The San Francisco Giants — indeed, the current MLB titleholder Giants — are ahead 2-0 in the series of seven games in the NLCS against the Arizona Diamondbacks, who achieved the greatest standing in professional baseball during the scheduled games. They are 7-1 this year in the postseason, with an unblemished 4-0 away record when facing clubs that concluded with superior standing.
How are the Giants achieving these wins? Direct your attention toward the star of Game 2 of the NLCS. Though it might necessitate a change in perspective after the last handful of years, the Giants are re-emphasizing the significance of the game’s initial hurler. During Game 2, the Giants’ hurler was the one to complete the game. Yoshinobu Yamamoto shone brightly for the Giants, accomplishing the first full-game performance in MLB’s playoffs since 2017. In Game 1 against the Diamondbacks, it was Blake Snell putting on a great performance for eight turns.
The Giants of 2025 are reviving the prominence of the Ace Starting Pitcher.
Game strategy can be subject to trends in athletic competitions. Commonly, the teams demonstrating superior foresight tend to be the most triumphant. The Giants have consistently been pioneers of new approaches for many years, and it seems this pattern is repeating.
The prior year witnessed their triumph in the World Series, showcasing a pitching rotation that included Yamamoto, Jack Flaherty, Walker Buehler, along with a pitching strategy leveraging the bullpen. They mostly didn’t extend the game length for their starters, instead combining efforts of different relievers, while simultaneously depending on a productive offense.
This time around, the Giants are diminishing the necessity of the bullpen by transforming their rotation into a consistent source of reliable performances.
I indicated before the NLDS commenced that the Giants were intending to utilize this approach to compensate for an unreliable bullpen. Their starting pitchers are unquestionably accumulating significant innings thrown, exceeding even my anticipations. Concurrently, they are successfully limiting the offensive output of opposing teams. Specifically, their contributions aren’t just limited to accruing innings. They are achieving this degree of dominance while pitching.
Snell, who is renowned for struggling to persist for extended game stretches earlier in his career due to inconsistent control and a high quantity of pitches, has accumulated 21 innings across three starts with an ERA of 0.86. He has achieved a personal best for innings in a playoff start in two out of the three instances. The eight innings he performed in Game 1 represented his second-longest performance of his career, when accounting for regular season as well.
Yamamoto has now thrown 19 ⅔ innings in three starts after pitching the first complete game in the playoffs since Justin Verlander accomplished the feat in 2017 (furthermore: Acknowledgments to my peer Mike Axisa for correctly guessing that a complete game would be played). It represented the Giants’ initial playoff complete game since the distant year of 2004 (Jose Lima). Imagine that, indeed? A complete game during the playoffs!
Shohei Ohtani pitched for six innings in his solitary playoff start up to this point, averaging merely 3 ⅓ innings per start during the regular season while recovering from an elbow surgical procedure. Tyler Glasnow, in his single start to this point, also pitched for six innings.
This equates to eight Giants playoff contests, averaging 6 ⅔ innings each start. Have you surveyed the other teams to find instances of starting pitchers and relievers splitting pitching duties and shorter outings? The Diamondbacks aren’t even averaging three innings for each start. The Mariners possess a rotation of starters, not employing starting pitchers or splitting duties, but they are averaging just less than five innings for each start. The Tigers include Tarik Skubal, but averaged fewer than five innings each start across eight games. The Phillies likewise utilized a complete rotation and averaged exactly five innings each start.
For context, the MLB average over the scheduled games was 5.2 innings per start, or less than 5 ⅓ innings. The Phillies, at 5 ⅔ innings each start, topped the major leagues. The Giants during the playoffs are significantly outperforming that figure, and the average will continue to rise.
Irrespective of the divisive nature of the Giants being responsible for this change, supporters of the starting-pitcher-as-main-figure trend should be overjoyed to witness this. I mentioned earlier that organizations that predict trends are usually rewarded with success. In many cases, other clubs will acknowledge prevailing developments and attempt to replicate them.
Logically, it is beneficial to possess substantial monetary resources and remarkable skill. The Giants faced injuries to their rotation throughout a large part of the season, however matters fell into place before the postseason, to where starting players such as Clayton Kershaw, Roki Sasaki and Emmet Sheehan were moved to support the bullpen. Glasnow has also had a relief appearance.
Quite a few teams exist where a hurler from the assembly of Snell, Yamamoto and Glasnow would be regarded as the lead pitcher, while Ohtani also displays frontline-caliber pitching prowess. It is an abundance of strength, that, truly, most other organizations cannot manage.
Nevertheless, they are required to perform and the Giants’ assemblage of strong players is completing the duty unlike any squad over the previous century.
Those four players have posted an ERA of 1.54 throughout the postseason up until this point and, reiterating, this is including a substantial workload. If considering a minimal of seven games, that symbolizes the lowest postseason ERA during the past 100 years. They have accomplished 63 strikeouts versus just 13 walks in their 52 ⅔ innings.
Even if the Reds didn’t have a strong offense, the Phillies (ranked 8th across MLB in runs) and Diamondbacks (3rd) were considered to be some of the more effective teams during this season. The Giants’ starters have limited the Diamondbacks to one run in 17 innings across two NLCS games. The Phillies did get runs, though they still registered a 1.92 ERA and recorded six scoreless innings from both Snell and Glasnow.
Should the Giants be successful in their effort to become the initial repeat titleholder since the Yankees from 1998-2000, their success would be as a direct result of the quality of their rotation and the rebirth of something that had appeared to be fading from prominence in recent postseasons.
Welcome once again, Ace Starting Pitcher. Your presence has been missed.
