Bryce Eldridge Is Him, and I'm Done Being Careful About Saying It

Two run shot to right center in the top of the first, a double in the eighth, Giants 10, Cardinals 3. He's 21 years old on a 63 win team and he's the only reason I still turn the games on.

First inning, Tuesday night in St. Louis, and I had the game on my phone propped against the sugar bowl while I did the dishes. Drew Gilbert gets on. Eldridge comes up. And I stopped washing the pan.

Right center field. Gone. Two runs, 17 on the year, and he did that thing he does where he doesn't watch it, he just drops the bat and starts running like the ball owes him money.

He is him. I said it out loud to nobody in my own kitchen. My wife asked who I was talking to.

I've been careful about this kid for a year and I'm done being careful

You know how this goes with us. We've had prospects. We've had the guy who was going to fix it. We had the September call ups who hit .240 and disappeared, we had the first round picks who turned into a middle reliever somebody else developed, and every time I let myself get excited I paid for it in April.

So I hedged. All of last year I hedged. He came up in 2025, played 10 games, hit .107, and I told everybody who asked that he'd be fine, he's 20, relax, and I didn't fully believe it when I said it. Ten games. One hundred and seven. That's the kind of number that follows a kid around.

This year he's hitting .272 with a .363 on base and 17 homers and 23 doubles in 106 games. He's 21 years old. He doesn't turn 22 until the middle of October.

Fifty seven walks. Fifty seven! A 21 year old in a lineup that's been getting outpitched all summer, with nobody behind him that anybody's afraid of, and he's still taking his base when they won't come in. He's not up here for a look. He's a hitter who knows exactly what he's doing up there.

Look at what he's done since the middle of August

Over his last 30 games he's hitting .327 with six homers, eight doubles, 29 RBI and an OPS of .972. Eighteen walks in that stretch too.

In September alone, 14 games, he's at .327 with a .422 on base and a .558 slug. Fourteen RBI in 14 games on a team that's 63 and 89.

That's the part that gets me. The season's been over since July. We're 29 and a half out. We got swept at home by San Diego this past weekend and I watched all three of those and I'm still mad about it. The building's half checked out, the manager's shuffling guys around, and this kid is putting up his best month of the year in the second week of September with absolutely nothing to play for except the fact that he's a baseball player and the game's on.

Tuesday he wasn't done after the homer. Eighth inning, Brett Harris on, and he lines a double to right for his 23rd double and his third RBI of the night. Giants 10, Cardinals 3. Turner Hill homered, Christian Koss had three hits, and we scored double figures for the first time in what feels like forever, and the whole thing started with a 21 year old putting one into right center in the top of the first.

There were four of them and he's the best one

Here's the number I keep going back to, and I looked it up twice because I didn't trust it. In all of Major League Baseball this season, four hitters who are 21 years old have gotten to 350 plate appearances. Four. In the whole sport.

Eldridge has the highest OPS of the four.

Not by a hair either. The other three are at .707, .799 and .701. He's at .828. And he plays half his games in a ballpark that has been eating left handed power since the day it opened, in a division with the Dodgers and the Padres, on a last place team where every pitcher who faces us in September is working on his October audition.

Six foot seven. Two hundred and fifty one pounds. Twenty one years old.

What I need from this organization, and I need it in writing

Don't get cute.

I've watched this front office do the thing where they find something that works and then trade around it, or block it, or decide the veteran on the two year deal deserves the at bats in the spring because of leadership. Buster's in charge now and I want to believe he's different, and mostly I do, but I've been burned so many times that belief costs me something.

So this is what I want. First base is his. Not a competition in Scottsdale, not a platoon, not "we'll see how it plays out." His. Write it on the whiteboard in November and don't erase it. Whatever you go get this winter, go get it to hit behind him, not in front of him, and not instead of him.

And when he has a bad two weeks in May, because he will, he's 21 and he's going to have a bad two weeks in May, leave him alone. Don't send him down to get right. Don't drop him to seventh. Don't let anybody with a radio show talk you into a reset. He's shown you who he is in his age 21 season on a 63 win team. That's the evidence. Trust it.

It's the first thing I've had in a while

I'll be honest with you about where I'm at. This has been a miserable summer. Webb's ERA is up over four and a quarter, the bullpen's aged me, the manager's lineups have made me yell at furniture, and I've watched more meaningless baseball in August and September than I have since I was a kid.

And I still turned the game on Tuesday. Because of him.

That's the whole thing. When the season's dead the only question left is whether there's a reason to look up, and for the first time in years there's a reason to look up and it's 6 foot 7 and it bats left handed and it's not going anywhere for a decade if these people don't find a way to ruin it.

Seventeen homers. Fifty seven RBI. Twenty three doubles. Fifty seven walks. Age 21. On this team.

He's him. I'm not arguing about it anymore. Come find me in about four years and tell me I was early.

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