Both Of The Arms San Francisco Added Saturday Last Pitched On August 23

Matt Wilkinson last pitched on August 23. So did Seth Lonsway.

That is what the two of them have in common, and it is a better explanation of San Francisco's Saturday than anything in either man's record.

The Giants made three moves before lunch. Wilkinson was recalled from Sacramento. The contract of Seth Lonsway was selected from Sacramento. Spencer Bivens was optioned to Sacramento, having thrown fifty pitches on Friday night. Two arms up, one arm down, all three of them on the same road, and a doubleheader that begins at 1:05 in the afternoon and finishes some time after ten at night.

Arizona named Merrill Kelly for the first game and Mitch Bratt for the second, and did it the way clubs normally do, which is in advance. San Francisco named nobody for either one until late in the morning, when it posted Matt Wilkinson for the opener. Wilkinson had been a member of the organization's Triple-A club four hours earlier. The second game still says TBD.

Seventeen games are on today's major league schedule, which is thirty-four starting pitchers. At mid-morning, thirty-one of those slots had a name in them. Two of the three that did not were the Giants'. An hour later San Francisco had filled one of its own, and the last two blanks in the sport belonged to the Giants and the Red Sox.

The reason is short and it is not a secret. Logan Webb started Wednesday and threw ninety-seven pitches. Landen Roupp started Thursday and threw ninety-five. Blade Tidwell started Friday and threw a hundred, and gave up six runs, and San Francisco lost 10-6. Ten men have started a game for this club in 2026. Six of them cannot start another one this week: Robbie Ray and Tyler Mahle were traded in the first three days of August, and Trevor McDonald, Carson Whisenhunt, Adrian Houser and JT Brubaker are on the injured list with, in order, an elbow, an elbow, a forearm and a set of bruised ribs. That leaves four, and three of the four pitched Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

So the club went shopping in its own system on the morning of the games, and what it came back with is worth looking at slowly.

Lonsway is 27 years old, throws left-handed, and has never appeared in a major league game. San Francisco signed him in July 2021, which means the organization has had him for five years and one month and put him on the 40-man roster this morning. At Sacramento this season he has appeared twenty times, started sixteen of them, thrown seventy-two innings, and posted a 6.00 earned run average. He has struck out forty-five men. He has walked forty-nine. Opponents are hitting .295 against him and his record is 1-5.

(It has not always looked like this. In six appearances at Double-A Richmond in 2024 he struck out twenty-six and walked seven, in thirty-two and two thirds innings, with a 1.38 earned run average. Triple-A is where the walks arrived.)

San Francisco is 55-80, so nobody has to pretend this was a promotion on merit. It was a promotion on the calendar.

On August 23, Lonsway started for Sacramento and went six innings on ninety-eight pitches, walking two. Ninety-eight is the most he has thrown in a game this year and six innings ties the most he has gone, which he had done twice before, both times this month. Six days later he is rested and he is stretched out, and there is nobody else in the organization who is both at once.

Wilkinson is the same case with better peripherals. He is 23, he has two major league starts to his name, and at Sacramento this year he has struck out forty-three in forty-three and two thirds innings while walking seventeen, which is a strikeout-to-walk ratio you can build something on. He also last pitched on August 23, three and two thirds innings on sixty-six pitches at Oracle Park. He was optioned the next day, and a pitcher who is optioned normally has to stay down fifteen days, which would have made him ineligible until September 8. A doubleheader lets a club borrow a twenty-seventh man for the day and waives that minimum, which is the entire reason he is standing in the home clubhouse this morning instead of watching on a television in Sacramento.

Nobody chose these two off a leaderboard. They were chosen off a calendar.

(No blame in that. A pitching staff is a set of dates before it is a set of talents, and a club that traded four pitchers in the first three days of August and has put five more on the injured list since is going to be reading dates for a while.)

The 40-man roster now reads thirty-nine of forty, one spot open. The active roster reads twenty-seven men, fourteen of them pitchers, one more body than a club may carry on a day it plays once.

And Lonsway is the second 27-year-old in four days whose contract this club has selected without his ever having pitched in the major leagues. Braxton Roxby was the first, on Wednesday, and he made his debut Friday night in the ninth inning of a game San Francisco was losing by four. One inning, seventeen pitches, no runs. Two 40-man spots in four days, spent on two 27-year-olds who had never been up.

The prospects everybody wants to talk about are several levels down and cannot pitch this afternoon. The shelf that matters in August is the one directly above them, and San Francisco has been standing at it all week.

Tuesday makes some of this go away. Rosters expand to twenty-eight on September 1, and after that San Francisco can keep an extra arm instead of borrowing one for an afternoon. That is three days from now, and there are eighteen innings in between.

Anyway. Somebody walks out to the mound at Oracle Park at five past one, and the club took until late in the morning to say who.

It is the man it borrowed for the afternoon.

Sources: San Francisco's active roster, 40-man roster, transaction log, schedule, standings and the 2026 pitching records and game logs of every player named, from the MLB Stats API for teamId 137 and sportId 11, retrieved on the morning of August 29, 2026, the first call stamped at 10:18 a.m. Pacific and the last before 11:00. Both Arizona starters, and the two TBD entries as they stood at mid-morning, from MLB.com's Giants probable pitchers page, read inside the same window. The starter for the first game, the remaining TBD for the second, and the league-wide count of two unfilled slots were re-read from the schedule endpoint at 11:51 a.m. Pacific, before publication. Wilkinson's and Lonsway's August 23 outings, Friday's box score and Friday's line score from the official game records. The 27th man rule and the September 1 roster expansion from MLB's published roster rules.