Hayden Birdsong To Undergo Tommy John Surgery
The Giants announced that right-hander Hayden Birdsong will undergo Tommy John surgery next week. He will miss the entire 2026 season and part of the 2027 campaign as well. Alex Pavlovic of NBC Sports Bay Area was among those to pass the info along.
The news is not surprising but is awful for Birdsong and the Giants regardless. It was reported a few days ago that Birdsong had an elbow issue and would be getting a second opinion. He was then diagnosed with a forearm strain and a sprain of his ulnar collateral ligament. He took a few days to consider his options but it seems he is destined for the surgeon’s table.
Prior to this injury, Birdsong was slated to be one of the club’s top depth starters. They project to start the season with a starting five of Logan Webb, Robbie Ray, Tyler Mahle, Adrian Houser and Landen Roupp. Due to injuries, teams usually need about a dozen starters to get through a full season. The Giants have Carson Seymour, Carson Whisenhunt and Blade Tidwell as optionable depth starters. Birdsong would have been in that group but has now been subtracted.
Birdsong should end up on the 60-day injured list whenever the Giants need a spot on the 40-man roster. The one silver lining of that outcome is that Birdsong will get a full year of service time and pay, more than if he spent the year as a healthy but frequently-optioned depth arm.
The typical recovery timeline for Tommy John surgery is usually 14 months or more. That means Birdsong won’t be available until about midway through the 2027 season, even in a best-case scenario. Ray and Mahle are both scheduled for free agency after 2026, so two rotation spots are potentially opening up. Those could be filled internally if guys like Seymour, Whisenhunt or Tidwell step up. The Giants could also make notable trades between now and then, in addition to potentially signing free agents next winter.
Time will tell what shape the rotation is in when Birdsong is again healthy but he should be a key part of the group regardless. He only has a 4.77 earned run average in his career so far but is only 24 years old and comes with some prospect pedigree. FanGraphs has been especially bullish, as they gave him the #42 overall spot at one point during the 2024 season. Birdsong posted a 2.51 ERA on the farm that year but then had a 6.23 ERA in Triple-A in 2025 and now he’s dealing with this lengthy rehab process.
Photo courtesy of Eakin Howard, Imagn Images
Giants Notes: Whisenhunt, Rodríguez, Birdsong, Harber
The Giants optioned left-hander Carson Whisenhunt and catcher Jesús Rodríguez to Triple-A Sacramento, per the club. Neither is particularly surprising, though both young players are ranked among the organization’s top 20 or so prospects.
Whisenhunt, 25, made his MLB debut last year and was tagged for a 5.01 ERA in 23 1/3 innings. He also logged a 4.43 ERA in 107 2/3 Triple-A frames. Formerly ranked among the sport’s top 100 prospects, Whisenhunt saw his strikeout rate plummet by nearly eight percentage points last season, checking in at 20.9%, though he did so with a career-best 7.7% walk rate that vastly outpaced 2024’s mark of 11.3%.
San Francisco signed Adrian Houser and Tyler Mahle this offseason, adding that pair of veterans to a group of incumbents led by Logan Webb, Robbie Ray and Landen Roupp. That quintet will open in rookie manager Tony Vitello’s rotation, with righty JT Brubaker providing a swing option in the ‘pen. Whisenhunt will be among the Giants’ first depth options in the event of an injury to a big league starter, with righties Blade Tidwell and Carson Seymour also in the mix.
As for Rodriguez, he was never going to supplant Patrick Bailey — the sport’s premier defensive catcher — as the starter. That he’s been optioned to Triple-A bodes well for backup Daniel Susac, who’s in camp as a Rule 5 pickup out of the A’s organization (though technically acquired via trade with the Twins). The 24-year-old Susac hit .303/.361/.455 in 36 plate appearances this spring and is poised to make his MLB debut as Bailey’s backup this year.
Rodríguez, 23, came to the Giants as part of the Camilo Doval trade with the Yankees last July. He had a huge spring (.353/.405/.559 in 37 plate appearances) but will head to Sacramento for additional development time. He’s coming off a strong .307/.393/.403 showing in 565 plate appearances spent mostly in Triple-A last year. Sending him to Sacramento will allow Rodríguez to get more regular at-bats than he’d have received as a backup to Bailey, and it also helps the team protect its depth by affording Susac a runway to a big league roster spot rather than placing him on waivers and having to offer him back to the A’s.
