bumgarner to taking the best engagement photos in the history of the genre, but he can’t help the Giants at shortstop.
So even a tweak to Luciano’s hamstring is noteworthy. Not panic-worthy. Not yet. His bat isn’t even Panik-worthy yet. We’re waiting on a lot of things, here. It’s just something to keep an eye on.
Logan Webb does weird things with baseballs and it’s a lot of fun to turn on an electronic device and listen to Duane Kuiper and Jon Miller crack jokes
These were separate sections, but I combined them because they’re pretty much the same thing: Sometimes it’s good to look on the brighter side of life. And because baseball is life, take a grumble break and remember that there are still things to appreciate about the 2024 Giants, as of right now.
The idea for this section was not supplied to me by San Francisco Baseball Associates LLC. It’s a product of watching — for the first time in several months — Logan Webb throw pitches that darted in different directions unexpectedly. Before I did that, though, I listened to Duane Kuiper and Jon Miller describe those pitches, and I imagined them in my soggy brain, and guess what? They were pretty much what I imagined them to be when I rewatched the game later.
Logan Webb might be the best pitcher in baseball. That’s not just me making stuff up; he has the best ZiPS projection of them all. He does things that other pitchers don’t, from throwing “complete games” to throwing murder-sinkers to working all four quadrants of the strike zone with any pitch, at any time, in any count, with command. That works! And while he’s just 1/26th of a roster, it’s never not time to appreciate him. (If you’re looking at the box score, the two-run single was a grounder with eyes. He looked good, otherwise.)
And he pitched in a game called by Giants announcers, all of whom are treasures. I’ll bet there’s someone reading this right now who is agreeing and nodding their head but hasn’t read this appreciation of Kuiper and Mike Krukow. Well, surprise, here you go! The Giants’ announcers are always one of the best parts of any baseball season.
If this still reads like propaganda, remember that the Giants have no excuse for not signing Blake Snell and Jordan Montgomery and Matt Chapman and Cody Bellinger (oops! too late), and they’re cowards for being scared of the luxury tax while their blood rivals from the south are redefining what it means to be a baseball team that tries.
But if they just signed one of Snell or Montgomery, that would be cool, too.
Mostly, though, let’s remember that Webb is a gift, and so is the general experience of consuming Giants baseball. It’s back. Spring has sprung. Ignore that the Giants didn’t score a run for the first eight innings and have some fun.
(Photo of Webb in the spring opener: Allan Henry / USA Today)
