Happy Tuesday, San Francisco Giants fans.
The Giants are once again rolling, and will have two chances to win a road series after beating the St. Louis Cardinals 4-3 on Monday night. That game featured something pretty rare: a start for Wilmer Flores.
The depth of the Giants has been on display lately, and the Giants have been facing an extremely large amount of right-handed pitchers. That means that the ultra-talented Flores hasn’t had many opportunities to start, and has largely been used as a pinch-hitter or late-game replacement. He’s not a pure platoon player like some of the Giants, as he hits righties fairly well ... but when the Giants are healthy, they’re not going to start Flores over LaMonte Wade Jr. at first or Joc Pederson at designated hitter when a righty is on the mound. And he’s behind J.D. Davis, Thairo Estrada, and Casey Schmitt on the right-handed hitting infield depth chart.
But he stays ready even when he’s not playing much ... as evidenced by his great game on Monday, when he started for just the second time in a week, and hit 2-4 with a double and a walk.
Earlier in the day, the Giants content team released a fun video about Flores. It’s the latest installment in their “How to Train Like a Big Leaguer” series, and shows Flores working on drills and going through adjustments with assistant hitting coach Pedro Guerrero. It’s pretty cool seeing how many little adjustments and improvements hitters are making, even when they’ve been playing in the Majors for a decade.
What time do the Giants play today?
The Giants play their second game of the series against the Cardinals at 4:45 p.m. PT.