Turning back to the pitching side of things, righty Hayden Birdsong is still mulling his options after being diagnosed with a flexor strain and UCL sprain, per Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle. He’s already had a second opinion from Dr. Keith Meister. Birdsong will miss the entire 2026 season if he undergoes surgery, although getting surgery earlier now would allow him to return sooner next year.
A spring standout last year, the now-24-year-old Birdsong was terrific out of the San Francisco bullpen to begin the 2025 season. He broke camp with the club and rattled off 20 1/3 innings with a 1.33 ERA, a 25.9% strikeout rate and a 9.4% walk rate. A move to the rotation didn’t pan out. Birdsong started 10 games for the Giants but was rocked for a 6.17 ERA with greatly diminished rate stats (21.8 K%, 13.7 BB%).
Whether he goes the surgery route or rehab route, Birdsong will be facing a substantial absence. Surgery would sideline him into summer of the 2027 season. Rehab would still presumably cost him months of the current campaign. The vast majority of UCL sprains result in Tommy John or internal brace surgery, though there are exceptions. Braves righty Grant Holmes, for instance, suffered a UCL sprain last summer but went the rest/rehab route and is healthy now, set to break camp as Atlanta’s fourth starter. More often than not, even pitchers who attempt the rehab route ultimately undergo surgery, but it’s not a foregone conclusion.
In other Giants injury news, the team announced that infield prospect Parks Harber will be sidelined for the next four to six weeks due to a Grade 2 hamstring strain. Harber was never going to break camp with the big club — he’s not on the 40-man roster and hasn’t played above High-A — but he’s had a big spring. In 33 plate appearances, he’s slashed .357/.424/.571. The 24-year-old split the 2025 season between the High-A affiliates for the Giants and Yankees (who traded him to San Francisco in that Doval swap), hitting a combined .323/.420/.550 in 343 turns at the plate.
Baseball America ranked Harber 16th among Giants farmhands entering the season, noting that his impressive 2025 campaign put him on the prospect map after going undrafted out of UNC in 2024. He’s a bat-first prospect who’s played all four corner positions — primarily the two infield spots (with a slight edge toward third base over first base). BA’s report touts his offensive prowess while noting that he still needs to work on pulling velocity, as all of his pull-side homers came on breaking pitches and all of his homers off heaters went to center or the opposite field.
Harber will likely open the season in Double-A. His primary positions on the big league club are largely blocked, especially if Bryce Eldridge can prove he’s ready to stick in the majors, but Harber could be a nice righty-swinging corner bat off the bench or perhaps a trade chip when the deadline or next offseason rolls around.
Hayden Birdsong Diagnosed With UCL Sprain, Grade 2 Forearm Strain
Giants right-hander Hayden Birdsong recently underwent an MRI due to an issue in his elbow/forearm area, and the news isn’t encouraging. Alex Pavlovic of NBC Sports Bay Area was among those to relay this afternoon that Birdsong has been diagnosed with a Grade 2 forearm strain and a UCL sprain. He’s weighing treatment options and expected to seek a second opinion from Dr. Keith Meister in the coming days.
While the exact timeline for Birdsong’s return to action won’t be known until the right-hander makes a decision on his treatment plan, fans in San Francisco should expect him to be out for at the very least months after this diagnosis, if not much longer. As Pavlovic notes, Birdsong’s diagnosis is often one that ends in Tommy John surgery. That would wipe out the entire 2026 season and likely at least part of the 2027 campaign as well for the right-hander, although if he opts to rehab the injury he would likely have a chance to return to the mound at some point this year.
It’s a frustrating turn of events for Birdsong and the Giants, as the former top prospect is still just 24 years old and was one of the club’s top depth arms behind their starting five of Logan Webb, Robbie Ray, Adrian Houser, Tyler Mahle, and Landen Roupp. Birdsong struggled badly with his command this spring, a trend that began last season, but has never wanted for velocity. Even during camp, the right-hander was throwing his heater at 97mph. He sports a career 4.77 ERA with a similar 4.81 FIP in the majors, but has shown flashes of excellence at times. That includes a 2.37 ERA and 3.50 FIP in his first 14 appearances last year, split between 11 relief appearances and three starts totaling 38 innings of work altogether. Pavlovic notes that the Giants were very encouraged by Birdsong’s latest spring outing, which saw him allow zero walks and strike out one batter while allowing just one hit in a scoreless inning.
