John Hefti-USA TODAY Sports
A bird pooped on Anthony DeSclafani this week, a fact he announced without prompting at the conclusion of his media session.
“I was like, you know what, that’s got to be good luck,” the Giants starter said after the team’s 12-0 win over the Rockies at Oracle Park.
He certainly didn’t pitch like crap.
The pitcher regarded as this year’s Kevin Gausman pitched like, well, the ace that Gausman has become in twirling a shutout and needing just 100 pitches to do so, striking out nine while allowing just four to reach base.
He was far better than he needed to be on a night the Giants’ bats awoke, and he was as good as he has ever been. It goes down as his second career shutout, his first five seasons prior, on Aug. 27, 2016, while he was with the Reds.
That might be a good season for the 31-year-old to remember, when he pitched to a 3.28 ERA in 123 1/3 innings, before injuries set in. He was back to at least a version of himself in 2019, when he struck out a batter per inning in 31 starts with Cincinnati, finishing with a 3.89 ERA.
Everything was wrong last year — his mind, too, in a pandemic-marred season during which his wife was pregnant with their first child and when a shoulder injury surfaced — which brought him into free agency, which brought his talented and lively right arm into Farhan Zaidi and Scott Harris’ clutches.
“A lot of it is just giving the Giants credit with the whole pitch-design thing,” DeSclafani said, asked what has changed from last year to this year. “Getting my fastball back to what it was in 2019, helped me get my slider shape back to what it was in 2019. I think the credit goes to them — just recognizing maybe what went wrong a little bit last year and help me fix those things.
“And then just the freedom to go out there and pitch. It’s been great.”
What has worked is an increasing use of his two-seamer, which is helping him induce an awful lot of ground balls. He’s throwing the sinker more than ever — the same weapon that Logan Webb employed well Sunday — and is humming around the zone with authority. His velocity was actually slightly down Monday, his four-seamer averaging 92.9 mph and sinker 91 mph, but the command was quality enough (and his slider nasty enough) that it didn’t matter on a chilly night.
“Part of the reason he was around in the eighth and the ninth inning is because he didn’t waste a ton of pitches,” Gabe Kapler said after the Giants posted nine runs in the first two innings. “Filled [the strike zone] up. He forced the Rockies to put the ball in play and to put the ball on the ground and for weaker contact in the air, and that’s why he was able to complete that game.”
He got more ground balls (10) than fly balls (eight), especially important when the Giants’ corner outfielders were Darin Ruf and Alex Dickerson. He entered play with the ninth best groundball rate in baseball (57.4 percent) among starters with at least 10 innings pitched.
He kept feeding the two-seamer early, then worked off of it and actually threw his slider more than any offering, getting nine whiffs and seven called strikes with the pitch.
“Out of the gate, he had a really good fastball going, and it was jumping,” said his catcher, Buster Posey. “…I think his ability to kind of give the hitters different looks as the game went along helped him pitch deep in the game.”
His ERA is down to 1.50. He has given a good first impression to San Francisco, and a seagull apparently gave him his official welcome.
Posey went 4-for-5 with a soaring home run to center. It was his first four-hit performance since Aug. 10, 2018, against Pittsburgh. His five home runs are the most he’s had in a single month since May 2017. He had five homers in the entire 2018 season.
“Overall, I felt like myself,” Posey said.
With the win, the Giants are 15-8 and off to their best start since opening the 2003 season 18-5. With the Dodgers’ loss, they are tied atop the NL West.
Kapler usually goes over the game for about an hour afterward.
“There’s not much to complain about tonight,” he said.