Giants note: Spring standout Guzman injures pitching arm originally appeared nbc sports birea
Scottsdale, Ariz. — One of the more interesting stories of the spring for the Giants took a brutal turn on Sunday.
Ronald Guzmán, a two-way player who has established himself as a reliever, bent over in pain and immediately exited after throwing a pitch in the eighth inning of the Giants’ 4-3 win over the Oakland Athletics at Scottsdale Stadium on Sunday. Play. Manager Gabe Kapler said that Guzmán felt discomfort in his left arm.
“It’s disappointing — he really opened a lot of eyes,” Kapler said. “I don’t want to go too far to say it’s a serious injury, because I don’t know, but whenever you see a pitcher walk off the field, you get the feeling that something’s not right. We “Will find out about it.”
Guzmán hit 16 homers in 2018 with the Texas Rangers but is trying to reinvent himself as a two-way player. The Giants have focused on the pitching side this spring and Guzmán was coming off another spring tour, He hit 98 mph on Thursday with a wipeout slider.
Guzmán has yet to swing a bat in a game this spring but has been taking batting practice. Given how far he’s come on the mound, he’s starting to look like a real option to help out the big league bullpen at some point this year. Now the veterans will wait and hope for the best from Imaging.
— It didn’t take long for Blake Sabol to arrive pick up his outfield glove, Sabol took a fly ball to left during BP on Sunday. He should play there in a game soon, and Kapler said Mitch Haniger’s injury spurred talks about keeping a third catcher (with Sabol, Joey Bart and Roberto Pérez likely as the other two). Is.
“The piece that turned up a week ago is Mitch,” Kapler said. “He’s going to make every push to be ready for Opening Day. Maybe it’s Opening Day, maybe it’s a little later.”
If Haniger isn’t ready for the season-opening road trip, the Giants could move Sabol to be an outfielder for a few days and see if some of this spring’s success translates. Because he is a Rule 5 choice, Sabol cannot be optioned to Triple-A at the end of the spring.
— Saturday’s loser at Sabol-Mania had a much stronger outing than Melvin Adon, who hit triple digits with his fastball and also featured a 92 mph breaking ball while striking out two of the three batters he faced. Got out. A few years before the emergence of Camilo Doval, Eadon was the hard-throwing right-hander who looked like a likely future at Oracle Park, but shoulder surgery limited him to just 21 minor league appearances since 2019.
The key for Adon, like most pitchers who throw hard, will be to throw strikes. He was generally around the plate on Saturdays, which allowed him to get help from some Dodgers hitters who expanded their field. Kapler said it was promising, but that Addon would have to stick around the zone a little more to make an impact. Command was an issue before surgery and he went 13 runs in 24 2/3 innings last year.
“But when you have stuff like that, you’re throwing at 100 mph and you have a fast breaking ball, getting around the plate is a good step,” Kapler said.
— Joey Bart and A’s catcher Kyle McCann back home in Georgia are occasional off-season workout partners, and McCann followed Bart behind the plate at Georgia Tech. McCann was second on Sunday and tried to take third on a pitch in the dirt, but Bart threw him out for third.
As McCann took a quick look at the plate, Bart turned to the batter at the plate. “That’s my boy,” she said, laughing.
— Tristan Beck is one of the Triple-A layers of defense behind a rotation that goes seven deep with Sean Heasel and Kyle Harrison. Beck has displayed good velocity this spring and showed a bad slider early in his outing:
Beck’s day was cut short in the seventh when he became the third Giants pitcher in two days to hit a line drive back on the mound. After getting his left ankle tested, Beck went back to the dugout with a trainer. Kapler said the Giants were just being wary of a pitcher who “looked great” and “has a good chance to make an impact” this season.
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On Saturday, Alex Cobb returned from a knee But the good news came from the X-rays., and a day later he was barely even with a limp. Ross Stripling saw an even harder shot come back to the mound, but it hit his glove on Sunday, and Stripling didn’t even flinch on the mound. As Stripling spoke to reporters afterward, Cobb came over and threw a punch at him.
“You did better than me,” he joked.