SAN FRANCISCO -- “Kruk and Kuip” will return to broadcast Giants games through at least the 2021 season, but their partnership will at times take on an unconventional format this year.

The Giants and NBC Sports Bay Area announced Friday that color commentator Mike Krukow has signed a two-year contract extension, though he will no longer travel with the team. Instead, Krukow will join his longtime partner and play-by-play announcer Duane Kuiper for 22 National League West road games this season via live remote from the NBC Sports Bay Area studios in San Francisco. Termed “SplitKast,” the innovative MLB broadcast will debut on the Giants’ season opener against the Dodgers on March 26.

Krukow, 68, had previously limited his travel schedule to NL West cities after publicly disclosing his battle with inclusion body myositis, a degenerative muscle disease, in 2014.

“It's something that hasn't been done before, but we're really looking forward to being able to do 22 more games together,” Krukow said in a statement. “I'm only losing six games from what I did last year, and that to me is enormous. I don't want to have to quit. To me, this was a gift. I'm ecstatic about it.”

NBC Sports Bay Area will attempt to create “a natural game experience” by providing a dedicated studio for SplitKast broadcasts at its San Francisco headquarters. During each telecast, Krukow will provide commentary while watching a monitor in San Francisco showing a real-time feed of the game. He will have access to various camera angles of the road ballpark and play, giving him the opportunity to continue to weigh in on the game action along with Kuiper.

“I think it'll take two or three innings to get used to the dynamics of him not being there,” Kuiper said. “But we've done so many games for so long that I think it's going to be an easy transition, I really do.”