If Birdsong had managed to finish Spring Training strong, it wouldn’t have been hard to imagine him as the next man up for the Giants’ rotation in case of injury headed into the season. That’s obviously off the table now, of course, and San Francisco will instead have to turn to a handful of other young arms if and when injuries force them to dip into their depth options. Top prospect Carson Whisenhunt is perhaps the most exciting name of the group, though he didn’t exactly impress in his 20 1/3 inning cup of coffee in the majors last year. The same can be said of Blade Tidwell, who posted a 9.00 ERA in four starts for the Mets before being dealt to San Francisco in the Tyler Rogers trade at the trade deadline. Swing man Carson Seymour also made his big league debut last year to mixed results, and after that trio the Giants could look towards non-roster invitees in camp like right-hander Caleb Kilian.
Giants’ Hayden Birdsong Getting Second Opinion On Forearm Issue
TODAY: Birdsong’s agent Scott Boras told Susan Slusser that his client’s issue is related to his forearm. After an initial MRI, Birdsong is now getting a second opinion. Despite this somewhat ominous situation, Birdsong himself is hopeful that he’ll just miss a few weeks of action, which seems like it would be a best-case scenario even if it means a season-opening IL stint.
MARCH 12: Giants right-hander Hayden Birdsong is being evaluated for an elbow issue, reports Susan Slusser of The San Francisco Chronicle. President of baseball operations Buster Posey tells Slusser that the team is awaiting word from their medical staff.
At this point, it’s not clear if the team fears a potential long-term injury. Birdsong has had a brutal Spring Training, giving up eight runs over 2 1/3 innings. His velocity is intact, though, as he’s averaging 97.3 mph on his heater. He averaged 95-96 mph on his fastball while working multiple innings last year.
Birdsong was one of the organization’s better pitching prospects when he debuted in 2024. He has shown the ability to miss bats at the highest level, but subpar command has undercut his consistency. Birdsong excelled out of the bullpen early in the ’25 season.
The Giants moved him to the rotation towards the end of May. Birdsong’s first five starts were solid enough, if inefficient, but the wheels fell off in his latter five appearances. A July 21 outing in which Birdsong didn’t retire any of six batters faced was the final straw. The Giants optioned him to Triple-A. A 6.23 ERA across 10 Triple-A starts wasn’t enough to get back to the MLB level.
Birdsong entered the spring no higher than sixth on the rotation depth chart. He can continue to start in the minors or be an option for work in a wide open San Francisco bullpen. His Spring Training numbers hadn’t put him in a great position to break camp even before the potential for an injured list stint.
Giants Notes: Devers, Birdsong, Rotation, Outfield
Rafael Devers made the first start of his career at first base for the Giants this week and, coincidentally or not, belted his first two home runs in nearly a month the following day. The recently acquired Giants infielder has now tallied three straight multi-hit games an looks to be emerging from a lengthy slump. He said after his first base debut that he briefly felt a bit nervous at his new position but quickly settled in (link via Shayna Rubin of the San Francisco Chronicle).
With Devers now ticketed for more regular work at first base, Wilmer Flores seems likely to pick up more DH at-bats. He’d been struggling at the plate while playing the infield corners (primarily first base) over the past month. For a player who struggled through knee troubles all last season before that knee ended his 2024 campaign, getting off his feet a bit more in the DH spot could prove beneficial. Devers is also playing through a back issue, but the two can perhaps now share time between the two spots in the short term. Devers added after last night’s game that he thinks he’s a better hitter when playing in the field, noting that it “keeps my head out of just thinking about the next at-bat.”
While Devers will surely be their biggest acquisition of the summer, there’s still room for the 54-49 Giants to upgrade the roster. They’ve been looking into second base options (Isiah Kiner-Falefa reportedly among them), and some recent struggles near the back of the rotation — coupled with lefty Kyle Harrison‘s inclusion in the Devers return — have created some questions on the starting staff as well.
