The San Francisco Giants opened a four-game series against the Arizona Diamondbacks at Oracle Park on Thursday evening after making a familiar kind of late-summer roster adjustment.
Infielder Buddy Kennedy, a 27-year-old who has now spent parts of five major league seasons with seven different organizations, was designated for assignment so that first baseman Bryce Eldridge could return from the bereavement list.
Kennedy’s latest stay in San Francisco was short and largely unproductive. The Giants had claimed him off waivers from Seattle on August 2, bringing him back to the club that had selected his contract in early June, then traded him to the Mariners for cash later that month.
In his second tour with the Giants he collected only a handful of hits in limited at-bats and was used mostly as extra infield depth.
Career numbers tell a consistent story: Kennedy has shown he can hit Triple-A pitching at a high level, but the major league bat has never caught up. He entered the year with a career average well below .180 in fewer than 200 plate appearances.
The move itself was mechanical. Eldridge, the 21-year-old former first-round pick, had left the club to attend his grandfather’s funeral in Virginia and missed the three-game series against Cincinnati.
The Giants placed him on the bereavement list Monday and expected him back in time for the Diamondbacks. Reports indicated he would slide immediately into the lineup as the designated hitter and bat in the middle of the order against Arizona right-hander Jose Cabrera.
At 6-foot-7 with 14 home runs already as a rookie, Eldridge represents the kind of power the Giants have been trying to keep in the everyday mix even as their season has slipped away.
Kennedy’s path through the league has been defined by versatility and persistence. Drafted by the Diamondbacks in 2017 out of the same New Jersey high school that produced Mike Trout, he is the grandson of former big-league infielder Don Money.
He has played first, second, and third base, plus occasional work at shortstop and in left field. Those attributes keep earning him 40-man roster spots, even when the results at the plate do not.
After this designation he will have seven days for another club to claim him or for the Giants to outright him back to Triple-A Sacramento if he clears waivers.
For a Giants team sitting well below .500, the transaction is less about changing the standings than about keeping the most promising young bat available.
Eldridge’s return gives San Francisco a left-handed presence in the middle of the order as they try to salvage something from a long homestand. Kennedy, meanwhile, continues the itinerant career that has taken him from Arizona to Detroit, Philadelphia, Toronto, Los Angeles, Seattle, and twice through San Francisco.
In a sport that still values utility and minor-league production, that kind of player rarely stays unemployed for long. The only question is which uniform he will wear next.
