Only six more sleeps
I'm ready for Opening Day. Are the Giants? Are you?
A friend—or so I thought—told me they were disappointed in my lack of spring training coverage. They were kidding, mostly. (Were you?)
But it got me thinking. Hasn’t this been a pretty uneventful spring in Scottsdale? Boring, even? (At least since Tony Vitello’s last comments about Tennessee.)
It’s been pretty vanilla. And that’s OK.
The Giants roster was nearly set from the moment they arrived to Scottsdale. The outfield and rotation, definitely. The infield, practically.
Bryce Eldridge had a chance to hit his way onto the roster, but as Alex Pavlovic wrote, “many around camp now believe he’ll start back in Triple-A.” Eldridge had a perfectly fine, if unremarkable spring, and so did most of the team. Nobody vaulted out of nowhere to contend for the roster, and nobody fell off the face the Earth, either, save for Hayden Birdsong’s sprained UCL. (You’ll see him in 2027, probably.)
The bullpen remains the most undefined part of the team—and even that cast is going to be one you could have written out on Valentine’s Day. (Though it’s not much of a valentine for a first-year manager.)
In the spirit of March Madness, it’s been a rather chalk spring. As expected. Status quo. If that holds for the next six months, maybe the Giants will finally be more than a bubble team.
Podcast: Kerry gives us the scoop on the latest food coming to Oracle Park, the Giants’ embrace of the 9/9/9 challenge, and what he learned from his time with Tony Vitello in Scottsdale.