SF Giants broadcaster’s full-circle moment with Matt ‘Tugboat’ Wilkinson is truly remarkable

The SF Giants called up Matt “Tugboat” Wilkinson on Wednesday and he made his debut against the Cleveland Guardians, the team that drafted him. While it was a disappointingly short outing, he pitched quite well and the whole thing was made cooler by the fact that Dave Flemming was on the call.

This was not the Giants broadcaster’s first encounter with Tugboat. Flemming recounted how he was on the call in Williamsport back in 2015 when Tugboat, who had already earned the nickname at the time, struck out 16 batters as a member of Team Canada going up against Team Mexico.

Dave Flemming's history with 'Tugboat' dates back to Little League World Series

It’s pretty amazing that Flemming got to be there for two huge moments in Wilkinson’s career. Flemming said that he spoke with Wilkinson ahead of the game and the portly lefty told him how that 16-strikeout performance is what started to get him thinking about how he could actually pursue baseball as a career.

Wilkinson may be older now, but he doesn’t look too different from how he did when he was 12 and his pitching mechanics are remarkably similar as well. 

Many kids who play in the Little League World Series dream of playing in the big leagues someday. Not many get to actually do it so it’s pretty awesome that Tugboat got to have that full-circle moment with Flemming and had a great debut with his family in tow.

It’s going to be interesting to see how the Giants choose to use Wilkinson going forward. Are they going to continue to use him as a quasi-opener where they just let him pitch one or two innings to start a game or will they choose to stretch him out a bit and use him as a starter like he was used in the minors?

The Giants only have two other left-handed pitchers on the roster in Sam Hentges and Carson Whisenhunt so they might choose to use Wilkinson out of the bullpen so manager Tony Vitello has another left-handed option to turn to.

It’s also easy to see him serving as a bulk-innings reliever for the team so maybe if they insert Adrian Houser back into the rotation they can use Wilkinson as a long reliever. That’s not a bad way to get his feet wet even if it would be more fun to let him be a starter.

He’s just 23 after all though. He was in the Little League World Series when the Giants were just a year removed from completing their “three in five” dynasty so there’s no need to rush things at this point.

With a nickname like that it’s impossible not to root for the guy so one hopes he can be a solid pitcher for the Giants going forward, whatever his role ends up looking like. Flemming will be on the call for just about all of it so he and Tugboat will always have a special bond.

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