San Francisco Got The Better MRI And Called Up A Man Who Has Never Pitched Up Here

Adrian Houser's MRI came back on Wednesday, and it found a strain in his right forearm. That is the answer San Francisco wanted, on the grounds that the other answer available this week was a torn ulnar collateral ligament, and the Giants had already read that one. On Tuesday. On a different pitcher. In a different elbow.

Then they made the roster move, and the roster move is the thing worth looking at, because it is the move a club makes when the news is good and also the move it makes when the news is bad.

Houser went on the 15-day injured list. Carson Whisenhunt, whose ligament is the torn one, went from the 15-day list to the 60-day. And San Francisco selected the contract of Braxton Roxby, a 27-year-old right-handed reliever from Johnstown, Pennsylvania, who has been paid to pitch since 2020 and has never been in a major league game.

He has pitched in 211 minor league games. None up here.

The good answer and the bad answer land in the same week#

The distinction between the two elbows is real and it is worth keeping straight, because the words get used loosely. The flexor is a muscle in the forearm, near the inside of the elbow. Houser strained muscle. Whisenhunt tore ligament. Alex Pavlovic of NBC Sports Bay Area reported Wednesday that Whisenhunt is taking one more opinion before the operation, and Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle has the decision that is left: whether it is an internal brace or a full reconstruction. Either one is most of 2027.

Where the distinction stops mattering is the calendar, and this is the part the Giants already know.

Houser said Tuesday night that the arm felt like the flexor strain he had with Milwaukee in 2022, and the comparison holds up better than a player's own guess usually does. Major League Baseball's transaction log calls the 2022 injury a right flexor strain and calls this one a right forearm strain, which is the same piece of him written down two ways. Milwaukee put him on the injured list on July 1, 2022, and activated him on August 24. Fifty-four days.

Fifty-four days from Wednesday is October 19. San Francisco's last scheduled game is September 27. Houser would have to beat his own recovery by three weeks to throw another pitch that counts this year, and nobody has said he will not, and nobody has said he will. (MLB Trade Rumors put it at "at least a couple of weeks," which is a floor and is doing honest work as one.)

Anyway. The 60-day transfer settles the same question for Whisenhunt without anybody having to talk about it. Sixty days from his August 25 placement is October 24, which is 27 days after the Giants are finished playing. The paperwork was already true. It is now also filed.

Roxby is what the last month of a lost season is for#

The Giants are 54-79, 26 and a half games back, with an elimination number of four and 29 games to play. Eleven men are on their 60-day injured list and eight of those are pitchers. A club in that condition is not calling up a reliever to protect a lead in a race, and Roxby has not been called up because he suddenly got good.

Here is the honest version of his season, which is more interesting than a promotion story usually is.

From 2021 through 2025 Roxby struck out 315 of the 1,023 hitters he faced in the minors, which is 30.8 percent, and that rate is the reason a 27-year-old with a 4.12 earned run average over 231.2 innings was still a live prospect at all. This year at Sacramento he has struck out 53 of 234, which is 22.6 percent. Eight points of strikeout rate, gone, in the season he finally got the phone call.

The rest of the line is not bad and it is not tidy. Thirty-six games, 57 innings, a 4.11 earned run average, a 1.18 WHIP, and a .205 average against, which says hitters are not squaring him up. They are also not swinging through him, and they are walking: 26 free passes, 11.1 percent of the 234 he faced. The traffic on his bases is mostly traffic he issued.

He got to San Francisco in January 2025 as the player Cincinnati sent back when the Giants moved Taylor Rogers and cash, which is to say he arrived as the receipt on a salary trade rather than as anybody's plan. Cincinnati had signed him as a free agent in June 2020, the summer the draft was cut to five rounds. He spent three seasons at High-A Dayton. He was better at Double-A Richmond last year, a 1.20 earned run average over 30 innings, than he has been at Triple-A Sacramento in either of the two seasons he has spent there.

None of that is a knock on him. A September roster spot in a season like this one has a specific meaning, and it is this: the club has run out of reasons not to look, and looking is the only thing left that is worth anything in 2027.

Roxby is on the active roster. Six years of buses got him to Triple-A and a stranger's forearm got him the rest of the way, and both of those are how it usually goes.

San Francisco used six pitchers in a 10-9 loss to Cincinnati on Wednesday afternoon. None of them was Roxby.

The MRI was the good one. He is up here either way.

Sources: San Francisco's transaction log, 40-man and active rosters, standings and schedule, and Braxton Roxby's and Adrian Houser's career records, from the MLB Stats API, retrieved August 26, 2026. Houser's 2022 flexor strain dates are quoted from MLB's own transaction log for July 1 and August 24, 2022. Houser's comparison to that injury via Will Simonds, NBC Sports Bay Area, August 25, 2026. Whisenhunt's second opinion via Alex Pavlovic, NBC Sports Bay Area, and the internal brace question via Susan Slusser, San Francisco Chronicle, both August 26, 2026. The "at least a couple of weeks" line via MLB Trade Rumors, August 26, 2026.