2025 stats: 4.61 ERA, 4.25 FIP, 1.112 WHIP, 18 K%, 7 BB%, 31 G (1 GS), 56.2 IP
In a season of low-leverage appearances, of lumbering through middle-innings in blow-outs, Tristan Beck finally had a chance to pitch with some purpose on September 16th in Arizona.
The Giants sat at .500. They teetered on the cusp of playoff relevance thanks mostly to the historic collapse of the New York Mets. The universe opened up a door and San Francisco loitered on the threshold. It was up to them to step through it. But they got whooped by LA over the previous weekend and then another quiet loss to Arizona had razed their record back to .500 and threatened to kick them off a crowded postseason stoop for good. With two more games against the Diamondbacks, and staring down the barrel of a four-game series in LA, the Giants needed to make a push in the right direction. Wins needed to be stockpiled. Every offensive outburst and shutdown inning would continue to simmer with consequence, and possibly ring with season-saving redemption.
The fact that Tristan Beck was making the start in a last-ditch, save-the-season bid to snap a three-game losing streak clues you into how far the rotation had fallen. Beck hadn’t made a start in nearly a year and had only four total in his short career. Bob Melvin wasn’t counting on him to go deep into the game — he’d essentially act as an extended opener — but getting the ball in the 1st inning in a Major League game was a relatively new context for the right-hander to pitch in. The situation got even stranger when the offense plated four runs before Beck had even taken the mound. Now there was a lead to protect, and he hadn’t had to preserve one that was less than five runs since June 6th in a game against the Braves.
Not only was this a chance for the team to change the tune and set the tone for a pitching staff that had given up 8 or more runs in its last three starts; it was an opportunity for Tristan Beck to remind the organization that after his vascular surgery in early 2024, he was still a relevant topic in the team’s future pitching conversations.
Beck did get one shutdown frame in the bottom of the 1st but couldn’t suppress the opposing offense in the 2nd. Gabriel Moreno pulled a sweeper down the left field line for a lead-off double. A pitch later he scored on Blaze Alexander’s hard-hit single. The ashes of a hanging sweeper to Adrian Del Castillo were found scattered around the right-field bleachers.
Three batters into the 2nd and the complexion of the game changed completely. A rosy-cheeked and healthy lead withered in an instant into an ashy and bag-eyed corpse. Beck would leave the game after the 3rd with the Giants ahead, but the outing needed to be emphatic and it wasn’t. Arizona’s offense tied the game up with two more runs against Trevor McDonald in the 5th and would go on to win it 6-5 with a walk-off single in the 9th off of Ryan Walker.
Perhaps I’m building this up to be more significant than this moment was. Tristan Beck and that 3-run 2nd is probably number 137 on the list of reasons why the 2025 San Francisco Giants missed the postseason. But in the grand narrative that is the 2025 Tristan Beck Player Review, it’s a massive mis-step in his hero’s journey.
Beck’s ultimate downfall was also the breakout pitch of the year.
In 2023, he used his sweeper almost exclusively against right-handers, including it in his mix just 8% of the time when facing a left-handed bat, and they were batting .294 against it. In 2025 that usage jumped to 23%, and the average dropped to .091. All batters hit just .141 against it. Part of that success came down to Beck being able to spin about two more inches of glove side break out of the pitch than he did in 2023. That increased movement, along with often tunneling it off his opposite-run fastball, stretched the corner of the plate and baited a lot of arm-only swings.
Here’s one that will probably live rent-free in Alec Burleson’s head for the winter.
And another that broke so far in it appeared to glance off Geraldo Perdomo’s back heel during the first inning of Beck’s start in Arizona.
The sweeper was Beck’s wipeout pitch (though Beck is far from being a “wipeout” type of pitcher). It averaged a 31% swing-and-miss rate (both the slider and fastball hovered around 20%) and when put in play, it avoided the barrel and tamped down exit-velocity. With a 5 Run Value and 2.0 RV/100, it was his most-effective pitch in 2025, a considerable swing from its -4 (-1.4) value two years ago and helped make up for a relative down year in value for his four-seamer (2.9 RV/100 in ‘23 to 0.1 this year).
In fact, Beck didn’t surrender a single extra base hit with the sweeper until September. From late-May to early September, Beck ended a plate-appearance with the breaking ball 47 times and opposing hitters managed just five singles against it — that is, until St. Louis’s Ivan Herrera launched one over the center field wall on September 6th. Gabriel Moreno would then send-out another one in Beck’s next appearance. Two appearances after that Moreno and Del Castillo would give the pitch a ride in that fateful 3-run 2nd.
Did that fateful frame send us careening out on a dark tributary of time, a “Back to the Future 2” alternate-1985 situation? Would we be singing Beck’s praises if he didn’t hang those two breaking balls? Would we be chanting for more Beck, more Beck, if he keeps the 2nd scoreless, allowing him to lengthen out his outing, possibly pitch into the 5th, and earn himself another opportunity to start in those final couple of weeks instead of someone like Trevor McDonald?
That’s a whole mess of ifs. And do we really want to spend the offseason debating whether 2026 is Beck’s year to claim a rotation role? Maybe we should be happy he served up those sweepers on the 16th. Those hangers were reality checks, truth bombs. Beck is 29 years old. He’s got some roster flexibility with one option remaining but is taking up a valuable spot on the 40-man, a place that will (hopefully) need to be cleared in the next couple of months after Buster Posey signs some established rotation and relief talent.
The Tristan Beck story has become irreparably separated from the San Francisco Giants story. There was a moment at the end of 2023 going into 2024 before his injury, when the two futures may have been somewhat coupled. Could he develop his secondary offerings? Avoid big innings? Could he be durable and dynamic enough to serve as a back-end starter? These questions were indicators of problems but also of hope. The problem is this 2025 player review is just a fading echo of the one I wrote in 2023. Yes, his sweeper improved but other than that, he did nothing in the somewhat limited opportunities he got to answer the questions and assuage the concerns that were raised after his rookie year.
