PHOENIX -- Giants right-hander Kevin Gausman was aiming to pull off a grab that would land him on SportsCenter’s list of daily highlights. Now he’s just hoping to avoid the blooper reel.

“I was trying to make a Top 10 play,” Gausman said. “Now I’m probably a not-Top 10 play.”

The Giants deployed an extreme shift in the first inning of their 5-5 tie against the Brewers at American Family Fields of Phoenix on Friday. With the left-handed-hitting Justin Smoak at the plate, third baseman Mauricio Dubón trotted out to left-center field to give the Giants four outfielders. Shortstop Donovan Solano moved to shallow right field, leaving the entire left side of the infield open for Smoak, who subsequently hit a routine popup to third base.

Realizing that he had the best chance at making a play, Gausman quickly sprinted after the ball, but he stumbled as he came off the mound and wiped out before he could make the catch. Smoak came away with a single and later scored on Keston Hiura’s RBI single to give the Brewers a 1-0 lead.

“That was an ugly play, for sure, on my part,” said Gausman, who allowed one run on two hits over three innings in his third Cactus League start. “But it’s all part of the game. Once he hit it, I kind of knew that we were shifted. That’s my area of the field on that type of play. Just got kind of going a little too fast, I guess, and hit the deck pretty quickly there.”

The Giants shifted on 25.4 percent of plate appearances in 2019, which ranked 14th in the Majors, according to Baseball Savant. But the frequency of their shifting seems to have increased this spring under new bench coach Kai Correa, who previously served as an infield coordinator for the Indians.

Gausman was burned by the shift on Friday, but he noted that he has also seen plenty of hard-hit grounders to right field turned into outs because an infielder was playing out of position.

“You like it when it works for you, and you don’t like when it doesn’t,” Gausman said. “It’s kind of as simple as that, to be honest.”

The Giants have used the four-man outfield against several lefty bats like Smoak, an extreme fly-ball hitter who hits most of his ground balls to his pull side. Manager Gabe Kapler said the club could experiment with five-man infields at some point this spring as well, though he said he will speak with all of his pitchers beforehand to make sure they’re comfortable with extreme defensive alignments.

“They’re not always going to work,” Kapler conceded. “It’s kind of a portfolio game. We want to see as many groundballs and flyballs as possible, and then we feel confident that we’ll catch more. But there are going to be times when we wish we were playing in a traditional alignment and we just weren’t.”

Dubón at the hot corner
Dubón made his first start of the spring at third base on Friday and logged three innings there, seamlessly handling a popup by Omar Narváez, but also making a throwing error on a grounder by Avisail García in the second. Dubón, 25, has seen time at shortstop, center field and second and third base, in an effort to mold himself into a super-utility player for the Giants this spring.

Dubón has appeared in only one Cactus League game in center field so far, but Kapler said he believes the 25-year-old could see significant time there this season.

“That throw from third base drew [first baseman Wilmer] Flores off the bag just a little bit, but one of the things we’re seeing with Dubón is the work he’s putting in on his throwing is really creating a lot of carry with his ball,” Kapler said. “A lot of good four-seam rotation that’s keeping the ball straight. That plays well at shortstop. It plays well in center field, and anytime he’s turning it at second base. The way I see it shaping up, I could legitimately see him playing center field quite a bit.”

Bart ejected
Top prospect Joey Bart, who entered the game in the seventh inning as the designated hitter, was ejected by home-plate umpire Ryan Blakney in the ninth after arguing a called third strike that appeared to be outside. The opposing pitcher? Pitching prospect Phil Bickford, a 2015 first-round Draft pick for the Giants, who was sent to the Brewers as part of the Will Smith trade in 2016.

“I think fire is good, I think intensity is good,” Kapler said. “I think all of those things can and should be channeled. In particular, in a Spring Training game while we’re competing to the best of our ability, it’s a good time to practice both the intensity that you talked about and maybe patience.”

Up next
Non-roster invitee Trevor Cahill will make his first Cactus League start and third appearance overall on Saturday, as the Giants host the White Sox at Scottsdale Stadium at 12:05 p.m. PT, live on Gameday Audio.The Giants had initially tapped Shaun Anderson to start Saturday’s game, but he will be pushed to Sunday as he continues to work on different grips for his fastball.