SF Giants Opening Day roster is surprisingly imbalanced in one key way

The SF Giants have officially set their Opening Day roster. There were a few surprises with who made the final cut, but the biggest surprise may be how heavily skewed the roster is in favor of right-handed players.

The final players to make the roster were infielders Casey Schmitt and Christian Koss who are both right-handed, along with the right-handed outfielder Luis Matos, and right-handed pitcher Randy Rodriguez.

Looking at the roster as a whole, it definitely seems to be a bit imbalanced. The starting rotation only has one left-handed pitcher in veteran Robbie Ray and the only southpaw in the bullpen is Erik Miller.

SF Giants Opening Day roster leans heavily on right-handed players

The young left-handed pitcher Kyle Harrison was seen as a favorite for the fifth rotation spot entering camp, but he got off to a late start and was outperformed by Landen Roupp and Hayden Birdsong which got him optioned to the minors.

There was a lot of debate over whether the Giants would carry a second lefty in the bullpen alongside Miller. Veteran pitcher Joey Lucchesi seemed like the front runner for this role, but ultimately the Giants decided to go with an almost exclusively right-handed bullpen.

Turning to outfielders, the only lefties are Jung Hoo Lee and the longest-tenured Giant, Mike Yastrzemski. It seemed fairly likely that Grant McCray would make the roster after the injury to Jerar Encarnacion because McCray is left-handed and his speed and defense would have been a nice addition to the roster. Instead, the Giants decided to only carry one backup outfielder in Matos. 

In the infield, the only left-handed bat is first baseman LaMonte Wade Jr. For most of spring training, it seemed like utility infielder Brett Wisely would have a good chance at making the team given the fact he bats left-handed. However, the Giants opted to go with Schmitt and Koss. Both had very strong showings in spring so they were both definitely deserving of a spot on the roster, but it is a bit surprising that the Giants did not have Wisely in the mix.

Koss was the main surprise given the fact that both Schmitt and Wisely were ahead of him on the depth chart heading into spring but he hit really well and was great on defense which earned him a spot on the team.

It will be interesting to see how this righty-heavy roster will fare early in the season. Rosters are obviously not set in stone so we will certainly see a lot of the lefties mentioned in this article at some point in the season. 

Perhaps this is a sign that the Giants are not going to play the matchup game as much as they have in recent years when they would pinch hit for some starting position players late in the game based on the handedness of the opposing relief pitcher. If the Giants are indeed moving away from that approach, we will have to see how their new strategy will pan out early in the season.