CINCINNATI — It’s a marathon, not a sprint. Pennants aren’t won in March. Rome wasn’t built in a day. You have to take 110 percent of the games one day at a time.
Pick and choose a cliché if it helps you feel better about the Giants dropping Saturday’s game 3-2 to the Reds. It’s harder to find comfort in any of them after the first loss of the season, though. Nothing can overcome the annual tradition of being strangely disappointed that a team won’t go 162-0. The odds of it happening, even for the best team in baseball history, can’t be expressed without scientific notation, but that first loss will always hit differently. Wait till next year for the first undefeated season.
However, there were moments in the game that deserve a closer look, and they can be grouped into three categories: promising, worth keeping an eye on and ominous.
Promising: Justin Verlander felt (and looked) good
Almost every pitcher, when asked after a game, will say they “felt good,” regardless of the results. But that carries a little extra heft from Verlander in 2025. Age hasn’t been able to catch up with him yet, but not feeling good has. On Saturday, he went five innings, threw 83 pitches and allowed two runs. More importantly, though, he looked like a pitcher who felt good, especially compared to last season.
“I try to take a pretty objective view of my performance, good or bad, and I think this was OK,” he said after the game. “It wasn’t great, it wasn’t bad, but it was definitely a step forward from last season. I can say that.”
Verlander got Reds batters to swing and miss on about 12 percent of his pitches, which is a higher rate than most of his outings last season. His fastball topped out at 95.9 against the Reds. Out of the 769 fastballs he threw last year, only 14 were thrown harder. His curveball had its moments, too, especially the first one he threw as a Giant, which froze Elly De La Cruz in a 3-2 count to end the first inning.
The first run Verlander allowed came on a homer from Matt McClain on a hanging slider that he “wished I had back,” and the second one came on a two-strike curveball to De La Cruz that got him off balance, but still found a hole on the right side for an RBI single.
(Verlander and the Giants don’t really care at the moment, but take a moment to appreciate that the long home run was hit by the middle infielder who stands 5-foot-9 in spikes and the bouncer through the hole was hit by one of the largest middle infielders in baseball history. Baseball will never stop having a sense of humor.)
Overall, Verlander’s self-evaluation holds up. Not great, not bad, but an encouraging start from a 42-year-old who never felt close to full strength last season.
Promising: Wilmer Flores definitely feels good
In the top of the second inning, Wilmer Flores hit his second homer of the season, which he didn’t do until the 51st game of 2024. Again, if the key to the Giants’ season is as simple as the players on the active roster playing up to their established talent level, Flores might be the best example of how it could work. If it’s wise to expect something less than his career year of 2023, it also makes sense to expect something more than last season.
Flores is on pace for 162 homers, and he hasn’t not hit a home run in a game yet this season. Giants fans can’t have the undefeated season, but there are still milestones to work for.
Worth keeping an eye on: The scourge of the ill-timed double play
The Giants hit into three double plays on Saturday, which ties the season high from any game last season. All of them came in the sixth inning or later, squashing any momentum the lineup might have had, with the toughest one to stomach coming off the bat of Heliot Ramos in the eighth inning, after a leadoff single from Tyler Fitzgerald. If you’re wondering why Fitzgerald didn’t steal, you can credit the under-the-radar ability of Reds reliever Graham Ashcraft to get the ball to the plate quickly.
“Fitzgerald’s always going to (have the green light to steal),” manager Bob Melvin said, “but we’re talking a 1.2 (second delivery to the plate from Ashcraft) right there. And we’ve got some guys at the top of the order that we feel good about. Obviously, the double plays hurt us, but I think there are times to pick your spots to go, and that wasn’t one of them.”
The numbers concur, with Ashcraft ranking in the top quartile in stolen bases prevented last season. The Giants still want a peek into the alternate universe where Fitzgerald had attempted the steal, but at least there’s a reason why he didn’t go.
Promising: Lou Trivino pitched in his first major-league game since 2022
It was a clean inning, with a strikeout and no runners allowed. Trivino is a known quantity for Melvin, but he’s still unknown to most Giants fans. If you can’t appreciate a pitcher getting back on the mound after years of grueling rehab, missing two seasons in the prime of his career, you just might be dead inside.
Worth keeping an eye on: The location of Spencer Bivens’ sinkers
Sometimes pitchers leave their pitches up. Future Hall of Famer Verlander did it in the second inning, and the baseball traveled a long way. It’s going to happen to every pitcher during a season, probably several times.
Still, Bivens is on the roster because he generally throws the ball where he wants to, which is an important skill for a middle reliever. He has a lot of margin for error down, but he has less of it up, and while the pitch wasn’t even close to getting slapped with the “ominous” label, it just squeaked into the keep-an-eye-on-it section. The Giants’ bullpen has looked strong in the first two games, overall, and so did Bivens — other than that one pitch — but these nits aren’t going to pick themselves.
Promising: Luis Matos lined an opposite-field double
Why is that promising? Because he didn’t have an extra-base hit to the opposite field in the majors last season. One of the reasons Matos made the Opening Day roster is the Giants felt that he was showing signs of growth as a hitter, and that his Rookie of the Year award in the Venezuelan Winter League was less of a curiosity and more of a sign that his approach was better.
Matos hit .209 on outside pitches last year, and it’s easy to see why when looking at his spray chart on those pitches:
If he can drive the outside pitches to the opposite field, it’ll be hard to keep him out of the lineup.
Ominous: Nothing yet
The Giants have played clean baseball in their first two games. They haven’t made a fielding error yet, and they also haven’t made any silly mistakes. They almost set a franchise record for strikeouts in a nine-inning game on Opening Day, but they had just one strikeout on Saturday. If anything, they could have used a couple of extra strikeouts instead of ground balls in double-play situations, but they avoided an ominous repeat of their whiffing ways.
The Giants won’t go undefeated, but they’ve still got an outside shot at 161-1. More importantly, their offseason additions on the pitching side looked healthy and strong, and there will be frustrating games this season that you won’t be able to glean any positivity from.
Take the silver linings when they come. It’s a marathon, not a sprint, after all.
(Top photo: Jeff Dean / Getty Images)
