Zaidi, Giants plan to ride bullpen games during playoff push

Zaidi, Giants plan to ride bullpen games during playoff push originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

SAN FRANCISCO -- Teams go to great lengths to keep their intentions from being known at all times, but especially in the weeks leading up to the trade deadline. The Giants front office and staff is particularly good at keeping things in-house, but if you listened closely over the last couple of weeks, you got a preview of how they planned to handle their pitching staff at Tuesday's deadline.

Twice last week, Gabe Kapler mentioned his team's record and ERA in bullpen games. When the Giants won a pair of them over the weekend, a couple of players slipped the stat into postgame interviews, a sign that the message was filtering down. On Monday, as he previewed deadline day, president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi again brought up the record.

"We've had a lot of success in those games and a lot of that comes from the ability to feature the bullpen, which has been a strength of the team," Zaidi said. "We've got to be careful about the workload with the bullpen, but if there's a way to manage a game where we get quality out of our starters like we got this weekend, but we can also feature our bullpen -- which is really effective, especially when put in good matchups -- that's just a good way for us to win games. Obviously we've been very successful in those games."

A night before the deadline, Zaidi said the front office would have to weigh that success against "bringing in a starter who we kind of will be locked into." He pointed out that he wasn't sure there was an available starting pitcher out there who could post the record the Giants have behind openers. That turned out to be foreshadowing.

The Giants didn't add a starter at the deadline and now look poised to stick with bullpen games throughout their final two months, and maybe even beyond that. They dabbled with the upper end of the pitching market, but when those pursuits didn't lead to anything, they stuck to their belief that what they're doing will be more effective than the available depth options would have been.

During an interview that aired on Thursday's "Giants Talk," Zaidi said the Giants will take it "almost game by game and turn by turn" through the rotation. During this last turn, they used just two starters, Logan Webb and Alex Cobb.

"It's been successful for us," Zaidi said. "It's not an attempt by us to reinvent the wheel and to be smarter than the other team. It's just about setting up our pitching staff in the way that we think gives us the best chance to win. We've had some success with it, so we'll continue to evaluate that against some of the ease of planning when you just have a straight five-man rotation and guys know who is taking the ball every day."

After a 7-2 homestand that heavily featured the bullpen, the Giants are 15-5 in games started by an opener or long reliever, with a 2.72 ERA and more than a strikeout per inning. Since the All-Star break, they're 4-2 with a 2.37 ERA in bullpen games.

What the Giants are trying isn't new, and the Red Sox certainly weren't surprised over the weekend. They play in the same division as the Tampa Bay Rays, who brought the opener back into the mainstream in 2018 when they had Sergio Romo start a game and have been employing the strategy ever since. The Rays have had 14 different pitchers start a game this season.

The Giants have had similar variance. John Brebbia and Scott Alexander have been their main openers the last couple of years and generally get three to six outs before giving way to a "bulk innings" pitcher. But Ryan Walker has shown an ability to get through the full lineup once, and on Monday, Jakob Junis pitched three shutout innings before handing the ball to Alex Wood, who has bounced back and forth between the rotation and bullpen.

Wood has made no secret of his preference to start, but his struggles in the rotation led to a change. The same thing happened to Anthony DeSclafani, who came out of the bullpen for his final appearance before going on the IL, as well as Ross Stripling and Sean Manaea. After his strong relief outing on Sunday, Stripling said something that would have been jarring a few years ago, but rolled right off the tongue.

"We've got two starters, so it's kind of all hands on deck at any time," he said.

While it's not at all surprising that the Giants are embracing openers, it's not exactly what anyone expected when they broke camp with six experienced starting options, plus Junis in the pen. Four months later, the Giants view this as the most effective way to deploy their personnel and give the team the best chance to win, although they know it's not the most popular strategy.

There's nothing the Giants can do to calm fans who hate not knowing that day's pitcher when they head to the park or turn on a game. That gripe -- which is legitimate, given that this is, you know, an entertainment business -- might only be solved by mixing starters like Kyle Harrison, Keaton Winn and Carson Whisenhunt into the rotation in the coming years.

Another popular complaint is that bullpen games will wear down the pitching staff, although there's not much evidence of that so far. The Giants found themselves in a tight spot on Tuesday after three straight bullpen games, two of which went 11 innings, but Cobb and Webb did their job and the staff was relatively fresh heading into an off day.

Camilo Doval and Tyler Rogers are the only Giants who rank in the top 30 in the NL in appearances, but that's because the Giants play so many one-run games, not because of how they structure their staff. It's likely that Webb and Cobb will be the only Giants to reach 100 innings this year. The routines have changed for the veterans, and that's a valid concern for some, but their overall workloads won't stand out.

The biggest question at this point might be what the Giants will do if this strategy continues to be this successful. Are they really going to use an opener in the postseason? Is this headed for Walker or Alexander starting Game 3 of the NLDS, for example?

"Players kind of adapt this mentality of, 'I'll do whatever the team needs. It's not about my routine or whatever,' " Zaidi said. "I remember when I was in L.A. and we used Clayton Kershaw behind Kenley Jansen to finish off a Division Series game. When you're talking about starting pitchers of that caliber coming out of the 'pen for the sake of the team, it just shows that roles are more flexible.

"We're sort of asking for that mentality from our guys the last couple months of the season, which is a challenge, but I think they're up to it. This is the most unselfish group of players that I've ever been around. That's part of what's made this possible."

RELATED: How Brebbia's unique MLB path led to key bullpen role

There has been some light grumbling within the clubhouse, but nothing that's reached a level where the staff is concerned. Kapler knows he's asking a lot of some of his veterans, particularly the ones who will be free agents soon, so perhaps it wasn't a surprise that he attempted to change the nomenclature last week.

The "bulk innings guys" are now "featured guys," and after a quiet deadline, it looks like they'll be heavily featured the rest of the way.

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