[Related: San Francisco Giants Trade Deadline Outlook]
San Francisco optioned right-hander Hayden Birdsong to Triple-A Sacramento earlier this week after a start in which he yielded five runs to the Braves (in large part because of four walks) without recording an out. That proved to be the tipping point, but Birdsong’s struggles extended well beyond that one nightmare outing. The 23-year-old was the talk of spring training thanks to a dominant performance and looked like a revelation out of the bullpen early in the season. San Francisco moved him into the rotation in late May, and the early returns were good: five starts, 25 innings, 3.24 ERA, 24.3% strikeout rate, 8.4% walk rate.
Things went downhill from there. Birdsong was tagged for 14 runs in 12 1/3 innings across his next three starts. He bounced back with a strong performance against the A’s but then bottomed out with this week’s collapse versus Atlanta. All told, he has a 10.38 ERA (22 runs, 20 earned) over his past five starts — a span of just 17 1/3 innings.
The Giants are still weighing their options to replace Birdsong, but the back of the rotation’s struggles don’t end there. Justin Verlander finally picked up his first win as a Giant yesterday but did so while scattering five walks over five scoreless innings. He’s started 17 games and pitched to a 4.70 ERA over the life of 84 1/3 innings. Since returning from a monthlong IL stint due to a pectoral strain on June 18, Verlander has a 5.29 ERA with a 19.2% strikeout rate.
Verlander is the clear fourth starter behind Logan Webb, Robbie Ray and breakout righty Landen Roupp at the moment. In-house alternatives like Trevor McDonald, Carson Ragsdale and Mason Black have posted underwhelming results in Triple-A. Righty Carson Seymour has been working in long relief but pitched pretty well as a starter in Triple-A. There’s certainly room to add a starter to solidify the back of the staff and provide some insurance against an injury to Webb or Ray — either of which would be a devastating loss.
Both Rubinand John Shea and Kerry Crowley of the San Francisco Standard called out a right-handed-hitting outfielder as a potential area for upgrade this week. It’s a sensible pursuit, given Mike Yastrzemski‘s longstanding struggles against left-handed pitching. The Giants have given 110 plate appearances to 23-year-old Luis Matos this year, but he’s posted just a .173/.218/.375 batting line in that time.
Righty-swinging outfielders expected to be available include Minnesota’s Harrison Bader, Luis Robert Jr. of the White Sox, the Orioles’ Ramon Laureano and perhaps Chas McCormick of the Astros or Adolis Garcia of the Rangers. Not all of those outfielders will change hands, of course. The White Sox would very likely need to pay down some of Robert’s salary, but they’re willing to do so and he’s caught fire at the plate recently, making him a more interesting option than he might’ve been even one month ago.
Giants Notes: Devers, Eldridge, Payroll
The baseball world was stunned by Sunday’s Rafael Devers trade and further details have continued to spill out in subsequent days. Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle reports that the Red Sox asked for prospect Bryce Eldridge in trade talks but the Giants quickly rebuffed that.
Eldridge is clearly a talented prospect, making it understandable that the Sox would ask about him, and that the Giants preferred to keep him. The 16th overall pick of the 2023 draft, he has since taken 845 plate appearances in the minors, hitting 39 home runs with an 11.5% walk rate. His 26.5% strikeout rate is a bit on the high side but he’s also been facing far older competition basically the whole time. He’s now in Triple-A even though he’s still only 20 years old.
He started this year at Double-A and mashed, putting up a line of .280/.350/.512 in 34 games. That got him quickly promoted to Triple-A, where his production has stalled a bit. He is hitting just .160/.232/.340 at the top minor league level so far with a 33.9% strikeout rate. But it’s a small sample of 13 games and, as mentioned, he is extremely young for the level.
By keeping Eldridge in the fold, the Giants may have a bit of a squeeze in the first base/designated hitter mix over the long run. It appears that Devers’ days of being a third baseman are effectively done. Matt Chapman is one of the top defensive third basemen in the league and is signed through 2030. Devers is now learning first base and could be a viable option at that spot in the coming weeks.
