Giants’ Tristan Beck Diagnosed With Aneurysm In Upper Arm

Feb. 29: The Giants announced this morning that Beck has been diagnosed with an aneurysm in his upper arm. He’s currently weighing his treatment options. The team will likely have more information in the coming days.

There’s no firm timetable on how long Beck might be sidelined, but manager Bob Melvin told reporters that he won’t be on the Opening Day roster (X link via Shayna Rubin of the San Francisco Chronicle). The Giants appear to be anticipating a fairly lengthy absence, though Melvin did not rule out the possibility that Beck could pitch for them at some point this season.

Feb. 27: Giants right-hander Tristan Beck has left the team’s spring complex and is traveling back to San Francisco to undergo testing after experiencing discomfort in his right hand, the team announced to reporters (X link via Alex Pavlovic of NBC Sports Bay Area). The team will provide further updates in the coming days.

Beck, 27, becomes the second Giants starter to incur an injury of some sort in camp. Fellow righty Keaton Winn has been slowed by a nerve issue in his pitching elbow. He resumed throwing Sunday but is at least a week behind the rest of the group. That’s good news, but early injury troubles for the Giants’ presumptive fourth and fifth starters is nevertheless unsettling — particularly given the patchwork nature of the starting staff behind ace Logan Webb.

The Giants are relying on Winn, Beck, top prospect Kyle Harrison and reliever-turned-starter Jordan Hicks to shoulder the bulk of the workload in the rotation. In terms of proven big league starters, it’s among the thinnest rotations in the game. Veterans Alex Cobb and Robbie Ray will eventually join that group, but both will very likely open the season on the injured list. Ray will be sidelined into the season’s second half as he recovers from last May’s Tommy John surgery. Cobb is on the mend from October hip surgery. A precise return date isn’t clear, but Pavlovic suggested a couple weeks back that Cobb was hoping to be cleared to face hitters by the end of spring training. That trajectory would likely sideline him into May, at the very least.

Beck came to the Giants by way of the 2019 trade that shipped former closer Mark Melancon to Atlanta. The former fourth-round pick made his MLB debut in 2023, pitching 85 innings of 3.92 ERA ball with a below-average 19.2% strikeout rate but a strong 5.9% walk rate. Most of that work came as a multi-inning reliever, however. Beck appeared in 33 games for San Francisco but made just three starts. He completed five innings only three times all season — twice in long relief and once in a start that marked his final appearance of the year.

Another injury scare for a Giants starter will only further spark speculation about the possibility of the Giants adding to the rotation. President of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi has downplayed the potential for any notable acquisitions following the team’s signing of Jorge Soler, but the Giants remain one of the most obvious fits for high-profile free agents like Blake Snell and Jordan Montgomery — both in terms of actual roster need and from a payroll vantage point. The team’s projected $164MM Opening Day payroll (via Roster Resource) is more than $36MM south of the franchise-record $200.5MM mark set back in 2018, and the Giants are also about $24MM shy of the luxury-tax threshold.

If the Giants are strictly averse to shelling out the requisite years and dollars needed to bring in Snell or Montgomery, there are still alternatives on the free agent market. Michael Lorenzen and Mike Clevinger remain unsigned, as do rebound candidates like Eric Lauer, Jake Odorizzi and Noah Syndergaard (to name a few).