Breakout San Francisco Giants Star Named 'Honorable Mention' in Reliever Rankings

The San Francisco Giants had a breakout star that is entering the conversation with the best relievers in the league.

Sep 23, 2024; Phoenix, Arizona, USA; San Francisco Giants pitcher Ryan Walker (74) celebrates after defeating the Arizona Diamondbacks at Chase Field. | Matt Kartozian-Imagn Images

As a whole, the San Francisco Giants bullpen was disappointing. One player, though, broke out and will be hoping to carry that success into this season.

ESPN's Buster Olney recently released a ranking of the relief pitchers in MLB. While there were no Giants named in the top 10, emerging star Ryan Walker was listed as an "honorable mention."

Walker has had a long road to getting to the active MLB roster, but it looks to have paid off as he is finally establishing himself with consistent solid play.

The Washington native was a 31st round draft pick back in the 2018 MLB draft out of Washington State University.

His college career was uneven. He started out strong, but had an ERA over 5.00 in each of the final two seasons. That is why he was such a late draft pick.

Though he did spend six years in the minors, he was actually fairly consistent throughout that time. It wasn't like he was getting shelled at any point.

Walker exhibited solid control and slowly grew his strikeout numbers and never really got hit too hard. He wasn't really exhibiting dominant stuff, just very solid.

He finally got his chance in the majors after starting 2023 out with a 0.89 ERA over his first 20.1 innings at the Triple-A level.

While it wasn't exactly that un-hittable in the Majors, it was enough to help him stick around. He had a 3.23 ERA over 61.1 innings of work with a 1.386 WHIP and 11.4 K/9.

Walker improved upon that this past season, which was his true break out as one of the best relievers in all of baseball.

Over an impressive 80 innings on the mound, he maintained a 1.91 ERA with 0.850 WHIP and 11.1 K/9.

One of the main reasons that he was able to find even more success was a bit of added velocity and cutting way down on the walks.

The 29-year-old pretty much has a two-pitch mix with a sinker and a slider, but they force a lot of misses and poor contact.

It was his slider that really improved from 2023 and 2024 and has become truly devastating for opposing bats. It has the most horizontal break in baseball (minimum of 500 pitches), per Baseball Savant.

San Francisco didn't do much to address their bullpen this offseason, but it looks like they will move Walker into the full-time closer spot while Camilo Doval tries to figure out his struggles.