Welcome to Verducci’s View, a new weekly baseball newsletter from Sports Illustrated senior writer Tom Verducci. Every Monday, Tom will empty out his notebook and cover MLB’s hottest topics, provide in-depth analysis through both text and video breakdowns, look forward to what’s worth watching during the week and more. This week, we’re focusing on the Giants’ historically poor start, the rise of left-handed hitting rookies, the evolution of Max Fried and more.
Well, that didn’t take long. We have our first Team in Trouble, a team off to such a horrific start you begin to throw small sample caution aside and wonder if the early signs are signs of doom. April hasn’t arrived and the San Francisco Giants are on the clock, needing wins quickly.
The Giants scored one run while getting swept in three games at home by the Yankees. They are only the 10th team to start 0–3 while scoring no more than one run. None of the previous nine made the playoffs. The 2016 San Diego Padres are the only other team to start 0–3 with one run or less at home. They finished 68–94.
Good teams don’t start this badly. Here is the historical bad news for the Giants when it comes to teams starting this badly:
0–3 Teams to Score One Run or Fewer
RA-RS
Final Record
2016 Padres
25-0
68-94
2015 Twins
22-1
83-79
1988 Orioles
18-1
54-107
1963 Mets
17-1
51-111
2026 Giants
13-1
?
2013 Marlins
12-1
62-100
1979 Braves
10-1
66-95
1937 Bees
6-1
79-73
1969 Astros
6-1
81-81
1933 Braves
5-1
83-71-2
It’s easy to dismiss three games as too early to draw conclusions. But don’t dismiss the early pressure those losses put on San Francisco. It is true that teams can’t win a division in April but can lose it.
Slow starts can doom teams. Just look to last season. The early Teams in Trouble included the Braves (5–13), Orioles (10–17), Twins (7–15) and Pirates (8–15). All of them went on to lose between 86–92 games. All of them replaced the managers who were in charge during those slow starts.
The biggest question about the Giants entering this season was their offense. That’s why this start sets off alarms. Last season San Francisco ranked 17th in runs per game and 24th in slugging. Its only “major” additions were Luis Arraez, an average offensive player with little power (OPS+ 99 last year) and Harrison Bader, coming off a career best season (118 OPS+) in an otherwise unspectacular offensive resume (career OPS+ 95).
How bad were the Giants against the Yankees?
- The Yankees pounded them with 71.2% fastballs (including cutters), an absurd here-it-is-hit-it approach considering the major league average is 54.9%. San Francisco hit .113 against that barrage of power pitching. Rafael Devers is notoriously vulnerable to fastballs. The Yankees threw him fastballs on 34 of 48 pitches (71%). He went 1-for-8 against those fastballs.
- The lineup is woefully short. The 7-8-9 hitters came to bat 30 times and were put out 28 times, managing one hit and one walk. That’s too many built-in breathers for the opposing pitcher.
- After the third inning, the Giants hit .121 and did not score.
- The Giants have such poor depth that manager Tony Vitello used the same nine players to take all 99 plate appearances in the three losses. He made one substitution, using a pinch runner.
Of course, the Giants are not as bad as they looked. They are not the 1988 Orioles. Their pitching is solid. But they have a suspect offense, they have a manager hired out of college who had never worked in the majors, and they play their first 18 games against contenders (Yankees, Padres, Mets, Phillies, Orioles and Reds).
It is a team searching for its identity. And just three games into the season, they need to bank wins so that Team in Trouble does not become their full-time identity.
Baseball’s Left Turn
Guardians outfielder Chase DeLauter has four home runs in his first four MLB regular season games. | Stephen Brashear-Imagn Images
It was the Opening Day of smashing debuts. Six players made their MLB regular season debuts Thursday. All of them had big days. Kevin McGonigle, 21, of the Tigers, Justin Crawford, 22, of the Phillies, JJ Wetherholt, 23, of the Cardinals, Carson Benge, 23, of the Mets, Chase DeLauter, 24, of the Guardians and Munetaka Murakami, 26, of the White Sox combined to go 10-for-23 in their MLB regular season debuts with five home runs, five walks and 10 runs.
Noted oddity: all of them are left-handed hitters.
But maybe it’s more than an oddity. Left-handed hitters are on the rise in numbers and production. Lefty hitters last year:
- Took 44% of all plate appearances (including switch hitters from that side), the highest percentage since 2014.
- Posted an OPS of .732, a 23-point edge over righthanded hitters, the biggest such gap in 19 years (+29 points in 2006).
- Scored their most runs in a season, hit their second most homers (only in 2019 did lefties hit more) and took their fifth most plate appearances.
- Helped offensive teams gain the platoon advantage in batter-pitcher matchups 54.6% of the time, the highest such rate since 2014 (54.7%).
From 2020–22, right-handed hitters outhit lefties three straight years. But the past three seasons have seen a surge in lefties outhitting righties. Here’s what that gap looks like in graph form:
MLB
What’s happening? It’s not due to a surge in switch-hitting. Those hitters are down 20% in the past decade. Teams are emphasizing platoon advantage more rather than running out the same players. But mostly the rise of the lefties seems simply part of the ebb and flow of the game. Teams had better stock up on left-handed relievers to counter this trend.
