The Giants are dealing with yet another injury. Blade Tidwell made an early exit from tonight’s 5-2 victory over Minnesota. Manager Tony Vitello told reporters postgame that the right-hander felt elbow discomfort and will go for further testing on Tuesday (via Alex Pavlovic of NBC Sports Bay Area and Susan Slusser of The San Francisco Chronicle).
Tidwell was out to a nice start this evening, with a Brooks Lee solo homer his only blemish across 3 1/3 innings. He spiked a breaking ball to Ryan Jeffers in the top of the fourth and grimaced, then immediately signaled to the dugout. While it’s too soon to know whether there’s any ligament damage, that’ll obviously be the main concern until he gets the testing results.
San Francisco acquired Tidwell from the Mets last summer as part of their return for Tyler Rogers. The University of Tennessee product reunited with his college coach when the Giants hired Vitello over the winter. Tidwell got some run with the major league club early in the season as a reliever. He spent the next couple months in Triple-A but has held a rotation spot since the Giants shipped out Tyler Mahle and Robbie Ray at the deadline.
Tidwell has worked 56 2/3 innings of 4.45 ERA ball in his first MLB look of note. He has fanned just under 20% of opponents against a 9% walk rate. While hardly a dominant performance, he’s done enough to hold a spot in a Giants rotation that has been hit hard by injury.
San Francisco has already lost three early-career starters to elbow surgeries. Hayden Birdsong required Tommy John surgery during Spring Training, while Trevor McDonald and Carson Whisenhunt went down after the All-Star Break. Veteran righty Adrian Houser also suffered a season-ending flexor strain in August, though there’s nothing to suggest he’s facing surgical rehab.
The Giants are down five starters overall, as they also opted to shut Logan Webb down last week. (Webb has a blister and presumably would’ve pitched through it had the team been competitive.) Tidwell figures to join them even if imaging comes back clean, as there’s no upside in bringing him back for what would’ve been his final start this weekend against the Dodgers.
Anthony Molina and Cesar Perdomo will start the final two games of the Minnesota series. The Giants can run some combination of Landen Roupp, Matt Wilkinson and Yunior Marte for the Dodgers series. If they do place Tidwell on the injured list to bring up another arm, he’d incredibly be their 24th player (and 14th pitcher) on the big league IL.