The injuries are getting a little worrying, aren't they?
NOT THAT INJURIES AREN'T ALWAYS WORRYING OF COURSE, HA HA, DON'T WANT TO MINIMIZE ANYTHING
It’s bad form to complain about a baseball team after they go on the road and sweep the hated Cardinals and then sweep the hated Dodgers. I get it. On that 6-game road trip, the Giants went 6-0. Can’t do better than that! They came back from deficits of multiple runs more than once, tying and winning games in late inning and, a couple of times, in extra innings. It really was a great road trip.
Except people kept getting frickin’ hurt all the time.
In St Louis, Mitch Haniger broke his arm when he got hit by a pitch, and JD Davis sprained his ankle. Haniger’s injury was serious enough to knock him out until August or September; Davis’s just kept him out of the lineup for a few days, and unable to play third base for a few more. Neither was ideal, of course, but the team had backup options, so up came Luis Matos, and up came David Villar, and they had coverage.
Then the Giants got to LA, and it got worse. John Brebbia and Wilmer Flores both had nice showings in Friday’s game and ended up on the IL afterwards, Brebbia with a strained lat after a scoreless inning and Flores after fouling a ball off his foot during an at bat in which he ended up homering. Then it was Alex Cobb, with a strained oblique, and then it was Scott Alexander aggravating a hamstring strain he’d been dealing with for weeks. Along the way, just for kicks, Casey Schmitt gave everyone a scare by getting hit with a pitch of his own, and while it looks like he’s going to avoid the IL, that injury still reinforced just how badly they’ve stretched their depth.
The Giants are now riding an 8-game winning streak, and they’ve done it because they have more good players than they can fit on a 26-man roster. They’ve done it by having a Luis Matos behind the glass case, and Keaton Winn and Tristan Beck waiting in Sacramento, and David Villar ready to step in even when he hasn’t had a great year. That depth has been what’s kept this team not only afloat, but, like, taking off on a jetski.
But…there’s only so much depth that one system can have. The Giants still have position players they can call on if necessary, with Joey Bart behind the plate, and Bryce Johnson in the outfield, and sweet, beautiful Isan Diaz on the infield, and Brett Wisely ready to step in almost anywhere on the field. It would obviously not be ideal if the team has to call on one of them, but they are all major league-caliber players.
You can’t quite say that on the pitching side anymore. At this point, the only pitchers on the 40-man roster who are still in the minors are Jose Cruz, Randy Rodriguez, and Cole Waites. Cruz just got to AA, where his results (in less than 8 innings) have been up-and-down, Rodriguez has been in AA for most of the year, and he’s been good there, but with too many walks, and Waites has had an incredibly tough time in AAA this year, and in his brief major league time, was noticeably much worse than he was in 2022.
These pitchers are not quite trustworthy. We know that because faced with injuries, the Giants called on Sean Hjelle, who was awful in his time in the majors this year but is still a clearly better option than any of the other three.
There is one more, of course. He may not be on the 40-man roster, but Kyle Harrison is getting closer and closer every start. He finally completed five innings in his last AAA start, and has been getting stronger as the season wears on. So yes, if there’s one more injury, Harrison absolutely is an option.
But I don’t think the Giants want Kyle Harrison’s call-up to happen because of something external. Harrison is the kind of prospect that you call up because he’s ready to be called up, not because there’s an injury that means you have to get another body to San Francisco by 6:45. You don’t treat him like a bulk innings guy who can cover the second through fifth innings; you treat him like a starter with whom you carefully gameplan so he gets the experience he needs to thrive as a starter in the future. Anything else is simply not using your time and his time in the way that will maximize his future performance.
Because injury call-ups are about the present, and everything the organization does with Harrison needs to be about the future. There are times that you can thread the needle and kind of do both, but you’ll always be shortchanging one of the two. If it’s the top of the 5th and Harrison has two on and one out, that’s exactly the situation you want him to pitch through, but if it makes you more likely to lose the game, then he’ll have to get that experience later. That experience is exactly what he needs, and it could also mean the team loses the game.
Kyle Harrison will be a major leaguer when the team decides he’s good and ready. It may very well be later this year, but I doubt that it will be anytime soon. That could change, of course, if there’s another injury before Alex Cobb comes back and the team gets in dire straits, or it could change if Harrison has a Lincecum-in-Fresno run of starts which makes it impossible to not make him a big leaguer, or it could change if I’m wrong and the Giants are 100% ready to call him up on Thursday. I don’t know, but the fact that he really is their next legitimate option is not a comforting one.
Anyway, the Giants shouldn’t have more injuries, is my real idea. This is why I get paid the big bucks.