What a lovely way to start the year

Undefeated!

The San Francisco Giants dominated the Cactus League this year, leading to a chorus of voices (yours perhaps among them) reminding you on an hourly basis that Spring Training results don’t matter. In a quest for optimism ahead of the long journey that is a 162-game baseball season, you might have found yourself questioning authority, asking the immortal why when presented with said hourly reminder.

There are, unfortunately, a lot of answers to that question; answers you’ll eagerly pull out the next time the Giants finish their spring schedule five games under .500. But the largest reason might be this: many baseball games are decided in the late innings, when Spring Training games are populated by players who won’t be deciding Major League games that season.

Here’s an example: on March 9, the Giants beat the Chicago Cubs 8-6. They trailed 6-3 entering the ninth inning, but then had a rally that began with a solo home run from Aeverson Arteaga and concluded with a three-run home run from Sabin Ceballos … a pair of players on loan from Minor League camp who spent last year in A-Ball.

That might tickle your baseball fancy, and it might even portend success for the 2027 Giants, but it doesn’t mean diddly squat for winning Major League games over the next six months. We would have to wait and see how the Giants actual big leaguers did against other teams’ actual big leaguers.

The early returns weren’t great. Against a reigning Cy Young vote-getter in the Cincinnati Reds Hunter Greene, the Giants struck out six times the first time through the order, with just one batter reaching base. Or, as Alex Pavlovic noted while graciously previewing this game story…

But we’re getting sidetracked here. While it’s true that the Giants weren’t facing the Hunter Greenes of the world with regularity in the desert, the point I led with was that a large number of games are decided late.

So let’s start with the late. The latest of the late. The latest that baseball games get before the rules change for reasons we won’t get into.

The ninth inning.

The Giants trailed the Reds 3-2 in the ninth inning on Thursday, in all her Opening Day glory. The heart of the order — three players with nine-figure contracts — was due up … not something we’d seen in the ninth inning of a spring game. They were facing veteran righty Ian Gibaut … also not something we’d seen in the ninth inning of a spring game.

Willy Adames led off and struck out, the 15th such instance of a Giants batter striking out.

One down.

Jung Hoo Lee followed and fell behind 0-2, before taking three balls, fouling off two pitches, and finally taking ball four. The tying run was on the bases.

Matt Chapman was next. His quest to roll his hot spring over into the season had hit a snag, as he was 0-3 with a strikeout. He punched the second pitch he saw the other way, shooting it through the hole in the right side of the infield while Lee motored from corner to corner.

The Giants had the tying run at third base. Heliot Ramos took a sweeper at the knees for strike one.

There was only one out. Ramos fouled off a fastball at the hands for strike two.

The Giants had preached situational hitting all spring, how they had focused on putting the ball in play in RBI situations, and avoiding harmful strikeouts. Ramos took a sweeper at the edge of the zone for strike three.

You had to feel for Ramos. To that point he had been the entirety of the offense, providing both runs on what I can confidently say will stand as one of the best at-bats of the year, even after 161 more games are played. In the fourth inning, against a right-handed flamethrower, Ramos — attempting to prove he can hit same-handed pitching well enough to be an honest-to-goodness everyday player — worked a count full before fouling off five consecutive pitches. Finally, on the 11th pitch of the at-bat, Greene hurled a seventh straight fastball at Ramos, who drove it the other way for a gorgeous home run.

But in the ninth inning, that memory faded into the distance. Ramos, needing but a lazy fly ball to tie the game, was caught staring at a perfect Gibaut pitch, and that seemed destined to haunt him all through Friday’s off day, leaving fans squirming in the hellacious discomfort of sports what-iffery.

The sympathy was short lived, because the failure was fast forgotten. Five pitches later, Patrick Bailey found just enough bat to ground a ball over the infield and past a diving body and a flailing glove, scoring Lee to tie the game and keep the Giants alive.

But the fun wasn’t over, even after Wilmer Flores fell behind 0-2.

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.

It won’t be revealed in one day, of course. But in the land where Buster Posey sent 43,000 fans home miserable, while a pitcher reacted in despair on the mound as the ball sailed over the left field wall — and with Posey present for both his 38th birthday and his first game as Top Dog — Flores did the same.

Ian Gibaut is no Mat Latos, and Opening Day is no NLDS, but it’s hard not to see one and think of the other.

The Giants intend to win with strong pitching this year, and this game served as a poetic reminder not just that there are other ways to win, but perhaps that the Giants can master some of them as well. Their ace, Logan Webb, took the mound and simply wasn’t very sharp. He walked three batters — something he had only done on eight occasions over the last two seasons — and gave up untimely hits, surrendering three runs in five innings of work. Their elite closer, Ryan Walker, needed the insurance runs afforded him after plunking a batter and giving up an RBI single, setting the final score at 6-4.

But the bullpen between the two — Randy Rodríguez in the sixth, Erik Miller in the seventh, and Tyler Rogers in the eighth — was sensational, keeping the Reds suppressed enough so that the offense could shine. And even though they only mustered six hits, while striking out 17 times, the offense did, indeed, come through. Ramos and Flores brought the boom, and Lee, Chapman, and Bailey the calm, clutch, necessary at-bats late. The kind of at-bats their Minor Leaguers frequently exhibited in compiling a shockingly-good spring record. The kind of at-bats that maybe, just maybe, will lead the Giants to do the same.