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MLB MLB Opening Day Willy Adames and the Giants had a rough opening series at the plate against the Yankees. Darren Yamashita / Imagn Images Are the San Francisco Giants a lousy offensive team? No. You don’t have to agree with me, and you certainly don’t have to do it after the Giants scored one run in 27 innings, but I’m something of a connoisseur of lousy lineups, and this one doesn’t belong in the conversation. They’re projected to score runs this season, and it’s not like the lineup is filled with ambiguity and unproven players. Advertisement Panicking abut the Giants getting swept by the Yankees to start the season would only make sense if your primary concern about this roster was the lineup. The last time the Giants scored one run in a three-game home series was 1949 — when they played a short walk from Yankee Stadium. If this series was predictive of how the lineup is going to perform, then this year’s team would have a harder time scoring runs than last year’s team. And the one before that. Oh, and the 2008 team, which had nobody with 20 home runs and only three players with 40 walks or more. This team’s lineup isn’t worse than those lineups, and it’s not especially close. Might not even be the same sport as the 2008 team. At the same time, nobody wants to hear that the first series of a season doesn’t matter. Of course it does. Last year’s final wild-card spot came down to a tiebreaker between the New York Mets and Cincinnati Reds on the final day of the season. The Giants finished two games behind both teams. So of course these games matter. They don’t have to be predictive, though, upending what were once safe assumptions. The Milwaukee Brewers gave up 36 runs in their opening three-game series against the Yankees last year. One team ended its first series of the season on pace to score 2, 106 runs, and the other on pace to allow that many. Only one of them won the division, though. If you have the entire 2025 season recorded on your DVR, I won’t spoil it, but the answer might surprise you. If it were an absolute meltdown from the bullpen, or if anyone else but Logan Webb were lit up, some too-early grousing would be acceptable, if not recommended. The lineup should be fine, though. Maybe. Probably. Other notes from the regrettable start to the season: Here’s some good ol’ fluff to take your mind off the losing. The Automated Ball-Strike system was a supporting cast member in the final game of the series, and almost all of it was positive. Matt Gage called for his own against Jazz Chisholm Jr. in the sixth inning, and the result might be one of the closer calls we’ll see all season. Heck, one of the bots that’s trying to automate these challenges couldn’t even put it in the strike zone. Advertisement You can understand why:

It wasn’t a meaningful call in the game, but, oh, how the crowd enjoyed it. The way the ABS challenges are presented has a big part in this, because every challenge is animated on the scoreboard. You get to see the whole thing, and you get a split-second endorphin rush as you attempt to get it right before the reveal. It’s way better theater than it could have ever been expected to be. In the bottom of the ninth inning, leadoff hitter Heliot Ramos took what would have been a called third strike in the before times, but he challenged it and eventually drew a walk. I’d like to think this bat flip gained an extra foot of elevation because of the ABS chicanery. Look at how high this sucker gets: Heliot Ramos had a successful challenge to avoid striking out, then he drew a huge leadoff walk ? ‍? pic. twitter. com/x TTu657l AP — SF Giants on NBCS (@NBCSGiants) March 29, 2026 If that happened in 1967, everyone would think that Ramos inspired Stanley Kubrick. Instead, it gave a team hope, which they and the crowd desperately needed. It was still a loss, still a series sweep, still a gnarly way to start the season. But there was life in the ninth inning, and there didn’t have to be. ABS will eventually break your heart, and just wait until they lose a game because they blow through their challenges too soon. So far, though, it’s been a success: fast, engaging, fun and useful. I reserve the right to have the exact opposite opinions by next week. Before Wednesday’s game, manager Tony Vitello joked that the Giants having three lefties wasn’t a big deal to him because college teams stack up on southpaws, who are especially effective against players who might not have seen a lot of talented lefties in their lives. But it’s unusual on a major-league roster for a lot of reasons, especially in the three-batter-minimum era. And the Giants can’t possibly get away with it all season. Advertisement Not that they’re planning to, or that the bullpen in March is the bullpen that’s going to last. The only way a three-lefty mix can work is if at least two of the lefties don’t have meaningful platoon splits. If you have lefties that can overpower right-handed hitters, you’re worrying about semantics and technicalities when you complain about an imbalanced bullpen. Outs are what you want and the handedness is incidental. However, the Giants probably don’t have that assortment of lefties. Erik Miller has the stuff to do it, but he’s almost certainly more effective against lefties. Gage has plenty of deception and a career 2. 61 ERA, but the tiny sample of his major-league career suggests he’s not a secret righty-killer. That brings us to the newest Giant, Ryan Borucki. Tyler Mahle lasted only four innings Saturday because of pitch-count concerns (he missed the start of spring because of illness and isn’t quite ramped up yet), and the decision was made to give Borucki a clean inning to start the fifth. It made sense, considering that three of the four batters coming up were left-handed. The right-handed batter, though, was Aaron Judge. And with two outs and the bases empty, here’s how the at-bat went: Borucki has been sneaky impressive, and you can see why the Giants jumped on him. If he can keep his sinkers low and reclaim the command he had pre-injury, he can help against lefties. However, with two outs and nobody on in a close game, he should not be throwing cutters at the belt to Judge. This does not feel like a new kind of baseball opinion. This feels like settled science, just with different names. An intentional walk in front of Cody Bellinger? Sure, but I’m more of a nibble-just-in-case guy. Maybe you get an 0-1 count on a foul ball or called strike and open up some options. The only rule when attempting to nibble is that there can’t be a ball right down the middle. The execution left a lot to be desired, but it’s the blueprint that’s at fault. Three lefties in the bullpen in March, when starters are less likely to go deep, didn’t guarantee a Judge-Borucki matchup, but it sure made it more likely, and it’s why the arrangement isn’t going to last. It’s why it’s pretty rare in the first place. Advertisement I don’t mind it. For now. If the Giants are going to make this whole operation work, they’d greatly benefit from Lee becoming pest against left-handers. The early returns aren’t great, but he’s had just over 200 at-bats against major-league lefties so far. He’s going to need more looks before we get a definitive answer. Which might be coming sooner rather than later. In the bottom of the seventh, with the Yankees leading by two runs with two outs, the bases empty and lefty Tim Hill on the mound, Lee hit for himself. This, even though the entire bench is right-handed. This is a bench built to give wedgies to pitchers like Hill, in theory. Maybe I’m overestimating the fragility of a major-leaguer’s ego, but you can’t send a message to Lee that reads  “We don’t think you can hit Tim Hill. ” Not yet, and definitely not with the bases empty and two outs. Maybe with runners in scoring position, but the Giants still think the red ink on his Baseball Savant page is going to make up for the blue and take him a lot further than he’s already gone. The payoff would be big, and it’s a dream worth chasing. But if Lee’s performance against lefties doesn’t improve, substantially, this can’t be the play all season. It’s something to watch as the year progresses, but for now the Giants are going to stick with him early in the season. That’s probably a good thing. Unlike that Giants-Yankees series back there. Woof. Bury it in the woods and move on. The good news is that there are 159 games left. (That could also be the bad news, of course. ) Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms Play today's puzzle Grant Brisbee is a senior writer for The Athletic, covering the San Francisco Giants. Grant has written about the Giants since 2003 and covered Major League Baseball for SB Nation from 2011 to 2019. He is a two-time recipient of the SABR Analytics Research Award. Follow Grant on Twitter @Grant Brisbee