SAN FRANCISCO — Every team in baseball needs to figure out a way to pitch at least 1,400 innings a season.
Starters, openers, relievers, closers, bulk and mop-up guys must all add up to that big number.
And as we enter June, it’s hard to see how the Giants will get to that number without lighting their bullpen on fire.
The Giants are operating with four starting pitchers at the moment. They can only trust one to provide a quality outing whenever he takes the mound.
The result of short numbers and short leashes? So far this season, Giants starters have only thrown 280.1 innings. That’s fewer than five innings a start. Sure, there’s an opener or two in there, messing up the data, but you can’t skew the second-lowest starter output in baseball. It’s already 60 innings behind the National League-leading Phillies.
Of course, last season, the Giants were last in baseball in innings thrown by starting pitchers. The three teams above them in that stat were the Athletics, Rockies, and Red Sox — all three were last-place teams, two 100-loss operations.
But this season was supposed to be different.
At best, it’s the same result via a different path.
The Giants’ starting pitching had to improve going into this season. It looked like it did for a while, but now, the situation seems dire.
Sure, Logan Webb is out there going deep into games, but one man does not make a rotation. Entering Friday’s series with the Yankees, the second-most-trustworthy pitcher on the Giants was not the reigning National League Cy Young winner, Blake Snell, or super-prospect Kyle Harrison — it was converted reliever Jordan Hicks.
And in that game, Hicks further called into question if he could continue in that role.
The cracks started showing up a few weeks ago, but they’re undeniable now.
Hicks, the one-time 100-mile-per-hour flamethrower, signed with San Francisco because he wanted to start games, and he changed his arsenal to better fit that role. Gone was the heavy heat, and in came a sinker, splitter, sweeper mix that might not have touched triple-digits but carried plenty of velocity and even more movement. The result was a brilliant first month of the season — he had a 1.59 ERA after 34 innings.
And while that ERA didn’t balloon in May, it is up to 2.70 — he allowed four runs in 5.1 innings Friday against the Yankees — and he’s only been good for those five innings for the past month.
Is this manageable for the Giants? Acceptable, even? Absolutely.
If Hicks was a No. 4 or No. 5 starter, that is.
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But with Snell looking like a shell of what he once was — with no one able to say when he’ll put it together — and Harrison becoming a one-pitch pitcher whose one pitch isn’t as good as the Giants suggest, Hicks has become the linchpin of this rotation. Perhaps, even, the linchpin of the team.
And he’s looking really wobbly.
Friday, he gave up two monster home runs to Aaron Judge, which accounted for all four of his runs allowed. Sometimes you have to tip your cap — Judge is on an ungodly run right now, and Hicks was battling him.
“Other than that, I thought he pitched fine,” manager Bob Melvin said of Hicks.
But other than that, Hicks gave up 11 hard-hit balls (exit velocities over 95 miles per hour), with eight 100-mile-per-hour contacts against him.
Let me contextualize that for you: the Yankees smoked him.
The Brox Bombers have an outstanding lineup, but this is becoming a trend for Hicks.
Hicks’ hard-hit percentage against went up 14 points — nearly half of the in-play contact against him is hard-hit — in May. Barrels against have nearly doubled from the first month of the season, and there’s been a significant drop-off in his overall velocity — he’s down almost two miles per hour across the board from the beginning of the season.
There are a lot of red flags here, and I know the Giants are seeing them.
But Melvin kept rolling the dice by leaving Hicks in the game for 101 pitches yesterday.
What other choice did he have? It’s just like when the Giants pitched Hicks after he spent the morning puking out his guts before a game against the Rockies last month.
The logic: “Our bullpen has been pretty beat up lately.”
And unless something drastic changes with the starting rotation, “lately” will become “for the season.”
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Now, Keaton Winn will return in the coming days to fill the No. 5 spot in the rotation. We’ll see if we see the early-season Winn or the one who saw his ERA explode to 6.17 over his last three starts before going on the injured list.
And while Alex Cobb is coming off multiple setbacks amid his rehab from hip surgery, bringing into question his return to the team in any capacity, another former Cy Young winner, Robbie Ray, remains on track to join the Giants by the All-Star break. That could be a boon. His addition could also be too late to salvage this rotation.
The arrow is pointing down on three of the Ginats’ four starters. For a few, it’s hard to see them going up again. And the possible reinforcements are wild cards, at best.
And for a team seeking a Wild Card berth, that won’t work.
The 2021 Giants spent the season’s final weeks with a three-man rotation, Johnny Wholestaffing their way to the West crown and 107 wins.
But that was a necessary move for the home stretch of a charmed season.
Doing something similar for four months — the final two-thirds of the season?
That’s just a fool’s errand and a great way to ensure this season is anything but charmed.
