PEORIA, Ariz. — A day before he would throw the first pitch of the Tony Vitello Era, Hayden Birdsong sat in front of his locker at Scottsdale Stadium and talked at length about how encouraged he was by his offseason. Birdsong spent all winter in Scottsdale and felt he found some mechanical fixes that would help him stay in the zone more often.
“We’ll see what happens when I get in the game,” he said Friday. “Hopefully I don’t lose everything, but I don’t think I will.”
In the box score, Saturday’s outing looked eerily similar to the ones at the big league level last summer before the Giants sent Birdsong back to Triple-A. He started the first Cactus League game for the Giants but recorded just one out. After two seeing-eye singles and two walks, Birdsong watched a fastball leave the yard for a grand slam that gave the Seattle Mariners a 5-0 lead.
But Birdsong found a huge positive in the short outing. His four-seamer, which topped out at 98 mph, was mostly thrown for strikes.
“That’s my main goal, to fill it up with the heater,” Birdsong said at Peoria Stadium. “That’s one win in there, my fastball was in the zone. I’m not upset, but I’m not happy.”
Birdsong threw 11 of 16 fastballs for strikes, but his command was off with his cutter, a pitch he said he tried to stop throwing after last season. The new staff wants him to stick with it; Birdsong said he likes the idea of having a pitch that goes glove-side, but he admitted it has been “finicky” in bullpen sessions.
While the results weren’t there, Vitello wasn’t concerned at all. He said “the ball was jumping out of (Birdsong’s) hand.”
“I thought he was fine,” Vitello said after the Giants stormed back for a 10-5 win. “You’d like to subtract the walk from everything — someone across the table from me would say, ‘What about the ball that was driven to right field?’ But a couple different steps (from) an infielder or a ball just kind of hit a different way, you’d like to think his results were better. But he was throwing the ball well.”
There isn’t much to discern when it comes to spring training lineups — the Giants left nearly all of their key position players at home — but it would make sense if there was something behind the decision to go with Birdsong on Saturday. The Giants desperately need a few young pitchers to step up this spring, and Birdsong stands out as someone who could help in either the rotation or bullpen.
The right-hander showed flashes of brilliance as a starter in 2023, striking out a dozen batters at Coors Field and whiffing 11 in his final start. When Landen Roupp won the final spot in the rotation last spring, Birdsong ended up in the bullpen. At certain points last April, he was the most dominant reliever on the staff.
The command issues once he reentered the rotation muddied the waters, and right now, the Giants truly don’t know what they have in Birdsong. They talk about him often in meetings, and he was specifically brought up in their interviews with pitching coach candidates, but there are still questions about his role and his future.
At times, Birdsong looks like a future No. 2 starter behind Logan Webb. At times, he looks like a closer. But it also wouldn’t shock anybody if he spends much of this season in Triple-A, trying to find consistency.
When Vitello watched clips of Birdsong over the offseason, he was drawn to a strong start against the Kansas City Royals in May. Birdsong left the mound that day with a 1.91 ERA, but it was 4.80 when he was optioned to Sacramento in July. He hoped to get on track and return in September or October if the Giants got that far, but he never made it back to Oracle Park.
“That’s to be expected for a younger guy,” Vitello said of Birdsong’s ups and downs. “You’re trying to find your personality in the big league uniform. I think his personality in college and then in the minor leagues was, you know, he’s always had success. But at some point you get punched in the mouth, and you’ve got to find that consistent image.”
Vitello noted that Birdsong, like Bryce Eldridge, grew up in an area where it wasn’t always easy to find good baseball weather. That has limited his reps to an extent.
“He’s still a pup,” the manager said.
The Illinois native moved to Scottsdale after the end of the 2025 season, and the Giants pretty quickly found what they felt was part of the issue. Birdsong described it as “side-bending too far.” This spring, he’s more upright.
“I was just getting a very inconsistent hand position,” he said. “That could have been it. You never know.”
That was reinforced on Saturday. Birdsong said he felt good mechanically, but that didn’t lead to better results.
Front offices and coaching staffs don’t make decisions purely on spring ERAs, but for a young player trying to force his way onto the roster, this was still a rough way to kick things off.
“I’m obviously trying to win a job,” he said. “So I want to throw all my pitches and punch people out and not walk people. But at the same time, I’m working towards the end goal of things.
“Making the team is awesome — it would be great — but I also know that if I don’t make the team, I have more time to work on my stuff and get stuff to where it’s perfect, so whenever I come back up or if I start up (in the big leagues), I can have it ready.”
Download and follow the Giants Talk Podcast