WASHINGTON -- The Giants debuted a new road look on Saturday afternoon at Nationals Park, swapping their traditional gray jerseys for the black alternates they typically wear during Spring Training and Saturday home games at Oracle Park.
They hoped donning the jerseys -- which will be cycled in during road trips this season -- would help them sustain the positive momentum they built during Spring Training, when they finished with the best record in the Cactus League. But things didn’t exactly go to plan.
Kyle Harrison did his part to keep the Giants within striking distance, but the club’s bats went silent against right-hander Jake Irvin, culminating in a 3-0 loss to the Nationals on Saturday afternoon at Nationals Park.
“We won yesterday, so maybe we should have stuck with the grays,” third baseman Matt Chapman said. “I think it’s just having another jersey to wear on the road. We played well in it in Spring Training, so we wanted to bust it out. Obviously, it didn’t go our way today. I don’t think the jersey has anything to do with it too much.”
The Giants mustered only three hits -- including a pair of singles from No. 9 hitter Tyler Fitzgerald -- against Irvin, who struck out seven and walked two over eight shutout innings.
San Francisco’s best scoring opportunity came in the fourth, when Jung Hoo Lee singled and Wilmer Flores reached on an error to put a pair of runners on with no outs, but the club couldn’t cash in after Chapman hit into a double play and Willy Adames struck out swinging on a fastball to end the inning.
“Obviously, the days that we haven’t been able to win, our offense has kind of struggled a little bit,” Chapman said. “We haven’t been able to get on the starters. We’ve done well against the bullpen guys, I feel like, but sometimes we haven’t been able to jump on the starters. It’s not easy to always come back and try to find ways. But our pitching staff has kept us in every game. Unfortunately, we just weren’t able to do anything with it today.”
Harrison, who moved back into the rotation to replace the injured Justin Verlander, was charged with the loss after giving up two runs on five hits over four innings in his first start of the year.
The 23-year-old left-hander stumbled a bit in the first inning, when he gave up a double to Amed Rosario and then hung a breaking ball that James Wood cranked out to right field for a two-run homer, but he didn’t allow any other damage over his final three frames.
“It felt good to have a day dedicated to me and go about my business and get in the routine again,” Harrison said. “Just proud of how I felt out there and how I responded after not being built up too much. Just that one mistake, but I felt like I settled in a little bit.”
Harrison had been pitching out of the bullpen since being recalled from Triple-A Sacramento on May 6, so the Giants knew he’d be limited to around 60 pitches in his 2025 rotation debut. He ended up departing after throwing 57 pitches, 43 of which (75%) were four-seam fastballs.
Harrison averaged 94.7 mph on his heater and topped out at 96.3 mph on Saturday, which were several ticks up from the 92.5 mph he averaged on it last year.
“It’s always good to have that velocity, just going out there and attacking,” Harrison said. “That was the game plan. I got beat a little bit, but I didn’t give in, I thought, and made pitches when I needed to.”
Harrison will get at least one more start on this road trip, but he’s likely to slide back into the bullpen once Verlander is ready to return from the right pectoral strain that sidelined him earlier this week. Even so, the Giants fully expect Harrison to be part of their long-term rotation plans and help anchor a pitching staff that currently features two other youngsters in Landen Roupp and Hayden Birdsong.
“We knew at some point in time all these guys would probably get an opportunity in a season,” manager Bob Melvin said. “As far as Birdsong and Harrison go, obviously, these are two guys that we feel are going to be starters for us for a long time. I think it just speaks to what we have here, the fact that they didn’t start in the rotation. But it’s nice to have that kind of depth and that kind of talent. With JV out a couple of times, we can plug somebody like Harry in there.”