{"id":621069,"date":"2026-03-13T01:12:35","date_gmt":"2026-03-13T01:12:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/621069\/"},"modified":"2026-03-13T01:12:35","modified_gmt":"2026-03-13T01:12:35","slug":"giants-hayden-birdsong-being-evaluated-for-elbow-issue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/621069\/","title":{"rendered":"Giants’ Hayden Birdsong Being Evaluated For Elbow Issue"},"content":{"rendered":"

Giants right-hander\u00a0Hayden Birdsong<\/a> is being evaluated for an elbow issue, reports Susan Slusser of The San Francisco Chronicle<\/a>. President of baseball operations Buster Posey tells Slusser that the team is awaiting word from their medical staff.<\/p>\n

At this point, it\u2019s 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\u2019s averaging 97.3 mph on his heater. He averaged 95-96 mph on his fastball while working multiple innings last year.<\/p>\n

Birdsong was one of the organization\u2019s 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 \u201925 season.<\/p>\n

The Giants moved him to the rotation towards the end of May. Birdsong\u2019s 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\u2019t 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\u2019t enough to get back to the MLB level.<\/p>\n

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\u2019t put him in a great position to break camp even before the potential for an injured list stint.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Giants right-hander\u00a0Hayden Birdsong is being evaluated for an elbow issue, reports Susan Slusser of The San Francisco Chronicle.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":621070,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[5,203,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-621069","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-hayden-birdsong","10":"tag-mlb"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116219212508263727","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=621069"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621069\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/621070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=621069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=621069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=621069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}