San Francisco Giants 2019 Spring Training Preview: Starting Pitchers

Pitchers and Catchers report to Spring Training this week for the San Francisco Giants! The offseason is finally (somewhat) over! Let’s see who is showing up in camp.

With hand-egg finally over, and NBA getting closer and closer to their All-Star Break, that usually means one thing: Pitchers and Catchers report. The San Francisco Giants will report on February 14th, at their Spring Training Complex in Scottsdale, Arizona.

We wanted to take a look at each position grouping as they come into camp. So this week, we’ll be looking at the battery mates, and next week we’ll look at the rest of the position players as they begin to report to camp. First up is the starting rotation.

The Giants will return everyone from last year’s rotation, and more to Spring Training. Last year’s group sat ranked in the middle of the league in ERA, with a collective 4.06, and limited damage on the long ball, giving up the fifth best HR/9. Can you say thank you AT&T Park?

The one metric where they were hurt in 2018 was the K/9 ratio. They ranked 27th in the league. It could definitely use some improvement, but the A’s had the second worst K/9 in baseball and still won 97 ballgames. Granted, they used their opener method for a significant amount of the season which will likely lower the rate of K/9 for starters.

While they return all of the group from 2019, they’ll also add a few more new faces. So let’s see who all is going to be showing up in Scottsdale on Thursday! We’ll split them into three groups: The incumbents, the challengers, and the long-shots.

The incumbents are the returning guys from last year that are expected to contribute. The challengers are guys who are either new to the team, or new to the camp who could genuinely challenge for a starter’s spot, and the long-shots are likely made up of NRI’s and guys who are there mainly for experience.