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Countdown to Opening Day: Any lessons from last year's fast start, weak finish? originally appeared on NBC Sports Philadelphia

CLEARWATER, Fla. — In baseball, there’s a game almost every day. And that creates a dilemma when things start to slip sideways.

Players have to think about what they did wrong in order to correct their mistakes, but not so much that they carry it over to the next game. Stewing over yesterday’s failure is a pretty surefire way to turn one bad day into a slump. And the same principle can apply to an entire season.

On July 11, 2024, the Phillies completed a sweep of the mighty Dodgers at Citizens Bank Park. They were 61-32, proud possessors of the best record in baseball.

From that point until the end of the season, they were a game under .500 (34-35) and then got punched in the nose by the Mets in the NLDS.

It was a stunning conclusion to a season that started with such promise.

By the time another spring training opened this February, out of necessity, they’d put all that behind them. When the season opens in Washington on March 27, it will be irrelevant. “Everybody talks about the playoffs last year. Well, the playoffs are gone,” manager Rob Thomson said early in spring training. “It kills me every day to think about not winning and how we lost. But you can’t control it and it’s in the past. And we’ve got to focus on today.”

He’s right, of course. But that has to follow a period of introspection, a CSI-level autopsy to try to determine why everything went kerflooey. Here are some theories and observations:

— The constant talk about getting off to a fast start was drummed into the players so much that there was a subconscious letdown when that goal was accomplished.

Thomson was pretty graphic in describing how hungry he thought his players were at his first Clearwater press conference in 2024. “I think these guys are motivated. They’ve had two years of tasting it. Now they want to take a chunk out of it and swallow it, you know, and eat it,” he said.

President of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski flatly rejects that premise. “I don’t think there was too much emphasis on getting off to a fast start,” he said early in spring training. “And I would say the same thing this year. Whether it comes out publicly or not, we want to get off to a fast start. It helps.”

— The players lost a little mental edge once they built up a huge division lead. After all, the difference between winning and losing at the Major League level is small.

The Phillies had a 10-game cushion over the Braves by June and were never seriously challenged after that. So it wouldn’t be surprising if the players’ focus wasn’t quite as sharp down the stretch.

One possible telltale sign could be that the team’s chase rate, how often they swung at pitches outside the strike zone, improved earlier in the year, then rose slightly. Then, in the NLDS, they whiffed 38 times in four games. Thomson disagrees.

“I don’t think they lost their edge, and I still see the same type of motivation,” he said. “I see the same kind of grind and eagerness to get back there. You’ve got to get back there. There’s no guarantee you’re going to. But we’ve got a good enough club to get back and win the whole thing, really. But you can’t just assume you’re going to get back to the playoffs. You have to earn it.”

Said Dombrowski: “I’m not really sure what happened. I can’t tell you 100 percent. We just didn’t play as well. I can’t tell you the mental aspect of that because it’s only guessing when you come down to it. But it’s apparent we didn’t play as well.”

— Regardless of what happened last season, even though they’ve made the playoffs three straight years, they still haven’t had two good halves to a season. In 2022 and 2023 they started slowly then had to come on strong after the All-Star break.

“I think about that a lot,” Thomson said. “How do you do that?”

To illustrate his point, he used left-hander Ranger Suarez, who was terrific in the first half but whose effectiveness dropped dramatically after that due to a series of injuries as an example.

“Do you limit his innings? Do you limit his pitch counts early? I don’t know,” he continued. “We’ll just have to play it by ear. Do you get guys more days off? I don’t know. You’ve still got to win games. And when it’s there for you, you’d better win them. Because a poor loss can send you into a deep dive very quickly. You’ve got to be careful with the whole thing. It’s very fragile.”

— Every team has to deal with injuries. Still …

Both Dombrowski and Thomson prefaced these remarks by saying they weren’t making excuses.

“We had a lot of injuries, behind the scenes,” Dombrowski pointed out. When you look at it, (Alec) Bohm had (a hand) injury. (Bryson) Stott had (an elbow) injury. J.T. (Realmuto had a knee) injury. (Trea) Turner had (a hamstring) injury earlier and came back. Austin Hays. Our starting pitching got hurt, the fifth starter type. Ranger was hurt. So that might have contributed as much as anything.”

He actually missed a couple. Brandon Marsh (hamstring) and Kyle Schwarber (groin) both spent time on the injured list, too.

Most significantly, Bryce Harper was the NL Player of the Month for May and June and a legitimate MVP candidate. He was on the IL with a strained hamstring and admitted to having issues with his elbow and wrist later in the year. He hit 21 homers with 61 RBI and .983 OPS in the first half, 9 HR, 26 RBI, .793 OPS after the break.

Bohm was .290/.804 before injuring his wrist at the end of August, .170/502 after he came back. Stott admitted during spring training that soreness in his elbow nagged him from May through the end of the season.

All were back for the playoffs, but not all were completely recovered.

“I do think it took a toll on us,” Thomson said. “That’s why I always say health is the most important thing. Because we do have talented guys, and a really good group of guys as far as makeup and how they get along and how they pull for each other. And we have more depth than we’ve had in the last three years. But your depth can be depleted quickly, so we’ve got to keep these guys healthy.”