Whenever Eldridge earns his way up to the majors, he and Devers will have to share the first base and DH spots, though that may not be a short-term problem if Eldridge still needs some time to develop against Triple-A pitching. The Giants are presumably fine with the long-term fit, since they seemingly took a hard line against even considering Eldridge being included in the deal.
Alex Pavlovic of NBC Sports Bay Area also reports on the Sox asking for Eldridge and notes that players like Hayden Birdsong and Carson Whisenhunt also came up at times during the talks. It’s unclear if the Giants were opposed to dealing those guys or if the Sox just preferred Kyle Harrison and James Tibbs, who ultimately were included in the completed deal.
Beyond the players, money was a key component of this trade, with Devers having about $250MM still to be paid out over the eight and a half years remaining on his contract. Jordan Hicks is still owed about $30MM in the two and a half years remaining on his deal, which offsets that somewhat, but the Giants still took on roughly $220MM in the swap. Considering the largest contract the Giants have ever signed in the history of the franchise is the $182MM free agent deal for Willy Adames, absorbing the money in the Devers trade was no small matter.
With that kind of financial commitment changing hands, ownership would naturally have to be involved. Giants chairman Greg Johnson spoke to John Shea of The San Francisco Standard, noting that he and Red Sox CEO Sam Kennedy spoke about the pact fairly early in the process, at the urging of Giants president of baseball operations Buster Posey.
“I talked to [Kennedy] at the (owners’) meetings (in early June) in New York, and I talked to him this week. Just put the message in that we’re serious. It’s not just chatter. Nobody wants to do all this work and then say, ‘Oh, now we’ve got to sell it to our owners.’ We wanted to let the other owners know ‘these guys are serious. They want to get something done.’ That changes the urgency. Buster was very smart to recognize that point. That goes back to his sense. He’s got a good nose for how people think and operate. It’s one of his strengths.”
RosterResource currently estimates the Giants to have a competitive balance tax number of almost $223MM, roughly $18MM below the $241MM base threshold. That should leave the club plenty of wiggle room to continue adding to the roster ahead of the deadline, whether they plan to avoid the tax or not.
Photo courtesy of D. Ross Cameron, Imagn Images
Giants Move Jordan Hicks To Bullpen
The Giants have moved right-hander Jordan Hicks into a bullpen role. Hicks’s spot in the starting rotation will go to right-hander Hayden Birdsong, who is now slated to start for San Francisco against the Royals on May 20. Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle first suggested that the club was discussing the possibility of taking Hicks out of the rotation this afternoon, and manager Bob Melvin later confirmed the change to reporters (including Slusser) and announced Birdsong as Tuesday’s starter prior to tonight’s game.
It was just last week that Melvin suggested that moving Hicks out of the rotation was not something the Giants had begun discussing. Just a few days later, however, Hicks suffered his worst start of the season against the Diamondbacks as he was torched for five runs across just two innings of work. In that time, he surrendered seven hits (including a home run) and one walk while recording just one strikeout. It seems that outing, which raised Hicks’s ERA to 6.55 on the season, was the final straw for the Giants and convinced them that it was time to explore other options to round out the rotation behind Logan Webb, Robbie Ray, Justin Verlander, and Landen Roupp.
It’s an unfortunate end to Hicks’s time in the rotation, particularly given the fact that peripheral numbers have generally looked favorably upon the right-hander’s work with the club this year. The righty’s 20.3% strikeout rate doesn’t exactly jump off the page, but he’s walked just 7.9% of his opponents and generated an incredible 57.4% ground ball rate. That’s the sixth-highest grounder rate among all qualified starters this year, and of the five names above him only Webb has allowed less hard contact than Hicks’s minuscule 27.7% clip. That elite contact management has been held back by a sky-high .362 BABIP and a shockingly low 56.7% strand rate. Those figures suggest some bad luck and poor sequencing may be the culprit of Hicks’s struggles, and those ideas are further backed up by his 3.48 FIP and 3.74 SIERA.
That 3.79 figure the 30th best SIERA in baseball among qualified starters this year, sandwiched between Clay Holmes and Freddy Peralta. While Hicks’s peripheral numbers may suggest strong underlying performance, however, it’s hard to make the argument that this move to the bullpen was premature. Hicks is the worst qualified starter in the league by ERA this year, and his struggles actually date back to last season when he posted an ugly 8.18 ERA with a 6.44 FIP across his final five starts of the year before moving to the bullpen in the second half and returning to form with a 1.17 ERA in August.
