The Giants, fresh off two successful bullpen games, are switching things up and going with what’s known as a “starting pitcher” on Wednesday. It’s incredibly retro of them.
It won’t be just any starting pitcher, though. Hayden Birdsong — the Giants’ best right-handed pitching prospect, if not their best pitching prospect, period — will make his major-league debut. Here are some takeaways regarding the promotion and what it means for Birdsong and the Giants.
Advertisem*nt
Birdsong is here far, far ahead of schedule
Birdsong was drafted in the sixth round of the 2022 MLB Draft, 196th overall. Only three players drafted in the first round that year have made the majors, which gives you an idea of how quickly Birdsong has moved through the system. He’s thrown just 169 2/3 innings in the minor leagues, which makes him the Giants pitcher with the least professional experience to debut since Tim Lincecum (62 2/3 minor-league innings) in 2007. Even teenaged Madison Bumgarner had more innings in the minors before he debuted.
The rapid ascent is even more remarkable when you consider that he was drafted as a reliever out of Eastern Illinois, not a starting pitcher from a bigger program like Stanford or Texas. Two years ago, he was playing against Jack Rando of the Belmont Bruins*. Now he’ll face Cody Bellinger of the Chicago Cubs.
The story of how he got to the Giants feels almost like fate or providence. Andrew Baggarly did a deep dive before the season started, and it turns out that Birdsong is from Mattoon, Ill., which is the same hometown as Bert Bradley, longtime Giants minor-league pitching coordinator and scout. Even that might have been enough to get him on the Giants’ radar, but Birdsong started pitching lessons with Bradley in the third grade. It was not so much a coincidence as it was the universe blowing a kid in the Giants’ direction.
(Farm director Kyle Haines also went to Eastern Illinois, which miiiight have given Birdsong a little extra helium on the draft board. Sort of like the unconscious movement that makes Ouija boards work. Just a theory.)
Hayden Birdsong struck out 6 over two innings of work, topping at 97mph, in his Cal League debut Thursday pic.twitter.com/GiTi1cHLgz
— SFGProspects (@SFGProspects) September 4, 2022
There are just two players draftedafter Birdsong to make the majors already, and one of them is Wade Meckler. If you want to know what the risks are when it comes to promoting a prospect ahead of schedule, you can skip to the the Meckler section here. It’s a commitment that affects the major-league roster for years, even if the prospect isn’t in the majors. But the reason that Baggs did a deep dive on Birdsong is that he was absolutely electric in spring training, and he’s only impressed more people since.
Advertisem*nt
Birdsong is up because his stuff should play in the majors
There’s more nuance to the promotion, but not much. Throws hard, misses bats, looks good doing it. Has bendy stuff. It all plays.
When Birdsong was drafted, his fastball was 92-94 mph. He added velocity almost immediately as a professional, and it’s still trending upward. On June 15, he threw a 99.2-mph fastball (one of only nine thrown by a starter in Triple A this season), and he had nine 98-mph fastballs in the same game. Raw velocity doesn’t mean nearly as much as it used to, but his average four-seam velocity in Triple A was the 12th-highest of the season. He throws gas, and it’s only getting, uh, gassier.
Birdsong throws his fastball up. Way up. Check out this heatmap from Sacramento:
Up, up, up. But if a hitter looks for a mistake in the middle of the plate, that leaves him vulnerable to the curveball, which has a sharp downward bite and looks like a fastball for about 40 feet. It can be a real bad time if you’re guessing fastball. Areal bad time.
There are, of course, caveats.
There will be concerns with Birdsong’s command and control
Birdsong is up because he has the stuff. He’s also up because the Giants are desperate. They’re currently sporting a two-man rotation, and one of those starters is a converted reliever who’s already reached a new career high in innings pitched. They’re going to need a lot more consistency from their starting pitchers.
You shouldn’t expect Birdsong to be the horse the Giants truly need right now, though. You can ride horses for miles and miles, up mountain trails, across river beds, et cetera, and it’s downright elegant a lot of the time. But a bird?
It’s fast, sure, but only in short bursts. And it kind of goes all over the place. If he were Bayden Horsesong, that would be one thing, but the Giants are going to have to assume that Hayden Birdsong will need a little lighter touch.
Which is an extremely stupid way to point out that Birdsong likes to liveout of the strike zone more than most pitchers. Part of this is that he’s young and still learning how to control his pitches, but some of it is that he doesn’t want to throw all of his fastballs for strikes. Just enough of them to get hitters chasing at the high ones. There will be high pitch counts and long innings in his adjustment to the majors. There will be walks. He threw 91 pitches in his last start for the River Cats, and that was a career high. He’s made 37 starts in the minors, and he’s thrown more than 80 pitches in three of them.
Advertisem*nt
You’re hoping for four innings. Five would be outstanding, but that’s something of a best-case scenario. You can’t expect a pitcher this inexperienced to fix the Giants’ workload problem. Not on his own.
Birdsong will help, though. He should help ease some of the burden that comes with the constant bullpen games, and he should give fans hope for the future at the same time. That’s about all you can ask from a young pitcher, and the hope is that he leaves you feeling better about the game he just left and the games he’s yet to pitch.
(Photo of Birdsong: Andy Kuno / San Francisco Giants / Getty Images)
Grant Brisbee is a staff writer for The Athletic, covering the San Francisco Giants. Grant has written about the Giants since 2003 and covered Major League Baseball for SB Nation from 2011 to 2019. He is a two-time recipient of the SABR Analytics Research Award. Follow Grant on Twitter @GrantBrisbee
