Giants reliever Will Smith made his return to the mound on Wednesday afternoon, after sitting out over an entire season while he recovered from Tommy John surgery. The big lefty was solid in his debut, striking out two hitters, including former minor league teammate Eric Hosmer, and hitting 94 MPH on the radar gun.
Former Giants lefty specialist Jeremy Affeldt joined Murph & Mac on Thursday morning to break down Smith’s appearance, and evaluate how his return to the bullpen with affect the entire San Francisco rotation.
“It was amazing,” Affeldt said of Smith’s performance. “I was watching that game yesterday and you saw he walked the first guy and was pretty upset about it. Probably because he was like ‘man, I need to snap out of this stuff. I’ve worked too hard to sit there and deal with this.’ Honestly, the way he went and punched the last two guys out — and punched out a really good hitter and a hot hitter, a guy who has been hitting the Giants pretty hard the last few games, Hosmer – it shows his stuff is there. He’s throwing 94 MPH, which velocity is not an issue obviously now, and that’s something that I think they are probably pretty excited about. His breaking ball is there. He has that ability to be a big guy for them late in the game.
“Now you have a guy on top of that with (Tony) Watson. I mean you’ve got some really good lefties coming in, and if you’re (Bruce) Bochy thinking ‘man, if one guy needs a break I’ve got him, if I can use them both in one game that’s a huge advantage for me, because I’ve got two power pitchers, two different arm angles, and depending on the matchups and scenarios that I want to go into play with, I’ve got them.’ If one guy seems to be struggling — maybe he lost his stuff a bit, trying to get his feel back — I can depend on a different type of lefty late in the game if I need to, if they’re just not feeling good that month.”
Even without Smith, the Giants bullpen has been solid so far this season, posting a 3.64 ERA, good for 11th best in the majors, something that has helped the club get by with a makeshift rotation of young, mostly unproven pitchers. That trend will only continue with Smith in the fold according to Affeldt.
“I’m telling you, that’s a big advantage to have. To have arms like that down there available, it’s almost like as manager you say, ‘okay last year was a chaotic mess, everybody knew it. We fell apart in the playoffs the year before. And now it’s almost like, man, we might have something here. A back-end where we’ve got a bunch of starters that have come in that are young, that might not know what a 162 game season feels like, they’re going to hit a lull, and all of the sudden now I have the ability to pull guys after five or six, believing that I’ve got a back-end that can save this game.’
“And that’s kind’ve what Bochy did with the core four a lot of times. After the fifth or sixth inning, we rolled out there and just rolled out wins. Because we had guys that could do it and could go four innings out of the ‘pen, and do it well.
“I think (Bochy) feels like he’s got a full deck coming into play, and then you add (Madison Bumgarner) at the end of the month hopefully? That’s definitely going to soften the blow if the Johnny Cueto diagnosis is not what they want to hear.”
Listen to the full interview below. To hear Affeldt on Will Smith, start from 9:43.
