SF Giants: 4 ways Gabe Kapler has mismanaged the pitching staff

How Gabe Kapler is mismanaging the SF Giants pitching staff: Not utilizing multi-inning outings

While the Giants decided to limit starting pitchers to strict pitch counts to start the season, the front-office made sure to construct the roster to handle the added workload on relievers. The Giants opened the season with 16 pitchers on the team’s staff. A far cry from the 11 or 12 usually on a team’s roster.

The coaching staff spent the second camp building traditional relievers up for 2 or maybe 3 inning outings. Furthermore, 10 of the members of the staff started games last year. If the team needed even more reinforcements, Andrew Suarez, Dereck Rodriguez, and Trevor Oaks remained at the alternate site as well.

The unique expanded rosters to help teams deal with the uniqueness of this season enabled the Giants to keep droves of pitching depth on the roster to play with. Yet, Kapler didn’t give all pitchers a chance to throw multiple innings early on.

Instead of giving one pitcher the chance to throw two innings, Kapler has often refused to give them the opportunity to do so. Often, even with a 16-man staff, Kapler has turned to pitchers on back-to-back days because, early in the season, the Giants were routinely using 5 different relievers a day.

Prior to this season, Rico Garcia has spent his entire career working almost entirely as a starting pitcher. Shaun Anderson was starting for the Giants as recently as last season. The two have only gotten one opportunity combined to last more than an inning.

They’re the obvious ones. However, if the team was building up relievers like Peralta and Sam Coonrod to handle multi-inning outings too, it’s just perplexing why they didn’t get more opportunities to do it when the team’s starters were still being built up.