Matt Wilkinson seems to be following SF Giants' Yusmeiro Petit blueprint

It’s the point of the season where the SF Giants are trying to figure out roles for players next season. Matt “Tugboat” Wilkinson has been fun to watch just because of the way he’s built and his nickname, but it seems like he is carving out a role for himself similar to the one Yusmeiro Petit had when he was with the Giants.

Wilkinson had arguably his best outing of the season on Sunday as he pitched five scoreless innings against the Los Angeles Dodgers. His ERA is down to 3.65 on the season and it’s easy to see him fitting in with the Giants as a sort of long reliever or spot starter who can give the Giants length out of the bullpen or come in and pitch five innings in a start if needed.

Those sorts of pitchers are incredibly valuable over the course of a 162-game season. Starting pitchers are inevitably going to be scratched or get hurt so teams need a versatile pitcher like Wilkinson who can fill whatever role the team needs.

Petit and Wilkinson even profile somewhat similarly with their stuff. Both guys have, or had in the case of Petit since he’s retired, pretty tame fastballs especially by today’s standards. Wilkinson’s heater hovers around 90 miles per hour on the radar gun which is roughly where Petit was at for most of his career.

Wilkinson is never going to blow opposing hitters away or strike out a ton of batters, but when he’s right he is going to throw strikes and hit corners while inducing soft contact and getting outs which is exactly how Petit thrived.

Yusmeiro Petit gives Matt Wilkinson a good model to follow

Petit proved that’s a sustainable model for a career as he pitched for 14 big league seasons, four of them with the Giants. He made 90 appearances for the Giants in those four seasons, 21 of them starts. He only walked 52 batters in 245 and 2/3 innings pitched.

Of course, his best moment as a Giant came in 2014 when he delivered six scoreless innings in extra innings as San Francisco outlasted the Washington Nationals in the 18-inning Game 2 of the NLDS. He also nearly had a perfect game in 2013 as Hunter Pence nearly made an insane diving catch for the 27th out. Petit is certainly one of the more underrated members of the dynasty era.

Buster Posey saw with his own eyes how big it can be to have a guy like that on the team so you can bet he is already thinking about a role like that for Tugboat.

If Wilkinson could follow that blueprint and serve as a long reliever and swing man going forward for San Francisco that would be ideal. The Giants should make a real effort to bolster the starting rotation in the offseason, but having Wilkinson as a bullpen arm who can eat up innings and start a game if needed would be an extremely valuable asset so let’s hope he continues to follow that Petit mold.

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