Yes, that’s his government name.
One of the primary reasons for optimism for San Francisco Giants fans this year — in addition to, you know, the courtesy optimism handed out in a pretty bag to every fan at the start of a season — is the lack of holes in the roster. The potential lack of holes, that is.
While some teams achieve mediocrity or even respectable competency by surrounding a few stars with random humans possessing vaguely baseball-sounding names (see: Angels [of Anaheim], Los Angeles for the last decade) the Giants figure to do so with unrelenting decency. There are uninspiring spots on the roster and areas where a role is defined more by a question mark than a player, but there are no holes; no glaring, known, sub-replacement level players being given a mitt and a bat and asked to be something they’re not.
The joy of such roster construction is that you can dream anywhere and everywhere, because any decent player can be a damn good player in any given year. You may think the Giants will be under .500 this year, but you know that more than half of the players on the roster could make the All-Star Game without it surprising you (individually, I should clarify; half the team making the All-Star Game together would surprise everyone, certainly). Or, put in more quantifiable terms that you may find encouraging or terrifying, Fangraphs projects to Giants to finish with exactly 81 wins and 81 losses. And that comes despite projecting the supposed strength of the team to struggle: in their annual preseason positional rankings, the site projects the Giants to employ the eighth-worst bullpen and ninth-worst rotation in the Majors. Just imagine if the pitching is as good as they seem to think it should be!
And so you can dream a little. If players A, B, and C actualize their potential, and players X, Y, and Z bounce back to their pre-2024 levels, while players 1, 2, and 3 continue their history of quality play and good health, well my goodness, the Giants might actually have something interesting simmering away on the stove.
Of course, the reason for pessimism is reflected there, as well. Talent has not been the Giants’ lack in their three-year run of flawless mundanity, so much as a lack of contingency plans when A, B, or C didn’t actualize their potential, X, Y, or Z didn’t bounce back, and 1, 2, or 3 didn’t continue their bill of clean health.
But that’s an article for another day. A day when the team spends nine innings trying to insert square pegs in round holes while limping their way to a listless loss. That day is not today. Today is a day in which the Giants played baseball exactly the way Buster Posey and Bob Melvin drew it up, beating the Houston Astros 7-2.
Today is a day where the Giants won because the players who could be good, which would almost surely spell a very successful season, were good. It was a data point firmly in favor of the players you believe in, who have earned you quizzical looks from fans of opposing teams when you express said belief.
Take Jordan Hicks. With a full offseason of preparing to be a starter, and working with the training staff to gain muscle weight and increase stamina, can he be the pitcher who had a 2.33 ERA through his first 11 starts last year? Or is he the player who had a 6.42 ERA over the next nine starts, was moved to the bullpen, struggled there, and was shut down? The answer to that question is one that will help determine whether the Giants flirt with 90 wins or 70.
On Monday he was the former. He gave up a hit and a walk in the first inning, needing 22 pitches to get out of the inning unscathed, but there were signs: even as his pitch count crept into the 20s, he was comfortably sitting in the 99s.
In the second inning it clicked. He needed just 11 pitches to strike out the side, setting down all three batters — Jerema Peña, Cade Smith, and Mauricio Dubón — with buckling sinkers that they idly watched whip across the edges of the zone. It was part of a string of 14 consecutive batters that Hicks would retire, before finally walking Jose Altuve with one out in the sixth. But even that didn’t rattle him.
Were it not the first start of the year, perhaps Hicks would have had a chance for a shutout, but instead he was pulled after six exceptional innings in which he allowed just one hit and two walks, struck out six, allowed no runs, and threw 51 of 72 pitches for strikes. He ended the day by pumping 98-mph sinkers and four-seamers, getting lefty Yordan Alvarez — who has a career .975 OPS against righties — to line out.
That Hicks might be the best fourth starter north of … well … you know. I don’t need to say it.
Or take Camilo Doval. He relieved Hicks, taking over to start the seventh inning. A day after recording his first save of the year — in drama-less fashion — Doval faced Christian Walker, Yainer Diaz, and Peña, setting them down in order and devoid of both danger and three-ball counts.
That Doval looked more like the 2023 All-Star than the 2024 player who got optioned. That Doval would give the Giants arguably the best one-two-three punch of any bullpen in baseball.
Or switch to the other side of things, and take Wilmer Flores. On Thursday, when Flores hit the go-ahead home run in the ninth inning on Opening Day, I wrote this:
If you’re looking for reasons to stake your Giants fandom to optimism — or pessimism — this year, Flores is one of them. The journey to a successful season rests, in no small part, on players who very recently were quite good, but are unsure about their ability to follow the path back to that success. In 2023, Flores had an .863 OPS, 23 home runs, and two functional knees. In 2024, he had a .595 OPS, four home runs, and zero functional knees.
The Giants’ blueprints for both a surprisingly good and a painfully bad season each contain one of those Floreses (Florii? Floreaux? Florese? Wilmers Flores?), and we all eagerly await the answer of which one will show up.
His encore was another home run on Saturday. And then, on Monday, in the sixth inning (after starting the scoring with an RBI single in the second), with the Giants clinging to a 2-0 lead, and with a pair of runners on the basepaths following walks drawn by Jung Hoo Lee and Patrick Bailey, and with stud pitcher Ronel Blanco forced out of the game, representing a team on the ropes, and with two outs … Flores did it again, launching a three-run blast to give him as many home runs this year as the rest of his teammates combined.
That Flores is one of the best designated hitters in baseball, a day-in, day-out presence against both right and left-handed pitchers, who can anchor an offense that surprises.
Hicks, Doval, and Flores were the poster children of how a successful game can mimic the blueprint for a successful season, but there were other reasons to feel similarly. Heliot Ramos who, despite his All-Star success a year ago, hit below league-average against right-handed pitchers, giving some worries that a platoon role might be in his future, smoked an eighth-inning double off righty Ryan Gusto, already the third extra-base hit of the year for Ramos against same-handed pitching. He, Matt Chapman (who had two walks and a two-run single), and Mike Yastrzemski (who had a pair of singles) all stole a base, giving the Giants five through four games … a year after having just 68 all season. The Giants once again played clean baseball, and through four games have yet to commit an error or allow a stolen base.
It wasn’t perfect, of course; neither baseball nor anything else is. Spencer Bivens got roughed up a bit, giving up a pair of runs in the eighth. Through four games the Giants still have a reliever (Hayden Birdsong) and bench player (Christian Koss) who have yet to get into a game, highlighting a reliance on their main players, and reminding us that they’re not as equipped as some teams to handle adversity.
But a 7-2 victory on the road against a very good team is a very good thing. A 3-1 record to start the season is a very good thing. And winning on the backs of players whose faces will pop up whenever you think, what is the best-case scenario this season? is a very, very, very good thing.
Perhaps they’ll win this year the way they won on this day.