The wait is finally over everybody, the San Francisco Giants first spring training game is today! (sort of)
The Giants play an intrasquad game today at Scottsdale Stadium around 12:05 p.m. Pacific Time. The San Jose Mercury News beat writer Andrew Baggerly tweeted the Giants lineups this morning:
Giants minors intrasquad lineup #1: CF Brown 2B Burriss LF Neal 1B Eldred RF Peguero 3B Noonan C Sanchez SS Adrianza DH Williams
Giants minor intrasquad lineup #2: CF Ford 2B Culberson 1B Belt C Joseph LF Evans 3B Gillaspie SS Crawford RF Perez DH Stewart
For those of you unfamiliar with intrasquad games, they are basically games that last no longer than a little league matchup, with team A squaring off against team B. These games are always the young guys trying to make the squad, pretty fun to watch up and coming talent honing their craft.
In injury related news Henry Schulman of the San Francisco Chronicle reports that Freddy Sanchez was finally allowed to take some light BP the last few days and hit a home run against bench coach Ron Wotus. I’m sure Ron Wotus is no Timmy, but it’s a start and a good sign that Freddy can take free swings without worrying about injury.
Brian Sabean was on the Murph and Mac show on KNBR this morning and announced the Giants 2011 pitching rotation as follows: Tim Lincecum, Jonathan Sanchez, Matt Cain, Barry Zito, Madison Bumgarner. I think this lineup is great, good idea to break up the lefties (Sanchez and Zito) and the workhorses (Cain and Lincecum), the group has a nice mix of pitching styles that will keep opposing hitters (hopefully) out of sync from game to game in this order. Andrew Baggerly tweeted another thing of note with this lineup:
This means Jonathan Sanchez would get home opener April 8 when team raises WS champs banner. Cain gets night opener when team gets rings.
Pretty sweet stuff, can’t wait for opening day!