A Rainout In Atlanta In June Left The Giants Needing Two Starters On Saturday

Anthony Molina came into Tuesday night's game with two outs in the second inning, because Adrian Houser's forearm had just ended his night five outs in, and somebody had to throw the other twenty-two. Molina threw thirteen of them. Four and a third innings, fourteen batters, no runs, and San Francisco won 3-1.

That is a nice line for a man with fifty-six major league games and a 6.60 earned run average behind him. It is also the closest thing the Giants have to a fifth starter, and the schedule is about to ask them to prove it twice in one afternoon and evening.

Here is what the next four days actually contain.

Friday night, Arizona at Oracle Park, and Blade Tidwell has the ball. Saturday at 1:05 p.m., Arizona again. Saturday at 7:05 p.m., Arizona a third time, because those two games are a split doubleheader. Sunday, nothing. Monday evening in Atlanta, one game, and then the club flies to Pittsburgh.

Four starts. One name.

The doubleheader is not weather and it is not this week's problem. It was arranged on June 23, five days after rain washed out a Giants game at Truist Park, and the arrangement was tidy: move the Sunday game up to Saturday, give both clubs Sunday off, and let San Francisco travel across the country on the empty day before playing the makeup on Monday. In June that was a courtesy. On June 23 the rotation was Robbie Ray, Tyler Mahle, Landen Roupp, Trevor McDonald and Logan Webb, and it turned over in that order for the rest of the month.

They have three now, and the count of how they got here is worth doing slowly, because it is worse than the injury list makes it look.

Ten men have started a game for San Francisco this season. Robbie Ray, who had made twenty-one of them, was traded to San Diego on August 3. Tyler Mahle, who had made eighteen, went to Atlanta the day before. Trevor McDonald, fourteen starts, went to the 60-day injured list on August 13 and has had season-ending Tommy John surgery. Carson Whisenhunt, eight starts, was diagnosed with a torn ulnar collateral ligament in his left elbow on Tuesday and moved to the 60-day list on Wednesday. Houser, sixteen starts, went on the 15-day list Wednesday and cannot be activated before September 10. JT Brubaker, one start, has been on the 15-day list with bruised ribs since August 24. Matt Wilkinson, two starts, was optioned to Sacramento on August 24.

Seven of the ten. Not one of them can pitch on Saturday.

What is left is Logan Webb, who started Wednesday, Landen Roupp, who starts tonight, and Tidwell, who starts Friday. Every one of the three is spoken for before the doubleheader begins.

So the Giants will use somebody else, and who that somebody else can be is settled by a rule nobody thinks about until a club runs out of arms.

A club may carry twenty-six players and no more than thirteen pitchers, and that limit holds through August 31. San Francisco is carrying thirteen. There is no room to add an arm by subtraction unless somebody goes on the injured list, which is a solution nobody schedules on purpose. On September 1 the roster goes to twenty-eight and the pitcher limit to fourteen, which would help enormously, and which arrives the day after the four days end.

The one door open before then is the doubleheader itself. A club playing two games in a day may recall a twenty-seventh man off the 40-man roster for that day only, and the league's own rule waives the option minimum for him. That matters here more than usual. Wilkinson made two starts for the Giants this month, threw two innings in the first of them and three and two thirds in the second, and was sent down on August 24. A pitcher who is optioned normally has to stay down fifteen days, which puts him at September 8. Saturday is the exception. The man who most recently started a major league game for this club can pitch in one on Saturday, or he can wait a week and a half.

The rest of the field is on the roster already, and their Triple-A lines are the only evidence there is.

Molina has made twelve starts in Triple-A this year, nine of them at Gwinnett before Atlanta traded him and three since at Sacramento, sixty-three and a third innings and a 3.55 earned run average. He has two major league starts in his life and both were for Colorado. Carson Seymour has nine Triple-A starts and seventy-six innings, but the Giants have used him in relief six times since August 11, including Monday and Tuesday. Trent Harris has three Triple-A starts among twenty-nine appearances and has not thrown more than two innings in a major league game. Braxton Roxby, selected Wednesday, has made thirty-six appearances at Sacramento this season and started none of them, though Tony Vitello did say the appeal was that he can provide length.

Length is the whole question. San Francisco needed five relievers on Wednesday after Webb's six innings, and lost 10-9, and that was a normal Wednesday. Saturday is two games and eighteen innings if nobody goes extra, and the club will have fourteen arms at the outside, thirteen plus the one the doubleheader lets it borrow.

Nobody has been named for any of it. Not for Saturday afternoon, not for Saturday night, not for Monday in Atlanta. That is not a club being cagey four days out. It is a club that has three starting pitchers, a rulebook that says thirteen until Tuesday, and a Saturday that a June rainstorm turned into two.

Molina found out he was pitching on Tuesday when Houser's forearm gave out in front of him. Saturday would be an improvement if somebody told him on Friday.

Sources: San Francisco's schedule, probable pitchers, transaction log, 40-man and active rosters, standings, and the 2026 pitching records and game logs of every player named, from the MLB Stats API for teamId 137, retrieved August 27, 2026 between 10:11 and 10:22 a.m. Pacific. The 26-man roster and 27th man rules, including the thirteen-pitcher limit, the September 1 expansion and the option-minimum waiver, quoted from MLB.com's own glossary entries "26-man Roster" and "27th Man." The doubleheader's announcement date, times and cause from MLB.com, June 23, 2026. Houser's placement, Whisenhunt's diagnosis, the McDonald surgery and the Vitello quotation from Maria Guardado, MLB.com, August 26, 2026.