San Francisco Giants catcher Buster Posey (28) jogs during an MLB game against the Los Angeles Dodgers at Oracle Park on Saturday the 22nd.
ST. LOUIS – The Giants would never beat a series more important than another, but for a club that only has one game before the Dodgers on Sunday, the set of four that starts in Los Angeles on Monday is bigger than most of the others.
It is all the more important that All-Star Buster Posey could cross the injured list at the start of the Dodger Stadium in order to catch another All-Star, Kevin Gausman, who is off the emergency family vacation returns. Gausman was dating his wife Taylor, who was being treated for pregnancy complications in a Louisiana hospital. She was released Sunday morning.
Posey has been on the list of injured since July 6 with a bruise on his left thumbbone that made catching difficult, but manager Gabe Kapler said he was confident that Posey would be ready on Monday will be.
« He’s going in the right direction, » said Kapler on Sunday at the Busch Stadium. « He played catch with improvement yesterday, he felt improvements in swinging the club. »
Posey experimented with a thumb protector to see if it would help catch, but has not yet made up his mind whether to put it in one game.
Gausman should start on Friday but he will meet the team in Los Angeles and face Tony Gonsolin in the first of four games. Alex Wood will leave on Tuesday with the Dodgers planning a bullpen game, Logan Webb will start against Julio Urias on Wednesday and Anthony DeSclafani against Walker Buehler on Thursday.
The Giants are 3-6 against the Dodgers this season, but all three wins came in Los Angeles.
Trading deadline excerpt: The Texas Rangers, who are expected to be sellers by the deadline, have explored the Giants series in St. Louis.
The Rangers have one of the best starting mugs that could be available, All-Star Kyle Gibson, and they might as well be ready to part with reliever Ian Kennedy. Slugger Joey Gallo may be in the market, but he’s under team control for another year and would likely need some particularly good prospects to tear him away.
In short: Aaron Sanchez threw 80 litters and allowed three undeserved runs at a rehab start in Triple-A Sacramento on Saturday night. « The blister situation is fine and the encouraging thing is that the volume is building up, » said Kapler. … Reliever Camilo Doval was registered at 103 mph during his two-inning goalless stint, a record for the stadium radar gun in Sacramento.
Susan Slusser has been with The San Francisco Chronicle since 1996. She is the beat writer for the Giants. Before that, she was full-time responsible for the A from 1999 to 2021.
Slusser’s book on the A’s, 100 Things A’s Fans Must Know and Do Before They Die, was published in 2014, and she and A’s radio announcer Ken Korach released a new book, If These Walls Could Talk, Tales from the Oakland A’s Dugout, Locker Room and Press Box, in 2019. She is also a correspondent for the MLB network.
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