San Francisco Claimed A Reliever Milwaukee Waived, So Ryan Walker Is Going To Sacramento For The Third Time

The Giants had fourteen pitchers on Saturday morning, and they wanted a different one.

That is harder than it sounds, because the room was full. San Francisco's active roster read 28 men and 14 pitchers when the club got to Citi Field, and so did everybody else's. All thirty major league rosters sat at exactly 28 players and exactly 14 pitchers when the wires opened, which is the sort of unanimity that tells you nobody is choosing. A full room is a full room. To let Joel Kuhnel in, one of the fourteen had to go out the other door.

They picked the pitcher who led this franchise in saves last season.

Ryan Walker was optioned to Triple-A Sacramento, and Kuhnel, claimed off waivers from Milwaukee on Friday, was activated in his place. Alex Pavlovic of NBC Sports Bay Area reported the pairing on Saturday morning. It is the third time San Francisco has optioned Walker this year.

Kuhnel is not the story here and it would be unkind to make him one. He is 31, he debuted in 2019, and he has pitched for three organizations in 2026: the Athletics selected his contract in April, traded him to Milwaukee for cash in June, and Milwaukee designated him for assignment on Wednesday. He has a 4.84 ERA in 35 games this year. He is a live arm on a bad team's September roster, which is a real job, and it happens to be a job that cost somebody else his.

Anyway. Here is where the somebody else has been.

May 10#

Walker opened the season in the ninth inning. He saved a game at San Diego on March 30, and he saved on both April 21 and April 22 against the Dodgers, and in between he blew leads on April 18, April 30 and May 3. Seven days after that last one he was optioned to Sacramento. The league's transaction log records no optional assignment for him between the day San Francisco selected his contract in May 2023 and this season.

The numbers underneath it were already ugly and the walk total was the ugliest part. Walker has issued 19 walks in 32.2 innings this season. In 2024 he issued 18 in 80.0 innings, threw 99 strikeouts against them, and finished with a 1.91 ERA and a WHIP of 0.85 across 76 appearances. A reliever who strikes out ninety-nine men and walks eighteen is a weapon. A reliever walking better than five men per nine innings is a decision the manager has to justify to himself before he makes it.

July 9#

He came back on June 12 and threw well for two weeks. Then Arizona happened.

On July 1 he faced four hitters at Chase Field, allowed four hits, allowed four runs, and recorded no outs. Not one. He appeared three more times after that and gave up a run in every one of them, including two home runs in an inning against Toronto at Oracle Park, and on July 9 he went back down.

That is the outing that reorganizes a season. Opponents have now scored on Walker in 16 of his 33 appearances, which is a coin flip dressed up as a bullpen role, and there is no way to use a reliever like that in a game that is close.

September 5#

The third one is the one that reads strangest, because September is the month rosters get bigger.

Walker was recalled on August 24 and pitched six times over eleven days: two scoreless innings against Cincinnati, two-thirds of a scoreless one against Cincinnati again, a clean inning against Arizona, and then two runs against Arizona on August 29 and one in each of his last two at Pittsburgh, four earned across 6.1 innings in total. That is a 5.68 ERA, which for him now counts as a stabilization. It was not enough, and it was never really going to be, because the club had a waiver claim it liked and a roster with no give in it.

Walker is not some late arrival the organization has no feelings about. San Francisco drafted him in the 31st round in 2018, No. 916 overall, out of Washington State, which is about as far down a draft board as a functioning major league reliever ever comes from. He got to the ninth inning the long way. Last season he recorded 17 of this club's 41 saves in 162 games, and Camilo Doval took 15 more. Two men had the ninth inning and everybody else in the bullpen combined for nine.

This season the Giants have 26 saves, in 142 games, and they have used ten different men to get them. Caleb Kilian leads with eight. Nobody else has more than four. That is not a bullpen with a closer in it; that is a bullpen with a whiteboard.

And Walker is one of a crowd in the other direction too. San Francisco has made 49 optional assignments in 2026, spread across 26 different players. Tristan Beck has been sent down six times and Will Brennan four. Walker's three ties him for fourth on his own team, with Carson Whisenhunt, Trevor McDonald and Spencer Bivens. The Sacramento shuttle has been the club's primary roster instrument all year, and the only thing unusual about Saturday's trip is who was on it.

The club is 58-84 through 142 games, eliminated in the National League West, with a wild-card elimination number of five. Twenty games remain, the last of them against the Dodgers on September 27, and none of them decide anything.

Here is the part Tony Vitello will have to sort out in about two weeks. Sacramento has 14 games left. Its regular season ends on September 20, seven days before San Francisco's does.

So Walker has been sent somewhere that finishes first.

Called Shots: two filed, on whether Walker pitches in the major leagues again this season and on whether he is on the 40-man roster next Opening Day.

Sources: MLB's transaction log and active-roster endpoint for teamId 137 and for all thirty clubs, read Saturday morning; MLB's season and game-log records for Walker (2023 to 2026) and Kuhnel (2019 to 2026); MLB's 2025 and 2026 pitching splits for San Francisco; the 2026 schedules for San Francisco and Sacramento; Alex Pavlovic of NBC Sports Bay Area on the swap, read in relay rather than at NBC.