![\"San](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/BNG-L-GIANTS-0521-1_229501602.jpg\")
Justin Verlander works out under the eye of Giants trainer Dave Groeschner Wednesday at Oracle Park.\u00a0Karl Mondon\/Bay Area News Group<\/p>\nSAN FRANCISCO \u2014 The Giants are up against a left-handed starter Wednesday in their get-away day game against the Kansas City Royals at Oracle Park.<\/p>\n
Fortunately it will only be for an inning or so as the Royals are expected to have a bullpen game with left-hander Daniel Lynch opening against the Giants\u2019 Logan Webb.<\/p>\n
The Giants have been anemic against lefty starters all season, most recently being shut down by Mitty and Stanford product Kris Bubic in the first game of the Kansas City series. In their series against the Athletics, lefty Jeffrey Springs retried 20 batters in a row after giving up leadoff homer to Heliot Ramos.<\/p>\n
The grim numbers? The Giants have a .206 batting average, a .280 on-base percentage and a .348 slugging percentage.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to be better against lefties. We really do,\u201d Melvin said. \u201cOr every time someone is going to look to throw a lefty at us.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Giants hope infielder Casey Schmitt, recently activated after a left oblique strain. During a nine-game road trip to Washington, Detroit and Miami, Melvin is hopeful right-handed hitter Jerar Encarnacion will join the roster.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s going to start in Arizona and get some at-bats there, go to Triple-A and get more at-bats,\u201d Melvin said. \u201cIt\u2019s another big bat in the lineup and a guy who\u2019s hit lefties in the past. We don\u2019t just target him for lefties, but it\u2019s another big bat in our lineup with power.\u201d<\/p>\n
Justin Verlander works out under the eye of Giants trainer Dave Groeschner Wednesday at Oracle Park.\u00a0Karl Mondon\/Bay Area News Group<\/p>\n
Verlander update: Right-hander Justin Verlander threw on the field under the watchful eye of trainer Dave Groeschner, then met with president of baseball operations Buster Posey. Melvin said after briefing the press he would be joining the conversation to determine whether Verlander\u2019s pectoral issue will cause him to miss a start.<\/p>\n
In four innings against the A\u2019s, Verlander didn\u2019t throw a pitch over 93 miles per hour, said he was dealing with a physical issue but declined to be specific. Melvin said it was a \u201cpec\u201d issue.<\/p>\n
If Verlander doesn\u2019t go, it\u2019s possible left-hander Kyle Harrison could fill a spot in the rotation. Harrison is currently working out of the bullpen, but Melvin said he thought Harrison could stretch things out in a starting role.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we need him to start at any point in time soon, I think he can give us 50 pitches, so we\u2019ll see where it goes,\u201d Melvin said.<\/p>\n
Harrison is in a similar role to Hayden Birdsong, who swapped his reliever\u2019s role for a starter\u2019s role with Jordan Hicks.<\/p>\n
The Giants are off Thursday, and none of the starters for the upcoming Washington road series Friday through Sunday have been announced.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Originally Published: May 21, 2025 at 12:19 PM PDT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN FRANCISCO \u2014 The Giants are up against a left-handed starter Wednesday in their get-away day game against…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":44479,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2408],"tags":[5,1865,9406,162,388,55,4,378,66,4343,4340,4344,4341,4342,71],"class_list":{"0":"post-44478","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco-giants","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-bob-melvin","10":"tag-casey-schmitt","11":"tag-giants","12":"tag-justin-verlander","13":"tag-kansas-city-royals","14":"tag-mlb","15":"tag-san-francisco","16":"tag-san-francisco-giants","17":"tag-sanfrancisco","18":"tag-sanfranciscogiants","19":"tag-sf","20":"tag-sf-giants","21":"tag-sfgiants","22":"tag-washington-nationals"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/114547548924794949","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44478"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44478\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}