Competition for Giants' fifth rotation spot heating up originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

SCOTTSDALE — The Giants have less than a week remaining in Arizona, and players got a reminder of that when they walked into the clubhouse on Sunday morning. There were large cardboard boxes in the center of the room, and clubhouse staffers slipped quietly from locker to locker as they started the tedious process of packing up an entire team and heading back home to Oracle Park. 

Just about everyone remaining in the clubhouse is guaranteed of at least playing in the final exhibition games back in the Bay Area, but the Giants still are trying to decide what the initial 26-man roster will look like. The major call is with the final spot in the rotation, and it’s certainly not an easy one.

The Giants came to camp with three young starters vying for the fifth spot, and all three made their cases over a 72-hour period this weekend. 

Landen Roupp struck out 13 in an eye-opening start at the minor league facility on Friday. Hayden Birdsong whiffed eight in five shutout innings against the Athletics on Sunday, lowering his Cactus League ERA to 0.75. On paper, Kyle Harrison easily had the worst results, but his fastball sat 93-94 mph and he hit 95 mph several times, a big step forward for a pitcher who was down in the low nineties after losing about a dozen pounds because of a virus just before the start of camp. 

“That’s what you want, kind of force our hand and bring it all the way down to the end,” manager Bob Melvin said of the competition. “It adds some adrenaline to spring training games, too, and certainly for our camp everybody is kind of interested to see what happens here, but all of these guys are really talented and like I’ve said before, these guys are all going to pitch for us.”

There’s no doubt that the Giants will need all three this year, and given the normal rhythms of a 162-game season, there’s a good chance that multiple young starters end up making double-digit starts. All three of them could wind up there. 

But at the moment, there’s only one spot up for grabs, and all three want it. Harrison came in as the favorite and is trying to show he will be physically ready by Opening Day. Roupp mostly was a reliever last year but has said all spring that he hopes to start. Birdsong might have the highest upside of any pitcher in the organization, and he’s hopeful his development continues at the big-league level. 

“Obviously I want to make the Opening Day roster. It would be ideal, just because it would be cool,” Birdsong said. “But I know at some point I’m probably going to start up there regardless.”

The competition is a friendly one between homegrown pitchers who are 26 years old (Roupp) or 23 (Birdsong and Harrison). Birdsong dominated his five innings, working efficiently and allowing just an infield single and roller through the middle of the infield. Afterward, he went back out to the dugout to watch Harrison, who hit 94 mph with his first pitch, an immediate signal that he was feeling like his old self. Harrison ended the sixth inning by freezing a right-handed batter with a 95 mph inside fastball. When he returned to the dugout, he saw Birdsong. 

“It’s really nice to see 95,” he said. 

“It looks good,” Birdsong responded. 

Harrison was in the low 90s in prior outings, in large part because of the virus that hit him at the worst possible time. Coming off a winter of shoulder rehab, Harrison dropped to 207 pounds at the start of camp and was behind as pitchers started live BP sessions. He said he’s up to 220 now and will try to pack on a bit more, but it might be hard for him to get fully up to speed by the time the Giants have to make a decision. 

“We’ll see where we are with him,” Melvin said. “He’s a little behind.”

Harrison was limited to three innings at the end of a week when most Giants starters went five, but he was happy to see his fastball return. Last year, he threw the pitch 58 percent of the time, and in a recent bullpen session he raised his arm slot to try and find more life. 

“I’m in a good spot now and I’m putting in the work, so it’s good to see it’s finally paying off a little bit,” he said. “Results wise, today wasn’t the best, but I was throwing strikes, competing, and getting ahead and throwing a lot of first-pitch strikes. A lot of those things, I’m trying to work on. I saw a little bit of it come to fruition today.”

The interesting thing about the competition is that it won’t be as cut and dry as picking a winner and putting the other two in the bullpen or sending them both to Triple-A. If Roupp is not the choice, he seems like a lock for a relief role, which he had on Opening Day last year. If Harrison is not the choice, the Giants — even with only one lefty in their bullpen — might find it makes much more sense to send him to Triple-A to continue getting his pitch count up. If Birdsong is not the choice, the Giants likely will point out that he made just two starts in Triple-A last year and could benefit from more development. 

At the moment, though, it’s hard to see that last argument. Birdsong lowered his Cactus League ERA to 0.75 and he has 18 strikeouts in 12 innings. Most importantly, he has zero walks after struggling with command as a rookie. 

“It gives me a little confidence boost,” he said. “That was my goal in the offseason, to fill it up more, and I’d say I’ve done that … (I had to) stop thinking about striking people out. Ground balls get outs, too. Pop-ups get outs, everything gets outs.”

Birdsong and Roupp have piled them up as effectively as any Giants pitchers this spring. Harrison, after a late start, will try and catch up as the Giants get ready to head home. It’s a competition that has become the biggest story in an otherwise drama-free camp, and it’s ongoing. 

“I don’t think the competition is going to be over until the last day of camp,” Roupp said.

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