Spencer Bivens Threw More Innings In Sacramento Than Any Giants Reliever Threw In San Francisco

The Kansas City Royals claimed a relief pitcher off waivers on Saturday and optioned him to Omaha the same day. Both clubs' transaction feeds carry it in one line apiece, which is a generous amount of room for a 66-83 team adding a 32-year-old with a 14.40 earned run average.

Here is the number that is in neither line.

Spencer Bivens threw 75 innings for Sacramento this season, in 35 appearances, at a 4.92 earned run average. No pitcher San Francisco used out of its bullpen threw that many innings in the major leagues this year.

Not close, either. The most major league innings thrown by any Giant who made fewer than two starts belong to JT Brubaker, at 60.1. Among the pitchers who started nothing at all, Caleb Kilian leads with 44.1 in 45 games, then Keaton Winn at 43.0, Dylan Smith at 34.1, Sam Hentges at 33.0. Bivens threw 75 innings for the River Cats and five for the Giants, and the five are the ones everybody has.

The five are real and they are terrible#

No part of this is an argument that Bivens pitched well, so let us get the prosecution in early.

He faced Toronto on July 6 and July 8 and got through an inning each time without a run. Then Cincinnati scored four earned runs off him in one inning on August 26, Arizona scored four more in two innings on August 28, and that is the whole major league season: four appearances, five innings, eight earned runs, 14.40. Sacramento is not a character witness either. A 4.92 in the Pacific Coast League is a man holding a job, not a man taking one.

So San Francisco designated him on September 9, the same day it claimed Duncan Davitt off Atlanta's waiver wire. Since then Bivens has not pitched anywhere. His last outing of any kind was four innings for Sacramento on September 5.

What eighty innings is worth to a club that cannot find forty-five#

The part worth stopping on is not the earned run average. It is the workload, and where the workload went.

Last year Bivens threw 81 innings in 54 games for San Francisco, which was more than any other reliever on the roster: more than Ryan Walker's 61.1, more than Randy Rodríguez, more than Tyler Rogers. He finished fifth on the entire pitching staff in innings, behind four starters and nobody else. That is not a good season, at 4.00. It is a durable one, and durability in a bullpen is a job description.

This year the same organization got 80 innings out of the same arm and used five of them, while no pitcher it used only in relief threw more than 44.1 innings in the major leagues. The innings did not evaporate. They happened, on schedule, roughly every third day from late March to September 5. They happened in Sacramento.

(There is a tidy version of this where the Giants are fools and a 32-year-old sinker-and-sweeper reliever was the answer all along. That version is wrong. He gave up eight runs in five chances and a 62-87 club is allowed to look at that and decide a 40-man spot can do better. The interesting thing is not that they were wrong. It is that they were in a position to be asked.)

The spot came from the Bronx, eventually#

The roster arithmetic on both sides is worth a minute, because it explains why this transaction could happen at all in the second week of September.

San Francisco's 40-man never moved. The endpoint returns 55 names with 15 on the 60-day injured list, which is 40 of 40, and it was 40 of 40 before Bivens was designated too. Davitt took his place the hour he vacated it. The designation opened a window on September 9, closed it on September 12, and produced no vacancy at any point in between. Davitt is still there, in the minor leagues, where he has not thrown a pitch for the organization.

Kansas City's side had an actual hole in it, and it had been open since Labor Day weekend. The Yankees claimed John Schreiber off Royals waivers on August 31. Kansas City selected Drew Waters the next day, designated him the day after that, and outrighted him to Omaha on September 4. (Waters was on the 40-man roster for roughly 26 hours. Somewhere there is a man whose job is printing the nameplates.) From September 2 the spot sat empty. Ten days later the Royals spent it on Spencer Bivens, and their 40-man now reads 49 names with nine on the 60-day list. Forty of forty. Everybody is full again.

San Francisco has designated 13 players for assignment in 2026. Another club has claimed exactly two of them: Jared Oliva, to the Mets in June, and Bivens on Saturday. Eleven times this year the Giants have given up on somebody and the rest of baseball has agreed with them.

Anyway#

Both clubs have 13 games left and both finish on September 27. San Francisco is eliminated in both columns. Kansas City is not, technically, in the sense that a club with an elimination number of three is still alive the way a candle in a hallway is still lit.

Omaha's season ends on September 20, eight games from now. After that, the only way Spencer Bivens throws another pitch in 2026 is if the Royals decide they want to see him, which is a strange thing to say about a man who has just been claimed for the purpose of being seen.

What Kansas City actually bought is the winter. He is on their 40-man now, and 40-man spots in November are the whole ballgame for clubs like this one. They looked at a pitcher who has covered roughly 80 innings a year for three straight seasons at whatever level you put him, decided that was worth one of their forty, and put him somewhere he cannot pitch.

San Francisco had the same pitcher, the same 80 innings and the same problem finding anyone to throw 45 of them in a big league uniform, and let him go for nothing on a Saturday.

Sources: MLB Stats API, read the morning of September 13, 2026: the 2026 transaction logs for teamId 137 and teamId 118; the 40-man rosters for both clubs; the season, year-by-year and game log pitching records for person 702352 at sportId 1 and sportId 11; team pitching leaders for teamId 137 in 2025 and 2026; the 2026 American League and National League standings; and the remaining schedules for both major league clubs and for Omaha and Sacramento.