Great timing, Tyler Fitzgerald!

The Giants get back a power-speed threat at exactly the right time.

It’s Major League Baseball’s inaugural “rivalry weekend,” and the San Francisco Giants will host the Athletics of Arabia or whatever. I’m not sure there’s much of a rivalry left here, as the A’s have been forcibly uprooted from Oakland (meaning out of the Bay Area) and into the Giants’ Triple-A stadium. About the only edge the A’s have left is their tendency to find a lot of young, useful talent, even if the total roster doesn’t cohere. But the Giants can match them at least a little bit, thanks to second baseman Tyler Fitzgerald, activated ahead of tonight’s game.

Fitzgerald is that anonymous guy with a couple of plus skills that just hangs around causing damage to major league pitching. The power-speed threat had been on the IL since May 1st due to a fractured rib sustained while diving for a ball. He’d really started to heat up at the plate before the injury, slashing .371/.421/.657 with a pair of homers, a pair of doubles, and a triple in 38 PA before the injury. He rehabbed for just 3 games in Sacramento and was 3-for-10 with a double.

With the Giants facing two left-handed starters in this series, he’s a value add. Not that Christian Koss had been awful as his fill-in, but Fitzgerald’s power is better and in a very, very small sample here in 2025, Tyler is 9-for-27 with a homer and triple against lefties. This will be a huge boost to the Giants’ season line against lefties (.226/.291/.376)— at least in theory. It’s never easy to shakeoff the cobwebs against major league pitching.

Brett Wisely wound up being optioned to free up the roster spot, and it’s for the best. Koss seems to have gained team mascot status while Wisely’s 0-for-10 has been so egregious that every action he’s taken has been basically negative value. As Brady posted a couple of weeks ago when he arrived to replace the injured Fitzgerald:

Welcome back, Tyler Fitzgerald!