Why some players believe the Giants-Dodgers rivalry could be even better in 2023

MLB made things particularly strange for the Giants, who will host the Dodgers only twice: in their first homestand of the year, starting Monday, and then again in their last, starting on Sept. 29.

SAN FRANCISCO — Here come the mighty Dodgers, who will ride into Oracle Park for a quick three-game series then disappear, not to be seen in the Bay Area again for 172 days.

The baseball gods have saved the Giants from facing the Dodgers 19 times a year and reduced that number to 13 with a new balanced schedule implemented this year.

The Giants will now host their biggest rivals only twice: in their first homestand of the year, starting Monday, and then again in their last, starting on Sept. 29.

It’s such an oddity that some of the players around the Giants clubhouse had no idea it was happening.

“Is it really?” asked Anthony DeSclafani.

“Huh,” said Logan Webb.

Ross Stripling, one of five former Dodgers now on the Giants, said he hadn’t heard anyone on the team mention the six-month gap between home games with their rivals, but thinks the Giants’ ambivalence shows it’s “a good team that we’re tackling the game at hand before we think about the Dodgers. But I know it’ll be a big deal.”

Will the new schedule mark the end of the Dodgers-Giants rivalry as we know it? Or does it make these games even more impactful?

Stripling is choosing the ladder, saying Monday’s series opener will be “a playoff-like atmosphere. Our fans will want to crush them. We want to crush them.”

Back in 2001, when MLB contracted the schedule to reduce travel and ensure each team would play every other team in the division 19 times a year, a league vice president, Katy Feeney, told the New York Post, “rivalries are going to be stronger.”

By that logic, reducing the number of Giants-Dodgers games would weaken the rivalry, right?

“There won’t be as many games so maybe it’ll add to the rivalry then?” Webb wondered.

The more he thought about it, Webb started to get excited about having fewer starts against his biggest rival.

The Giants’ ace has gotten a little tired of facing the Dodgers, who’ve had MLB’s most potent offense (5.34 runs per game) since Webb entered the league in 2019.

Last year alone, Webb pitched against them four times totaling 95 plate appearances, which represented 23% of his total plate appearances in 2022. From July 22 to Aug. 13, three of his five starts came against the Dodgers.

“It’s just overboard,” said Webb, who will pitch for the Giants against the Dodgers on Monday night. “I don’t think it was necessary to play them that much. I had months where I faced them three times in a month. Even if you do one game right, it’s hard to get professional hitters out going back to back starts against them. You can only do so much.”

He finished the year with a 2.90 ERA and earned an 11th-place finish in the National League Cy Young Award voting. Take out his stats against the Dodgers and his ERA would’ve been 2.57.

“It was the same thing in ‘21 and I faced them four or five times in the regular season and twice in the playoffs,” he said. “It is fun to face some other teams also.”

Webb is happier now that a more balanced schedule allows him to visit every ballpark at least once every two years.

“I got to face the Yankees (on Opening Day), something I had never gotten to do,” he said.

DeSclafani had been in the big leagues nine years and never seen Yankee Stadium until last week.

“Yankee Stadium was No. 15 for my son,” he said. “It took him a shorter time to see Yankee Stadium than me. It took me nine years. It’s taken him about 2 ½ years.”

Stripling, who was a players’ representative for the Blue Jays during the formation of the new collective bargaining agreement and helped negotiate the new schedule, said it’s great for baseball that every fanbase will get to watch Shohei Ohtani, Mike Trout and Fernando Tatis Jr. at least once each season.

But he admitted it’s not great for the Giants, who now have to travel 11,000 more miles than any other team in the league this year.

“The only crappy part is the traveling,” he said.

Manager Gabe Kapler was stoic about the whole thing.

“We don’t feel sorry for ourselves,” he said of the travel. “I don’t think Giants-Dodgers games ever need any amplification. They usually get amplified plenty.”

Before the Giants’ series finale against the Royals on Sunday, it was announced over the loudspeaker that tickets were still available for Monday’s series against… the voice softened… the Dodgers.

The Oracle Park crowd of 30,207 booed.

They’ll only have seven more chances to boo them this season.