SAN FRANCISCO -- The opener might be back in vogue for the Giants.
With their rotation depth thinned by the departure of left-hander Robbie Ray and right-hander Tyler Mahle at the Trade Deadline, the Giants are expected to get more creative with their pitching usage over the final two months of the regular season.
The unconventional route certainly proved effective in a 5-2 series-opening win over the Tigers on Friday night at Oracle Park.
San Francisco’s first opening assignment of the year went to right-handed reliever JT Brubaker, who gave up one run in the top of the first on a pair of singles and an RBI grounder by Dillon Dingler. Fellow righty Adrian Houser replaced Brubaker in the second and took on the bulk role, yielding one run over five innings to earn his first win since May 17.
“Houser set the tone for the game,” manager Tony Vitello said. “He threw the bulk of the game and really kind of set the tone of the game like you want a starter to do. I would just say overall the game was just a good team win.”
Keaton Winn, Sam Hentges and Dylan Smith combined to pitch the final three innings for the Giants. Smith, who was acquired from the Tigers in exchange for cash considerations in late March, worked around a two-out walk to Riley Greene to post a scoreless ninth and pick up his second save of the year.
Rafael Devers and Willy Adames both homered to back the Giants’ bullpenning efforts, while Jung Hoo Lee chipped in with a two-run single in the second inning.
The Giants regularly ran bullpen games under former president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi, though they largely abandoned the strategy once Buster Posey took over as the new leader in the front office at the end of the 2024 season.
Still, it makes sense to experiment with openers and other non-traditional approaches given where the Giants’ roster now stands. Logan Webb and Landen Roupp remain at the top of the rotation, but the club recently lost Trevor McDonald to season-ending Tommy John surgery and is giving an extended look to a pair of rookie starters in Blade Tidwell and Carson Whisenhunt.
Incorporating more bullpen games could also create more opportunities for the Giants to audition other young arms down the stretch, including Carson Seymour and Trent Harris, who earned his first callup from Triple-A Sacramento on Friday.
“To be truthful, a lot of this is to get a look at guys from this point forward,” Vitello said. “Either a look at opening, starting, following the opener, or a variety of roles out of the bullpen.”
The Giants signed Houser to a two-year, $22 million deal in December to fill out their starting rotation, but the 33-year-old veteran struggled mightily over the first three months of the year, logging a 5.73 ERA over his first 14 starts before being moved to the bullpen.
The switch to relief has yielded better results for Houser, who now has a 2.03 ERA over his last nine appearances. Houser said he went on his own “deep dive” after he was bumped from the rotation to try to find a mechanical tweak that would help get him back on track.
“I noticed that my hands were getting a little stuck close to my body,” Houser said. “I wasn’t able to have balance and wasn’t able to have a strong front side. Being able to see that just got my hands away from my body and a little bit more balance on the mound. I’m a little more in my legs like I wanted to be. I’ve just been able to stack that on top of each other and work on that every day.”
While Houser has had success pitching in long relief, he made it clear that he hopes he’ll have another chance to return to the Giants’ rotation in the future.
“I much prefer [to be] a starter,” Houser said. “That’s what I signed here to do, and that’s what I plan to do in the future. But right now, it’s all about getting outs and helping out the guys as much as possible.”