SnogBlogy

SAN FRANCISCO — First pitch was at 6:46 p.m. Wednesday night. It was 64 degrees and mostly clear with a chance of Wham!

John Brebbia, who would be the cheekiest member of the Giants bullpen if his actual cheeks weren’t hidden behind an enormous red beard, has bounced to “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” as his entrance music all season. Why should that change just because he happens to be pitching the first inning?

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Brebbia made his National League-leading 72nd appearance Wednesday. It was his ninth opening assignment. Two flyouts, one strikeout and a sticky-hand check later, Brebbia’s work day against the Colorado Rockies was done.

As openers go, Brebbia has made it as easy as a twist-off. He hasn’t allowed a run in any of his nine lid-lifters.

A reliever never plans on going solo, and the Giants bullpen has been a yo-yo all season. But Brebbia hasn’t missed that high. The Giants signed him prior to last season with the expectation that he would be working his way back following rehab from Tommy John surgery. They’ve been rewarded with one of the most durable and consistent relief pitchers in the NL. Brebbia has a 2.77 ERA while being used in almost every conceivable role.

The opener is becoming a forte. His clean first inning Wednesday marked his sixth opener in September and the fourth time he’s opened in the Giants’ past 11 games. It’s a decent bet he’ll get at least one more assignment before the season ends, and if so, he’d become just the seventh major league reliever in history (have openers been around long enough to have a history?) to open 10 times in a season. There’s no catching Ryne Stanek, who opened 29 times for the Tampa Bay Rays in 2018 and 27 times in 2019. But Brebbia could become the first pitcher on that list to post a spotless ERA in those assignments.

John Brebbia with an all-time reaction to ball four 😂 pic.twitter.com/ZvFJd48iYl

— Alex Pavlovic (@PavlovicNBCS) July 2, 2022

The transition might have appeared seamless, but Brebbia said it has involved some strategy. For instance, he had no idea how long he should give himself to warm up.

“I know it takes me an inning and a half,” he said. “How long is a half-inning? I had no idea. I never had to think about that before. I had to work backwards and figure that out.”

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It was a minor inconvenience. But Brebbia is accustomed to those. Every baseball season, he starts clean-shaven in spring training and then puts away the razor blades until October. He puts up with the daily grooming demands of a beard that doesn’t grow on his face as much as it engulfs it. He has to condition and comb it. He has to tolerate a wet face hours after he’s toweled off following a shower.

“It’s this really nice balance of stubbornness with stupidity that I’ve got going on,” Brebbia said. “Usually shortly after the All-Star break, it starts to get on my nerves a little. But you’ve got to keep it clean and smooth, right? It has to glisten.”

Preferably without grease or goop. By the end of July, every meal or snack becomes a careful risk/reward calibration. Soup is a non-starter, which isn’t an issue, since who orders a hot bowl of soup in the summertime? But breakfast is another story. It’s a daily test of surgical precision.

“Ohhhh, yogurt,” Brebbia said, letting out a puff of air. “Pretty much every morning I’m firing yogurt in there. Anything not purely a solid is really difficult. But I’m refusing to let it beat me. I’m trying to beat it.”

Mention the concept of corn on the cob to Brebbia and he’ll give you a wild stare.

“I have not had that in a while, but … yes, I can see an issue there,” he said. “Chicken wings are tough. Anything with sauce, really.

“You know, honestly, I don’t know anyone who likes the beard. It’s just a thing that happens now.”

Yet he’s remained committed to the fur face every season since 2014, after the Yankees released him as an A-ball reliever and he caught on with the Sioux Falls Canaries in the independent American Association. The following year, he pitched on the indy ball circuit again with the Laredo Lemurs. Brebbia, who was a 30th-round pick out of Elon University, showed enough promise to get a minor league contract with the St. Louis Cardinals. He worked his way to his major league debut in 2017.

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“I started it as a nice little daily reminder that baseball is supposed to be fun,” Brebbia said. “Every time I look at it, I think, ‘Oh, that’s right. I’ve been fired before and it was miserable.’ But then I made the decision to play for fun and it was the greatest time I’ve ever had.

“So that’s why I keep it. It’s well worth the tradeoff of, ‘Great, this thing is dripping wet after the game because I can’t dry it off.’”

Brebbia sticks to one other annual grooming tradition. He makes a point to shave the morning of photo day in spring training. He gets an endless kick out of juxtaposing his boyish mugshot on the scoreboard with the bearded version that makes him look like his best friend is an anthropomorphic volleyball.

“It really is the best part about it,” clean-shaven right-hander Tyler Rogers said. “It’s fun to look at the scoreboard when he comes in. I wish I could rock a beard like that.”

Rogers has led the NL in appearances each of the two previous years, racking up 80 games last season and pitching in 29 of 60 games in 2020’s pandemic-shortened season. He’ll be rooting for his teammate to take the most-used mantle this season.

“As they say, the best ability is availability,” said Rogers, who has made 66 appearances this year. “It takes a lot of pride and a lot of hard work to stay healthy throughout the year. And it shows consistency. You can’t lead the league in appearances if you’re not trusted. They have to believe in you.”

The Giants must fortify their bullpen over the winter and they’ll be on the lookout for more pitchers like Brebbia, to whom the Cardinals did not tender a contract following his elbow reconstruction surgery. But given his durability and consistency, Brebbia should be well worth what he’ll command in his final year of arbitration eligibility. It’s helped that the Giants coaching staff has paced him well. Even though he leads the NL with 72 appearances, he’s only been asked to pitch on back-to-back days 15 times.

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A year ago, those back-to-back assignments were problematic.

“Durability was number one on the list for me this year,” Brebbia said. “Just being able to recover outing to outing, not having as much inconsistency with how I felt on a daily basis. I wanted to make sure that was out of the way. So that’s a good box to check. I was supposed to feel more or less normal this year and I did feel more or less normal.”

Normal being a relative term, of course.

A few weeks ago, I was asked to administer a short questionnaire to players about the postseason. One of the questions: Who would be your choice to start Game 7 of the World Series?

Brebbia chewed on the question for a full 20 seconds.

“Can I go with an opener?” he said.

(Photo: D. Ross Cameron / USA Today)

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