While it’s far from impossible to imagine Hicks getting another look in the rotation at some point given those aforementioned strong peripherals, a number of injuries may be required in order for that to come to pass. After all, the Giants have an excess of starting talent that’s forced them to use well-regarded youngsters like Birdsong and recent top prospect Kyle Harrison out of the bullpen to this point in the season. Birdsong, who posted a 4.75 ERA in 16 starts as a rookie last year, has done everything that could be expected to earn another crack at starting this year with a 2.31 ERA and a 24.8% strikeout rate in 23 1/3 innings of work as a multi-inning relief arm. The righty’s 9.9% walk rate is elevated, but his 3.68 SIERA to this point in the year is even better than that of Hicks. As for Harrison, the southpaw began the season in the minors and has only made three appearances so far this year at the big league level, though he’s struck out 31.3% of opponents with a 2.25 ERA in that limited work.
The Giants Should Consider A Rotation Change
The Giants had a rotation battle throughout Spring Training. Logan Webb, Robbie Ray and Justin Verlander were locked into the top three spots. President of baseball operations Buster Posey said in December that the team remained committed to Jordan Hicks as a starter. The final job would go to one of three younger arms: Kyle Harrison, Hayden Birdsong or Landen Roupp.
Harrison seemed like the frontrunner entering camp. If that had been the case, he quickly pitched his way out of it. The lefty allowed eight runs in 6 2/3 spring innings. The Giants optioned him before Opening Day. (He's since made four starts at Triple-A Sacramento, allowing nine earned runs despite recording 21 strikeouts over 15 innings.) It came down to Birdsong and Roupp, with the latter getting the nod. Birdsong broke camp as a long reliever.
The decision came as a surprise. Birdsong started 16 all of his major league appearances last year. He turned in a 4.75 ERA over 72 innings as a rookie. He'd been lights out during Spring Training, firing 12 innings of one-run ball with 18 strikeouts and no walks. Roupp had a good but less impressive camp, giving up five runs with 14 strikeouts and one walk across 12 frames. He also had more experience working out of the bullpen, as he'd started just four of 23 appearances during his debut season last year.
San Francisco probably feels good about their decision to give Roupp a rotation job. The 26-year-old righty carries a 4.09 earned run average with an excellent 31.2% strikeout rate through the first four turns. He has recorded a pair of quality starts and reached seven innings for the first time in his MLB career on Saturday, when he held the Angels to two runs while striking out nine.
While Roupp has earned continued starting looks, the rest of the rotation beyond Webb has struggled. The Giants have raced to a 15-9 record despite their rotation having the seventh-worst ERA in MLB, entering play Wednesday. They should already consider making a change.
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NL West Notes: Ohtani, Gomber, Birdsong
The Dodgers have been taking things slowly with superstar Shohei Ohtani as he prepares for his return to pitching. After just over a month off from regular bullpen sessions, Ohtani resumed throwing last weekend and threw another bullpen session earlier today. As noted by Bill Plunkett of the Orange County Register, Ohtani threw 26 pitches, and for the first time this year he included his splitter in the bullpen session. This came after what Plunkett described as a “light” bullpen session on Thursday. While that’s a noticeable ramp-up in activity, it shouldn’t be mistaken for the Dodgers accelerating Ohtani’s timeline back to the big league mound.
According to Plunkett, manager Dave Roberts indicated that the club hopes to replicate something akin to the schedule Ohtani will have when he returns to the big league mound as a starter by having him throw off the mound twice a week: once with a lighter bullpen session on Thursday followed by a full session on Saturday. Despite the superstar now getting back on the mound somewhat regularly, Plunkett notes that there’s still a long way to go before he’ll be ready to pitch in a big league game for the Dodgers. He relays that, per Roberts, the next step for Ohtani would be to incorporate his entire arsenal into his bullpen sessions rather than exclusively fastballs and an occasional splitter.
