PHILADELPHIA — Only two Major League Baseball teams have yet to make a roster move this season, and they played each other Monday night in the opener of a four-game series in the City of Brotherly Love.
One is the Phillies. The other is the Giants. And for that, Tyler Fitzgerald is grateful.
Despite the second baseman’s early-season batting woes, management stuck with him, and the decision finally is paying dividends. Fitzgerald homered, tripled, and doubled in the Giants’ 10-4 rout of Philadelphia that gave them a 12-4 record, second-best in the majors.
“Maybe if this happened last year, the slow start and slow spring training,” Fitzgerald said, “I probably wouldn’t be here right now.”
Asked to elaborate, he suggested players were kept on a “shorter leash at times” during the previous regime.
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It’s another example of the leadership differences between Farhan Zaidi and Buster Posey, who has emphasized roster continuity in his first year as president of baseball operations. Under Zaidi, roster moves seemed constant, making it tough for players to keep a good rhythm and maintain a positive mind-set throughout the grind of a long season.
To go this long without making a roster move — the longest for the Giants since 2014, their last World Series season — means nobody’s out injured. It also means management has faith in the players placed on the Opening Day roster.
After shortstop Willy Adames signed his seven-year, $182 million contract in December, Posey called Fitzgerald to talk about moving from short to second and assure that the team still trusted him. It was a rough transition, not as much defensively as offensively. Fitzgerald had a back injury early in spring training, and when he returned, he had issues with his mechanics and confidence. His swing was too long. His hands were too slow. He was hitting in the .100s and feeling down about it.
“It’s been super frustrating. Frustrating spring and frustrating couple of weeks,” Fitzgerald said. “But teammates had my back the whole time, and the coaching staff had my back throughout everything. That goes for the front office, too. Everybody’s had my back.”
During the last homestand, Fitzgerald received advice from Barry Bonds about swinging more downward to generate more backspin on batted balls. In baseball vernacular, Bonds told him to “get on top of the ball.” Slowly but surely, Fitzgerald has been fixing his mechanics and improving his confidence.
In his past four games — the homestand finale, two games in New York, and Monday’s series opener — Fitzgerald was 7-for-14 with four extra-base hits. He appreciates that he has been given time to work himself out of his slump.
“It gives me a little peace of mind,” he said. “At the same time, man, it’s the big leagues, and I have to produce.”
Fitzgerald finally hit his first home run Monday, in his 44th plate appearance, and ditto for Adames, who homered for the first time in his 69th plate appearance. For the record, neither lacks power. Adames hit 32 homers last season, and Fitzgerald in July became the first Giant since Bonds to homer in five straight games and seven times in eight games.
Fitzgerald’s three-run homer and Adames’ solo shot highlighted the Giants’ six-run second inning, their largest rally of the season.
“I was kind of worried. I thought I lost my power. I was, like, man, I can’t homer anymore. I can’t even get a hit,” kidded Adames. “But, no, it obviously feels great to have that first one out of the way.”
The 6-spot gave major relief to pitcher Landen Roupp, who had yielded three first-inning runs and nearly got pulled for Spencer Bivens before rebounding and completing five innings. Despite the early chaos, he got the win by relying heavily on his strength, the curveball, which he threw a whopping 56 times.
Mike Yastrzemski also joined the homers party with a seventh-inning blast against Tanner Banks, significant because it was his first homer off a lefty since June 19, 2023, a 10th-inning walk-off homer vs. San Diego’s Ray Kerr, back when Bob Melvin managed the Padres.
It was the second time this season the Giants hit three homers in a game, and Fitzgerald became the first Giant since 1900 to collect three extra-base hits as the No. 9 hitter, falling a single shy of the cycle.
Through it all, he’s thrilled with the long leash.
“Yeah, that’s what you want, right?” he said. “This game is so hard, the season is so long, that you’re not going to produce the whole entire season. Yeah, I had one RBI before today, and it’s game 16. So that’s not acceptable.”