Your San Francisco Giants have their Home Opener Friday afternoon, and while the defending NL West champions are given little chance to repeat last year’s stunning success, Kapler and the Captain have other ideas.
When we last saw the San Francisco Giants, they were being eliminated from the playoffs on an atrocious umpire call in a white-knuckle, winner-take-all game against the Dodgers. But that bitter taste could not conceal a glorious season of exceeding expectations, where the Giants had the best record in baseball with a franchise best-ever 107 wins, won the division on the final day of the season, and not only reinvigorated their rivalry with the Dodgers, but made it more significant than ever before. Yet after the MLB lockout threatened to shorten this season and stunt these wildly overachieving Giants’ progress, we will still get a full 162 games of regular season baseball.
Play ball! pic.twitter.com/PdVFsjoZi3
— Karl Mondon (@karlmondon) April 8, 2022
And that begins today. The San Francisco Giants have their Home Opener against the Miami Marlins at 1:35 p.m. Friday at Oracle Park. The TV broadcast is on NBC Sports Bay Area, and the radio call is on KNBR if you’re a Jon-Miller-in-the-background kind of person. They play the Marlins again on Saturday and Sunday, with both of those games at 1:05 p.m.
Giants Opening Day lineup: Yastrzemski RF, Belt 1B, Ruf DH, Pederson LF, Crawford SS, Flores 3B, Estrada 2B, Duggar CF, Bart C, Webb RHP
— Alex Pavlovic (@PavlovicNBCS) April 8, 2022
Pitcher Logan Webb starts today, and emerged as the revelation among many revelations of last year’s magical Giants season. The team’s rotation also added Chicago White Sox pitcher Carlos Rodón (who had a no-hitter last year), and exciting young closer Camilo Doval was sensational down the stretch of last August and September’s wild ride.
Brandon Crawford is already in midseason form 🤘 pic.twitter.com/Lv5Ofogk68
— KNBR (@KNBR) April 7, 2022
The retirement of Buster Posey certainly takes the team down a notch, but only a slight one, as he was basically just a part-time player last year. The only other significant loss is pitcher Kevin Gausman, but the team added splash-y hitter Joc Pederson (formerly of the Dodgers), and brings back the Brandons with the good hair, Brandon Crawford and “Captain” Brandon Belt.
Pablo knows a thing or two about being the underdoghttps://t.co/TKklZJOSwI
— SF Giants on NBCS (@NBCSGiants) April 8, 2022
Oddsmakers give these Giants little chance of repeating last year’s best-record-in-baseball magic, once again favoring the star-stacked Dodgers and San Diego Padres to dominate the division. But manager Gabe Kapler has a gift for making mediocrity into greatness, or at least, a steady stream of wins. And those wins begin today at 1:35 p.m. at Oracle Park.
Related: The MLB Lockout Is Over! Giants Likely to Play Ball Starting April 8 [SFist]
Image: SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA - OCTOBER 08: Logan Webb #62 of the San Francisco Giants reacts after striking out Cody Bellinger #35 of the Los Angeles Dodgers during the seventh inning of Game 1 of the National League Division Series at Oracle Park on October 08, 2021 in San Francisco, California. (Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)