It won’t be until Ohtani is using his full arsenal that facing live hitters in simulated games, which the Dodgers plan to use in lieu of a rehab assignment to get Ohtani up to game speed while still allowing him to continue serving as their everyday DH in the lineup, is on the table. He’ll surely need several of those outings before he’s ready to get into games, and Plunkett suggests that at this point a realistic timeline for Ohtani’s pitching debut with the Dodgers would be sometime in June “at the earliest.” In the meantime, the Dodgers are utilizing a rotation of Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Blake Snell, Tyler Glasnow, Roki Sasaki, and Dustin May. Both Clayton Kershaw and Tony Gonsolin could also return from the injured list before Ohtani is ready to pitch, giving the Dodgers a host of potential options for the rotation.
More from around the NL West…
- Rockies southpaw Austin Gomber began the season on the injured list due to soreness in his left shoulder, and while he was sent out for a rehab assignment just after Opening Day with an eye towards returning after just the first couple of weeks of the season, he was scratched from his next rehab start due to shoulder inflammation. That paved the way for Colorado to promote Chase Dollander to the big leagues, and Thomas Harding of MLB.com spoke to Gomber in more detail about the situation today. According to Harding, Gomber wasn’t able to pitch at maximum effectiveness during his rehab start even after receiving an anti-inflammatory injection in his shoulder. As a result, Gomber noted that the plan now is for him to have a slower and “more traditional” rehab process. He won’t throw for another week while the inflammation calms down, and will likely not return to the mound for another two or three weeks after that.
- While the Giants initially planned to use young right-hander Hayden Birdsong as a long reliever and piggyback starter after he lost out on the fifth starter job to Landen Roupp, it appears that may no longer be in the cards. As noted by Justice delos Santos of Mercury News, manager Bob Melvin told reporters today that the club is now treating Birdsong as a “true reliever” after his limited usage to begin the season. Birdsong has appeared just once in the Giants’ first week of games, making a two-inning appearance that saw him throw just 27 pitches. With Birdsong no longer stretched out as a starter for the time being, Melvin suggested that a one-inning appearance for the righty could be on the table. Birdsong pitched exclusively as a starter in the majors last year, with a 4.75 ERA in 16 starts, and hadn’t made a relief appearance in the major or minor leagues at the Double-A level or higher at any point in his career prior to his 2025 debut.
Landen Roupp Wins Final Spot In Giants’ Rotation
The Giants named Landen Roupp their fifth starter to begin the season, manager Bob Melvin tells reporters (link via Alex Pavlovic of NBC Sports Bay Area). Hayden Birdsong, who was the remaining competitor for that spot, also made the team but will start the year in relief.
Roupp breaks camp for the second straight year. The righty pitched mostly out of the bullpen during his rookie season. He started four of 23 appearances and tallied 50 1/3 innings of 3.58 ERA ball. Roupp’s 21.7% strikeout percentage and 47.2% grounder rate were close to league average. A 12% walk rate was the main red flag, but he has thrown plenty of strikes this spring.
The 26-year-old Roupp only walked one of the 46 batters he faced in camp. He hit a couple batters as well but only put 6.5% of batters faced aboard for free. Roupp struck out 14 while surrendering eight hits and five runs through 12 innings. That earns him his first Opening Day rotation spot behind Logan Webb, Justin Verlander, Robbie Ray and Jordan Hicks.
Birdsong had an even more impressive Spring Training. The 6’4″ righty ran an 18:0 strikeout-to-walk ratio over 12 innings of one-run ball. He could hardly have pitched better, but he’ll work in relief for the first time since his 2022 draft year. Birdsong started all 16 MLB appearances after earning his first major league call last June. He turned in a 4.75 ERA through 72 innings. Birdsong punched out nearly 28% of opposing hitters but walked 13.7% of batters faced. It’s been a similar pattern throughout his minor league career. The Eastern Illinois product has a 34.4% strikeout rate against a 13.7% walk percentage in the minors.
Kyle Harrison entered camp as the favorite for the fifth starter role. The Giants optioned him to Triple-A Sacramento over the weekend, in large part because a virus delayed his ramp-up this spring. They could have optioned Birdsong as well, but his exhibition performance was so loud that he left the team little choice but to carry him on the MLB roster in some capacity. Pavlovic writes that the Giants will use Birdsong in multi-inning appearances to keep him stretched out. There’s a good chance he’ll get a rotation opportunity before long as injuries arise throughout the season.