The San Francisco Giants made a big move at the trade deadline, shipping away a pitcher that hadn’t played for them this season.

After spending the entire start of the season on the injured list and just before making his season debut, San Francisco moved starting pitcher Alex Cobb to the Cleveland Guardians. In the deal, Cleveland sent over Jacob Bresnahan and a player to be named later per Guardians Insider Mandy Bell.

Bresnahan is a promising pitching prospect. The southpaw wasn’t ranked within the top-30 in the pipeline, but has had a stellar season in the minors that makes it easy to understand why the Giants were interested in him.

In the Arizona Complex Rookie League, he’s had a 2.54 ERA with a 1.043 WHIP while striking out 12.3 batters per nine innings. He was recently called up to Single-A (which is where he’ll start with San Francisco) and made one start where he gave up two runs in four innings.

“He’s 89-93 with a projectable frame, so I’m also banking on some more velocity here as well. He also has a promising slider and change, along with a deceptive delivery and control,” said Next Year In Cleveland writer Justin Lada in a scouting report about the player. [He has] more control than command and I’m projecting a step forward by ranking here as well, but at this point in the system it’s more about upside for me since most of the rest of the system offers less safety anyway.”

While he may not be the most well-known prospect, he has a high ceiling and could be a solid return for Cobb.

The 36-year-old veteran should help Cleveland a lot, if he’s around the same level that he was at a year ago.

Over his two seasons with the Giants, the right-handed pitcher had a 3.80 ERA with a 1.312 WHIP.

While he’s never been someone that strikes batters out at a super high rate, he rarely walks them and is one of the best at forcing ground balls.

His contract runs out at the end of the season, making him a rental for the Guardians. However good he may be, he probably doesn’t move the needle for San Francisco. Picking up a solid prospect and a player to be named later should be viewed as a win for the front office. They’ve fought back to just four games back from a Wild Card spot, but they did that without Cobb anyway.

“Maybe you yesterday said, ‘I’m going to start recovery,’ and you didn’t because addiction is strong, addiction is a disease, it takes a lot to get to a place where you’re ready to get on that recovery spectrum,” Fromer said. “But we want to make sure when you’re ready, you have what you need.”

She told KQED that Glide’s decision to offer foil and other supplies “is really about saving lives and preventing disease, but also creating opportunities for recovery.”

Dr. Amer Raheemullah, the director of the Inpatient Addiction Medicine Service at Stanford Hospital, said such harm-reduction strategies not only make drug users safer but also can urge them to turn to treatment options when made available at the same location as other recovery services.

“The idea is to reduce harm, but then also have this interaction with somebody who’s actively using to slowly nudge them toward treatment,” he told KQED. “That can be through counseling, like a skilled counseling interview that’s been shown to be effective, but it can also simply be by co-locating treatment in the same place that they’re getting these needles or these other harm reduction tools.”

One way to think about harm reduction, Raheemullah said, is to consider those struggling with addiction as having a neurological deficit.

Take someone with Parkinson’s disease, for example — “They might have an increased risk of falls. So, in order to reduce harm, we pad their house; we may make adjustments in their living situation, not to encourage falls, but to reduce the damage of falls if or when they occur. It’s the same with substance use,” he said.

Sharing and reusing needles can increase the risk of contracting HIV and Hepatitis C, which can lead to illness and, in some cases, death.

“The higher objective is to just reduce this harm that’s occurring, preserve life and not do too much damage for later down the line when people eventually accept treatment,” Raheemullah said.

There is also no proof that administering needles or other safe injection supplies increases the use of illegal drugs, he told KQED.

A randomized study of 600 people who injected cocaine, morphine and/or amphetamines found “no difference in the number of injections over time” for people supplied with sterile needles compared to those taught how to purchase them, according to the 2003 report out of the University of Alaska Anchorage.

The Center for Disease Control also said in a February 2024 report that 30 years of research has shown programs that provide access to sterile injection equipment “do not increase illegal drug use.”

Fromer said that Glide’s distribution of safer drug-use materials is one of the nonprofit’s many programs geared toward helping drug users — whether they have chosen recovery or not.

Jennifer Friedenbach, the executive director of the coalition on homelessness, said San Francisco officials haven’t wasted any time sweeping homeless encampments across the city, and she’s not happy about it.

“What we have seen is much more aggressive treatment of homeless people. We’ve seen arrests, we’ve seen illegal confiscation of their property,” said Friedenbach.

On July 25, the governor announced his executive order requiring state agencies to clear encampments on state land.

That order also encouraged cities to do the same. On Monday, almost 72 hours later, the amount of time required to give notice of the sweeps, sweeps in San Francisco started happening.

“They’ve done the Haight, around the DMV, they’ve done an area south of Market, they did an area here in the mission near Folsom and 16th-ish,” said Friedenbach.

KPIX went down to the DMV to check it out, and the encampment that had been there for months, if not years was gone. All that was left was the notice warning of the sweep stapled to a nearby tree.

Friedenbach said she’s worried the people being kicked out have nowhere to go.

“It’s just kind of this forced march from place to place to place and because it’s being done in such a harsh manner you know people get really upset and they’re further destabilized. They lose all their survival gear. They’re of course very devastated by that,” said Friedenbach.

The city claims it has no other choice. They said over 2/3rds of the homeless refuse shelter or services.

Under these new rules, the city is still offering shelter to those being swept but if people refuse, the city doesn’t have to re-offer shelter the next time that person is kicked out of an encampment.

Friedenbach said she doesn’t believe that approach will solve anything.

“None of those actions have decreased homelessness. In fact study show that these kind of operations exacerbate homelessness and make it worse,” said Friedenbach.

For now though, the city is sticking to the approach. They’ve scheduled about three encampment sweeps each day this week and plan to also target smaller encampments on a daily basis.