The deadline to non-tender players on the 40-man roster isn’t too far away, quickly approaching on November 20. In the San Francisco Giants case, one of the more interesting cases is what they’ll decide to do with right-handed reliever Ryan Walker.

Now four seasons into his major league career, all of which spent with the Giants, Walker, 30, had a pretty rocky experience this past season which really hurt his chances of being tendered a contract by the front office.

Over the course of his 2026 campaign, Walker got optioned to the minors three times, which explains why he only logged 32.2 innings of work this year, a career low for him.

It’s not a surprise that he made three trips to the minor leagues this year, given how poorly he pitched. Across 33 appearances in relief, Walker pitched to a troubling 7.16 ERA and 1.81 WHIP. Nothing went according to plan this year for him which resulted in a complete unraveling.

The reason as to why he put up a career-worst ERA and WHIP, is for the amount of traffic he allowed on the basepaths.

Walker’s control was all over the place which resulted in him issuing walks 5.2 times per nine innings -- a massive uptick from his 2.6 BB/9 ratio in 2025. Furthermore, he allowed more hits in general than his usual self, giving up 11 hits over nine innings, which is inflated from his career 8.1 H/9 ratio.

A more concerning trend, going back to his 2025 season, is Walker’s recent inability to strikeout batters -- something that he excelled at during his first two major league seasons.

After posting a 29.7% strikeout rate in 2023 and 32.1% clip in 2024, it fell to a 22.6% mark in 2025 and more recently, only 14.8% this past season.

It’s not a good sign when a reliever’s stuff just simply isn’t effective anymore, as shown by Walker’s disturbing walk rate and severely low strikeout rate.

You may be asking, can he make a comeback?

Walker could technically rebound, but his underlying numbers certainly aren’t pointing towards a comeback. His expected ERA is in a lot better place than his actual ERA, currently holding a 4.45 mark, but his FIP is very concerning at an alarmingly high 5.52 mark.

A lot of why his xERA and FIP is so high is because he doesn’t strike out many opponents and issues a ton of walks. Walker was also prone to the long-ball this year, another factor to poor expected numbers, which we’re about to touch base on.

Even though Walker actually did quite well in terms of limiting hard-contact, to a respectable 34.8% clip, and only giving up barrels 6.3% of the time, two above-average marks, he still allowed a career-worst 1.4 home runs per nine innings on average.

The Verdict

All things considered, Walker has put himself in a tough place with the offseason just kicking off. According to FanGraphs, he has a projected arbitration value of $1.6 million.

You may be thinking, $1.6 million isn’t that much to bring back a reliever who posted a 3.23 and 1.91 ERA between his first pair of seasons. It’s a bit more complicated than just looking at the contract value.

Given that the Giants currently have 51 players on the 40-man roster, with more being added soon to protect players from the rule-5 draft, the front office is going to have to shed quite a few players' contracts off the books.

That alone further clears up the debate on why Walker is more likely to be non-tendered than offered a new contract.

It’s tough because we know what he’s capable of, but he also just finished the worst season of his career by quite a big margin. At some point the Giants front office will have to make tough decisions to even out a roster that needs a lot of fixing.

You could make somewhat of a case for tendering him a contract, considering he still has two options left. That way, he could start 2027 in the minors to try to fix the hurdles he encountered in 2026. Still, that path is unlikely.

Anyway, the most realistic and logical choice would be for the Giants to ultimately non-tender Walker, ending a four year run with the team.