Another fantastic start in the books.
Keaton Winn did it again. On Sunday afternoon, Winn — the less heralded of the two rookies in the San Francisco Giants rotation — took the mound and delivered another knockout performance, leading he Giants to a 3-2 win over the Pittsburgh Pirates … and a series victory.
Winn went six innings deep, despite throwing just 80 pitches, and only allowed five baserunners (three hits, a walk, and a hit batter), and a lone run. It dropped his ERA all the way down to 3.18, and was the third consecutive outing in which he pitched six innings and allowed just one run. And since that fated, infamous first-inning grand slam to Jurickson Profar earlier in the year, Winn has allowed just five runs in 28.1 innings.
He may have opened the year as a fill-in while the Giants waited for Alex Cobb to return to health, but Winn has now forced the issue, and feels like an immovable piece of the rotation.
It might seem like the Giant have a logjam, seeing as how they opened the year with one of the top rotations in the Majors, despite Cobb and Robbie Ray both being on the IL. In reality, though, the Giants probably will need all the depth they can get, and are unlikely to have a point this season where they actually have to pick between an on-fire prospect and a proven veteran. As the current injuries to Cobb, Ray, and Blake Snell remind us, it’s rare for a full rotation to be healthy. And Winn, Kyle Harrison, and Jordan Hicks are all ramping up to full starter innings for the first time in their careers, something that Farhan Zaidi has admitted will need to be handled conservatively as we get deeper into the season.
So the Giants probably won’t ever have an earned logjam in the rotation. Which is good news for the decision-makers, who would have had to confront the fact that the least-heralded of their many starting pitchers is pitching like an All-Star right now.
What time do the Giants play today?
They don’t! It’s another off-day for the Giants, who head east ahead of a series with the Boston Red Sox that begins on Tuesday.