Brother against brother.
Baseball bonds families. It crosses generations. It comforts us with memories of the past and frightens us about our inevitable death — wait, Darren Baker is 26? Phillies prospect Justin Crawford is Carl Crawford’s son??? At its core, I think, baseball is love. Not just for the game itself but for how it connects us. And what is love if not passion? And what does passion fuel if not competition? And what does competition fuel if not feuds? And what do feuds lead to? Blood.
This weekend, Zack Minasian’s Giants will take on Perry Minasian’s Angels for the first time since the former became the general manager of the club. These are two baseball lifers facing off with rosters they’ve helped put together. Will it get ugly up in the executive suite?
Nah. Look at these two. This is all in good fun.
The MLB Network coverage literally cuts to their proud father, Zack Sr., beaming in the corner. A post on the Major League Baseball Clubhouse Managers Association by Maria Torres in 2020 talks about just how deep into baseball these brothers have been from childhood:
The image of his sons lying on a rug in the basement of a stadium in Arlington, Texas, has never left the mind of Zack Minasian.
For two decades, he managed clubhouses for the Texas Rangers. For two decades, Perry, Zack Jr., Calvin and Rudy took turns helping him.
And during a good chunk of those years , Perry and Zack Jr. spread themselves out on the floor to play their own makeshift version of fantasy baseball. They would draft teams based on a set of rules.
“They would do salary caps and have a budget for each team,” the elder Minasian said. “It was involved — and they were kids.”
This is as perfect a story as the league could dream up and here in the early season we get the first chapter in this family rivalry. One that probably doesn’t have a lot of trash talk going into it, so let me get the ball rolling.
Zack Minasian is probably doing a lot more work than we think. Buster Posey looks to have left him with the day to day operation of the club so that he could maintain a bird’s eye view, and so I really think the Minasians have roled up their sleeves to do equal work for their respective clubs, even if Perry’s job is much, much harder. Oh sure, Zack might have more pressure because the Giants are expected to compete for a playoff spot every year, but Perry has been the hospice nurse for Mike Trout’s now-borderline Hall of Fame career, helping it pass comfortably without a trip to the postseason in the final 10+ years.
Perry had to mortgage the team’s future in Shohei Ohtani’s final season rather than trade him. Meanwhile, Zack is wondering how many more right-handed bats he can squeeze onto the unstoppable killing machine of a lineup he’s built. The Angels are struggling in a soft division. The Giants are excelling in a brutal one. Zack is proving that the youngest child always gets the most attention and the least responsibilities, right?
I’m not so sure. Having Buster Posey as the organization’s figurehead rather than Arte Moreno is a tremendous advantage. The Giants also have a base and track record of developing quality major league arms. The Angels have sort of been floundering there. Perry’s problems could’ve been mitigated a bit by a healthier Trout, who has played in just 129 games since the end of the 2022 season — his last great year (6.1 rWAR).
But probably not by much.
Just last season, Sam Blum wrote for The Athletic that “The no-depth Angels have become a second-chance haven,” an absolutely brutal label for a major league club. I’m not sure how much of an anchor Anthony Rendon’s $36.6 million salary per season has been for the entire baseball operation, but given that he’s had just 1,095 plate appearances since the start of 2020 (and zero this season), I think it’s fair to say that it’s been at least a little bit of a problem. Maybe that whole $36 million wouldn’t go back into the club, but some of that might’ve been used to aid in player development or pick up some slightly better depth along the way. Their last couple of offseasons have seem them add the likes of Yusei Kikuchi, Robert Stephenson, and Jorge Soler.
Coming into this season, they were 312-396 under Perry. They started this season 8-4, their best start since 2018. They’re back to 9-9 as they host the Giants this weekend. They’re a bit of a mess, as they so often have been. But they’ve also won the last two season series over the Giants and — most importantly — the record has a stronger context than “lol that’s so Angels.” They’ve played just three home games so far in 2025.
Having said that, the Giants haven’t really been out of any of their games yet. The Angels have one of the worst bullpens in the sport here in the early going (5.91 ERA / 5.18 FIP). Even if their average offense can get to the Giants starters, this series could be really fun late.
