In Bryce Eldridge’s debut, the Giants peek into the future, take a hit in the present

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PHOENIX — Bryce Eldridge walked to the plate wearing No. 78 on the back of his jersey as if he were a non-roster invitee in spring training. Or a defensive tackle.

It’s certainly not a typical baseball number, but the Giants’ top prospect couldn’t have cared less Monday night when he made his major-league debut at Chase Field and went 0-for-3 with a 407-foot out. He was called up to help the Giants win games, but their playoff pursuit took another hit when they were pounded 8-1 by the Diamondbacks.

“It was fun,” Eldridge said. “There were a little bit of nerves. I wasn’t overly freaking out. After the first (at-bat), it just felt like a normal game. The first one got out of the way, and I felt completely fine.”

Eldridge needs to earn the number he wants, just like he needs to earn his future playing time, and he undoubtedly will. It won’t be 25, his favorite number, because it’s retired for Barry Bonds. It probably won’t be 14, which he wore at Triple-A Sacramento, because that belongs to Patrick Bailey.

Don’t be surprised if Eldridge winds up with No. 8, a number he likes because he grew up in Northern Virginia a big fan of the Washington Capitals’ Alex Ovechkin and Baltimore Ravens’ Lamar Jackson, both of whom wear 8.

For now, all that matters is he’s in the big leagues, and Eldridge is grateful for the opportunity even if he doesn’t have much of his regular gear including his own bat or mitt. He learned of the promotion Sunday night while passing through security along with his fellow River Cats at the Oklahoma City airport, and his stuff was shipped to Sacramento along with the rest of the team’s equipment.

So Eldridge took grounders at first base before the game with a clubhouse attendant’s mitt and swung a team-issued 34-inch, 32-ounce bat. No complaints, though. He was the designated hitter and didn’t need a mitt, and the bat didn’t feel foreign to him, especially when he barreled up his deep drive in the seventh inning.

Eldridge smoked Taylor Rashi’s inside fastball to the warning track in left-center, just in front of the 413-foot marker. Rashi thought it was gone, bending over on the mound in despair, but Jorge Barrosa made a nifty leaping grab to send Eldridge back to the dugout.

“Definitely a confidence booster,” he said.

According to Statcast, it would have been a homer in 23 other parks, an irrelevant stat considering the game wasn’t played at any of the 23 other parks. Still, Eldridge said his family and friends, at least 20 of whom met with him moments after the game, mentioned the stat to him.

“My loved ones were all over that,” he said.

Does he care? “No,” he said. “It’s not a home run. What matters more is I hit the ball hard. That’s our job.”

Eldridge hopes to get his own gear by Wednesday, the series finale. He isn’t expected to start Tuesday because a left-hander will pitch for Arizona, Eduardo Rodriguez, who blanked the Giants into the seventh inning in his last start. The plan is for Eldridge to DH against righties, so his next start is expected to be Wednesday.

In Eldridge’s first two at-bats, Zac Gallen threw more breaking stuff than fastballs, fully aware of Eldridge’s high strikeout rate. In fact, Eldridge saw four straight changeups in his initial at-bat and later said, “Being able to spit on those gave me some confidence. I’m not going to try to reach down low for those ones.”

Eldridge grounded out to first base in the six-pitch at-bat. Next time up, he went fishing for a knuckle curve and struck out, this time on five pitches.

“He looked good out there, had some good swings,” manager Bob Melvin said. “It’s too bad he didn’t get the one hit there, but he certainly didn’t look like he was overmatched. He didn’t look like he was nervous. He looked pretty hitterish at the plate.”

Suddenly, pitching is a major problem for the Giants. They have just three bonafide starters and a bullpen with just two relievers remaining from Opening Day. For the third straight game, the bullpen pitched poorly. All four relievers that got into the game – Matt Gage, Joel Peguero, Joey Lucchesi, and Keaton Winn – coughed up runs.

Three of them got knocked around in the decisive sixth inning, when the Diamondbacks erupted for six runs. Tristan Beck will start Tuesday, but he’s not amped up as a starter so the Giants will need to bullpen their way through nine innings, not a good sign considering relievers have yielded 19 earned runs over 14 innings the past three games.

Furthermore, the Giants managed just two hits, both by Casey Schmitt, whose homer accounted for the only run.

The Giants fell to .500 at 75-75. They dropped a half-game in the wild-card standings and are two games from the final playoff spot, still occupied by the Mets. The Reds moved into a tie with the Giants, and the Diamondbacks, with three straight wins, are a half-game ahead of both teams.

President of baseball operations Buster Posey called up Eldridge three days after first baseman Dom Smith pulled a hamstring, an injury that sent him to the injured list. Posey cited Eldridge’s hard-hit rate with Sacramento. Indeed, he was in the 100th percentile among all minor leaguers in both hard-hit rate and exit velocity, and his batting practice Monday bordered on breathtaking.

“I think he has the type of personality where he’ll probably embrace this environment,” Posey said. “He’s not going to be a guy that’s going to shy away from having some really big at-bats for us.”

To clear a roster spot, the Giants optioned outfielder Luis Matos to Sacramento and also designated Brett Wisely for assignment.

We leave you with an Eldridge tidbit. Because one of the mitts in his locker had “Wayne” written on it, he was asked the obvious: Who’s Wayne?

“My nickname,” he said.

As it turns out, friends back home call him Bruce or Big Bruce because “I guess my name autocorrects to Bruce.” They also call him Wayne, thanks to an acquaintance who took the Bruce nickname a step further, pulled a Batman reference, and started calling him Bruce Wayne. “It just stuck,” Eldridge said.