Two teams very familiar with one another will use starting pitchers the opponent is totally or generally unfamiliar with when the Colorado Rockies and San Francisco Giants wrap up their season series Sunday afternoon in Northern California.
Season-series bragging rights will be on the line when the Rockies send rookie right-hander Gabriel Hughes (0-4, 5.61 ERA) in search of his first major league win at the expense of the Giants, who hope to get the first victory of the season for their second-year right-hander, Blade Tidwell (0-0, 2.78).
The teams have split their 12 meetings this season. Colorado hasn’t won a season series from the Giants since 2020, losing 59 of 77 games from 2021-25.
The Rockies and Giants have split the first two contests of their current three-game series, with San Francisco rebounding from a 5-2 defeat on Friday with a 7-1 triumph in the rematch on Saturday.
Hughes will get the ball for his seventh consecutive start after making his major league debut against the Giants on July 3 as a reliever. He threw three shutout innings that day, earning a save in a 15-3 win.
The Giants fielded their pre-trade deadline lineup that day, meaning Hughes has never seen three players who started Saturday — Osleivis Basabe, Turner Hill and Buddy Kennedy — and has faced only faced two others (Drew Gilbert and Christian Koss) one time apiece.
Hughes, an Alaska native, might not know much about the Giants, but he believes he’s learned a lot about himself over the course of his six-week, seven-game tenure in the big leagues.
“The day that I pitch, in that couple hours before I go out, one of the things I do is watch this five-minute video of pitches I’ve gotten for swings-and-misses,” he told reporters recently. “Every couple of weeks, I’ll go through and update it.”
If he gets an opportunity to face the Giants’ Hill on Sunday, it would be a matchup of a player without a big-league win against a foe without a big-league hit.
Hill made his major league debut in Saturday’s win, catching a fly ball on the third pitch of the game and driving in the go-ahead run in the fourth inning with a sacrifice fly.
“He seemed calm,” Giants manager Tony Vitello noted to reporters after the game. “I’ll be danged — they say the ball will find you (and the) first ball in play is hit to him. Then to come up in that situation with the bases loaded and the crowd is cheering … to keep his heart rate to where it seemed he was under control was pretty impressive.”
Like Hughes, Tidwell began this season as a reliever, but he has transitioned into a starter in his last two outings.
After going 1-1 for the New York Mets last year, Tidwell left his most recent start Monday against the Houston Astros with a 2-1 lead, but the Astros rallied to tie, then win, 6-3 in extra innings, denying Tidwell his first win of the year.
He has never faced the Rockies.
– Field Level Media