The Lab-Grown Evolution of Max Fried
When Max Fried signed with the Yankees before the 2025 season, he turned himself over to the team’s pitching department, open to any suggestions about how to improve. Fried had been a very good pitcher who worked mostly north and south by throwing his four-seamer/curveball combo 63% of the time.
What emerged from the Yankees’ lab was Fried 2.0, a pitcher with an expanded repertoire who works the ball to all quadrants with pitch movement to all four points of a compass—east, west, north and south. That 63% four-seam/curve combo now accounts for only 29.8% of his pitches as a Yankee.
Fried allowed just two hits and a walk over six innings in his Opening Night start against the Giants. | Cary Edmondson-Imagn Images
Opening Day reinforced how much Fried has changed. He carved up San Francisco by mixing six pitches with various movements and location, such as elevated cutters that broke glove side, backdoor sinkers that broke arm side, four-seamers that held their plane at the top and bottom of the zone and sweepers and curveballs that plunged. The Giants could not eliminate a pitch or a hitting zone.
The transformation is remarkable. I have highlighted two significant changes: 1. Reducing his four-seam use by more than two thirds and 2. Vastly boosting his use of cutters and sinkers, a tandem of pitches with similar velocity (91.7 and 93.1) that break in different directions and can be used on both sides of the plate.
Max Fried Pitch Use
4-Seam FB
Cutters/Sinkers
Braves
39.5%
12.5%
Yankees
12.5%
46.2%
The net result is Fried has a much wider distribution of his pitches, especially when it comes to elevating the baseball and establishing the glove side of the plate.
For a quick visual of the transformation, I took the heat maps of Fried’s gem in the 2021 World Series clincher and compared it to the one from Opening Day. From a hitter’s perspective, imagine how much more of the plate you must cover against Fried 2.0:
MLB
Judge’s Revenge?
Some people think Aaron Judge will be among the biggest beneficiaries of the ABS system. The Yankees have bellyached for years that Judge gets too many low pitches out of the zone called strikes. On Friday, Judge won a challenge on a called low strike and then homered.
Truth is, that’s an outdated narrative that was true several years ago, but not recently. Last year Judge ranked 14th in most strikes called on pitches out of the zone (55). In 2024 he ranked 42nd (57). In 2023 he ranked 55th (52).
If you want to know the most likely beneficiaries of overturning calls, here they are:
2025 Player/Team
Called Strikes On Pitches Out of the Zone
Gleyber Torres, Tigers
66
Taylor Ward, Orioles
64
Chase Meidroth, White Sox
63
Marcell Ozuna, Braves
61
Fernando Tatis Jr., Padres
61
Matt McLain, Reds
60
Seiya Suzuki, Cubs
60
Juan Soto, Mets
59
The Other 2026 Rule Change
The crackdown on base coaches staying in the coaching box to stop sign stealing began last postseason. MLB officials told clubs the rule would be enforced. It wasn’t until the World Series, though, that umpires actively enforced the rule. Umpires warned both managers during Game 7 to keep their coaches in the box. Soon after that warning, Dodgers first base coach Chris Woodward barely dodged a foul line drive hit by Freddie Freeman. Woodward turned to first base umpire Adrian Johnson and said, “See?”
Woodward is among the coaches who believe that enforcing the rule puts coaches in harm’s way because they are closer to the plate than their preferred location. But the problem was that too many coaches were drifting farther down the line to pick up pitch grips and tells from the pitcher, which they could then relay to the batter or to the runner at second base, who can relay the information to the batter.
“I’m concerned,” Woodward said, “especially for some guys who might have difficulty getting out of the way. They should be able to monitor with cameras what coaches are doing and then if they see they are signaling or relaying something they can be told to stop.”
Pitch-stealing by coaches was getting too out of hand. The game should be decided as much as possible by players between the lines. I sympathize with Woodward’s concern for safety, but something needed to be done to curb the unethical behavior that was happening.
Breakdown of the Week
The Orioles signed free agent closer Ryan Helsley to a two-year, $28 million contract that includes a player option for 2027. It was a discounted rate because of how poorly he pitched last year, when he allowed a career worst .275 batting average, including .301 after his trade with the Mets. Helsley did not respond well to expectations after the trade and had trouble adjusting to pitching before the ninth inning. He also continued to have problems with tipping his pitches, a problem the Mets corrected at the end of August.
The early signs this year suggest Helsley may be a bargain. While no longer tipping his pitches, he also has added a third pitch. Check out the transformation of Helsley and how he conquered his pitch tipping here.
TV on TV This Week
Pirates at Reds, March 30, 6:30 p.m. ET (FS1)
Mets at Giants, April 2, 9:30 p.m. ET (MLBN)
Braves at Diamondbacks, April 4, 7 p.m. ET (Fox)
The Thursday matchup finds Team in Trouble against a Mets pitching staff under new leadership. New York hired pitching coach Justin Willard away from the Red Sox, where he was director of pitching development. Willard knows the modern and technological side of pitching inside-out, but his core pitching philosophy is old-school proven: attack the zone with premium stuff, a departure from teams that like to hunt chase swings. In their first two games against Pittsburgh, Mets pitchers threw 72.4% first-pitch strikes, a crazy-high rate that is unsustainable but does speak to the culture Willard wants to establish. The Mets should be in the same attack mode against the Giants.
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