SAN FRANCISCO — It’s almost Memorial Day, and Hayden Birdsong became only the sixth pitcher to start a game for the Giants when he toed the rubber at Oracle Park on Tuesday night. Just one other team, the Angels, lasted longer without deviating from their Opening Day rotation.
The 23-year-old right-hander never planned to work in relief but took the opportunity that was given to him out of spring training, pitched well enough to merit a promotion to the rotation and kept it up in his first start, leading the way to a 3-2 win over the Kansas City Royals.
Birdsong has only himself to blame for the one unearned run he allowed but otherwise breezed through five innings, scattering five hits while striking out four and walking none, to earn the win. He had a 2.31 ERA in 11 relief appearances and lowered that mark to 1.91.
Birdsong handed a 3-1 lead over to Randy Rodríguez, Kyle Harrison and Camilo Doval, who bridged the gap to the ninth inning, which Ryan Walker retired in order to earn his ninth save of the season with his third straight 1-2-3 outing.
Possessing four pitches and a 6-foot-4 frame, Birdsong has the build and the arsenal of a starting pitcher and had been one exclusively up until manager Bob Melvin gave the fifth rotation spot to Landen Roupp. He started 16 games as a rookie last season, going 5-6 with a 4.75 ERA and 88 strikeouts in 72 innings, but had gone more than two innings just once out of the bullpen this season so was operating under a workload restriction.
When he made the decision to replace Jordan Hicks in the rotation, Melvin guessed Birdsong would have somewhere around 75 pitches in him and was comfortable enough allowing his pitch count to go slightly beyond that to record the final out of the fifth.
If there has been a knock on Birdsong, it has been his ability to command his arsenal. He averaged a walk more than every other inning as a rookie but landed 54 of his 80 pitches for strikes.
Things went haywire for a brief moment in the third, after Drew Walters smacked a leadoff single.
The Giants had already caught one runner stealing, erasing Maikel Garcia on a strike-em-out, throw-em-out double play in the second, and Birdsong attempted to hold Walters close to the bag. He picked over, but the ball hit the dirt in front of LaMonte Wade Jr. and skipped to the warning track.
Walters advanced to second, and Birdsong seemed flustered. He missed high and outside, then buried a pitch in the dirt that allowed Walters to make it to third. That put him in position to score the first run of the game when Birdsong, back in the zone, generated a can of corn from the next batter, Kyle Isbel.
The Royals pulled within one run in the seventh, making it a 3-2 game, when the speedy Bobby Witt Jr. beat out a dribbler to first base that allowed Hunter Renfroe to score from third. Renfroe led off the inning with a pinch-hit double off Harrison, and Witt won the footrace to the first base bag against Doval, but Patrick Bailey got him attempting to steal second and Doval got Vinnie Pasquantino looking to end the inning.
Birdsong punched out four batters, getting two to chase his changeup as it darted below the strike zone and two more to swing through fastballs in the upper 90s above the letters. The heater was Birdsong’s weapon of choice against Witt, last year’s runner-up for the American League MVP, winning their first battle with a 98.4 mph fastball at the top of the strike zone.
Witt went down swinging a second time chasing another high fastball, one from Rodríguez at 96.4 mph, to lead off the sixth. Rodríguez fired two more heaters past Salvador Pérez and Maikel Garcia to strike out the side, lowering his ERA to 0.87 and his punchout count to 30 with just two walks in 20⅔ innings.
Notable
With his former college teammate on the mound, Matt Chapman received a rare day off. He and Michael Lorenzen attended CSU Fullerton together in 2012 and 2013, when the Royals starter was still a two-way player (with J.D. Davis on the roster, as well).
It was the first time Chapman had been held out of the lineup in 49 games this season and only the ninth game he has missed since joining the Giants before last season. Melvin said it “wasn’t as hard as it usually is” to convince the ironman to take the day off. “I think he deserved it.”
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Chapman has faced Lorenzen seven times, reaching base three times on a pair of singles and a walk but gave way to Casey Schmitt, who lined an RBI single in the fourth inning to give the Giants their first lead of the game, 2-1, in his second game back from a 28-game absence with a strained oblique.
Schmitt drove in Willy Adames, who got the Giants on the board with a 387-foot triple into the right-center field alley that scored Heliot Ramos. Ramos reached to start the inning when Lorenzen ran a sinker too far inside and nicked his jersey.
The Giants chased Lorenzen the following inning, after Jung Hoo Lee extended the lead to 3-1 with an RBI single as the third straight batter to reach to begin the fifth. Lee singled home Mike Yastrzemski, who singled to lead off the inning and advanced to third on an errant throw by the first baseman, Pasquantino.
Up next
RHP Logan Webb (5-3, 2.42) starts the 12:45 p.m. series finale, which also wraps up a nine-game homestand. The Giants are then off Thursday they get acclimated for an 11-day stay in the Eastern Time Zone with nine dates in Washington, D.C., (May 23-25), Detroit (May 26-28) and Miami (May 30-June 1).