SCOTTSDALE, ARIZONA – Madison Bumgarner will follow Matt Cain in San Francisco’s starting rotation, though Giants manager Bruce Bochy says there will likely be some shuffling before the end of spring camp.
“We can still tweak it,” Bochy said Friday. “I’ll keep saying that when I look at all five starters, they are all so balanced.”
Ryan Vogelsong starts Saturday’s exhibition opener against a visiting split squad of Los Angeles Angels. Cain will take the ball Sunday, followed by Bumgarner, Tim Lincecum and Barry Zito.
Zito will start for the World Series champions in their regular-season home opener, with Vogelsong to pitch out of the fifth spot.
“I haven’t really announced that yet,” Bochy said. “At the end of the year, knock on wood they all stay healthy, they’ll get the same amount of starts. It’s not who is No. 1 or who follows who. Each one of these guys gives us a chance to win every time they take the mound. I don’t want them to get caught up in this.”
Lincecum, the two-time Cy Young Award winner who made the previous four Opening Day starts, is happy with the arrangement and glad for the opportunity to pitch in the season’s opening series in Los Angeles.
“I’m definitely excited to get out there again and throw against them,” Lincecum said. “That rivalry is so huge and the Dodgers went out and made themselves better too. I enjoy throwing at the Los Angeles Dodger blue, and not necessarily at the name on the back.”
Lincecum is coming off the worst of his six major league seasons. He was 10-15 with a 5.18 ERA, which “jumped” his career ERA to 3.31.
Despite being taken out of the rotation for the postseason, Lincecum managed to make his mark, going 1-1 with a 2.55 ERA in six appearances, including one start.
Zito won 15 games for the Giants last year, including six in a row. He also threw his first shutout in nine years. All of which prompted Bochy to give him the home opener.
“With the year he had and some of things he’s been through, I’m sure it would mean a lot to him,” Bochy said.
Ryan backs Rangers
AP
Nolan Ryan laughs when he hears people describe the Texas Rangers offseason as a disaster and the worst in team history.
While the Rangers were unable to re-sign five-time All-Star slugger Josh Hamilton, failed to lure pitcher Zack Greinke to Texas and traded Michael Young, Ryan still expects the team to be very competitive this season because of how they recovered after the disappointment of the early part of free agency.
Hamilton opted to sign with the AL West-rival Los Angeles Angels only days after Greinke took a big deal from the Dodgers.
“We stepped back, assessed the situation and were able to accomplish some things that needed to be done as far as strengthening our ball club,” Ryan said Friday after arriving in Arizona for spring training. ” I think we’re a better ball club today than we were the day Josh signed with the Angels. That’s the way I look at it.”
Ryan, the team president, said he is excited about the offseason additions of A.J. Pierzynski and Lance Berkman and what they can bring offensively to the Rangers. Asked if the Rangers were better without Hamilton, Ryan said it was a complex situation.
Before his surge with the Rangers the past five seasons, the 31-year-old slugger and former No. 1 overall pick had a history of alcohol and substance abuse that delayed the start of his big league career. He had two known relapses with alcohol during his time in Texas.
“You just don’t replace a talent like that and we all know that,” Ryan said. “But also, there’s a dimension that’s brought to the ball club that very few players if any other player in baseball would bring. It’s so unique and unusual that you can’t put other players in that category.”
Hamilton, the 2010 AL MVP, riled up some Rangers fans last week when in an interview with a Dallas television station said that “there are true baseball fans in Texas, but it’s not a true baseball town.”
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