Series overview
Who: San Francisco Giants at Los Angeles Angels
Where: Angel Stadium | Anaheim, California
When: Friday & Saturday at 6:38pm PT, Sunday at 1:07pm PT
National broadcasts: MLB Network (Friday & Sunday)
Projected starters
Friday: Logan Webb (RHP, 2-0, 2.63 ERA) vs. Tyler Anderson (LHP, 1-0, 2.87 ERA)
Saturday: Landen Roupp (RHP, 1-1, 4.80 ERA) vs. Kyle Hendricks (RHP, 0-1, 4.20 ERA)
Sunday: Justin Verlander (RHP, 0-1, 6.75 ERA) vs. Yusei Kikuchi (LHP, 0-3, 4.13 ERA)
Where they stand
Giants, 13-6 (3rd in NL West), 104 RS / 72 RA | Last 10: 5-5
Angels, 9-9 (3rd in AL West), 79 RS / 90 RA | Last 10: 4-6
Angels to watch
Mike Trout: It’s important to remember that he had two meniscus tears last season. He will turn 34 on August 7th. It feels pretty safe to say that his best days are behind him, but how much good is left in that bat and body? Well, he has 6 home runs in 18 games this season, so that’s something. Still, after hitting .171/.311/.457 in his first 10 games, he’s slashing .188/.235/.469 in his most recent 8, all road games. I’m interested to see him on the field again. The last time I can remember watching him play was when Shohei Ohtani struck him out to end the WBC.
When a player has done well against the Giants, I think that will carryover no matter their age or health status. A one-legged, one-armed Paul Goldschmidt would still destroy the Giants, I’m convinced; a post-peak, post-knees Mike Trout occupies the same anxiety slot. For his career he’s slashing .373/.429/.804 with 5 HR and 4 stolen bases against the Giants (13 games, 56 PA).
Kyle Hendricks: A soft-tossing righty should not have a place in modern baseball, and so it seems this veteran’s roster spot is quite tenuous and another sign of the Angels needing to scrape the bottom of the barrel to field a team. But as tough as it’s been for Hendricks post-2020 (4.78 ERA / 4.62 FIP in 548 IP, 1.1 rWAR), he’s always found a way to shutdown the Giants. For his career: 7-3, 2.33 ERA in 89 IP (14 starts), with a 0.91 WHIP! Post-2020:
3-1, 2.60 ERA in 38.1 IP (6 starts), with a 0.89 WHIP!
Does he still have the anti-Giants juice????
Jorge Soler & Taylor Ward: The Giants traded Soler to Atlanta who then traded him to the Angels this offseason. With the Giants (392 PA), he his .240/.330/.419 with 12 home runs. Since then, for both Atlanta and Los Angeheim: 13 HR in 257 PA. In the same 8 game stretch I highlighted above for Trout, Soler’s 9-for-29 with a pair of homers (.310/.394/.552). Will he rain down vengeance for being tossed aside?
Meanwhile, Ward has a 118 wRC+ since the start of 2022, 58th in MLB and right in the zone of Matt Chapman to J.D. Martinez. He’s just 1-for-24 in his career against the Giants.
Kyren Paris: I usually keep these to three players, but I must spotlight 23-year old Paris who has had an exciting start to the season. He’s 15-for-46 with 5 home runs, a double, a triple, and 5 stolen bases. Crucially, he’s 1-for-his-last-11 with 6 strikeouts and 0 walks, but just looking at his Savant profile, if I had to do a quick-and-dirty assessment, I’d say he’s Jerar Encarnacion with lots and lots of speed. Brent Maguire over at MLB.com might disagree, though, as just the other day he wrote about how Paris is doing a “peak Mike Trout impression.” Gulp?
Giants to watch
Luis Matos & Casey Schmitt: With a pair of lefties starting this series, it seems like we’ll see a bit more of the Giants’ bench, in which case these two might need to produce some offense if the Angels’ pitching plan expends most of its energy neutralizing Chapman, Adames, and Flores. Adames was the DH in the Philly finale which moved Fitzgerald over to short. Might Chapman get a DH game this series that moves Schmitt to third?
Matt Chapman: I was a little surprised to realize that Chapman’s home run in the Philly finale was his first in 11 games, but here’s hoping he keeps the good times rolling. He’s played in Angel Stadium 44 times across his career and in 190 PA he’s hitting .265/.347/.584 with 12 home runs, 11 doubles, and 3 triples.
Justin Verlander: For The Athletic this morning, Grant Brisbee reminded us all that it’s still too early to consider the Giants’ starting rotation as some kind of weakness. Justin Verlander’s season was under a microscope the moment he signed his contract, of course, and the results have put his career much closer to the cooked end of the spectrum. He has faced the Angels a lot in his career (220.2 IP). 3 of his 17 starts he made last season were against them and he had a 7+ ERA. The Angels’ lineup has a stark contrast of veterans and youngsters and so this will be a tough test.