Player review: Hayden Birdsong

The sins of youth are easily forgiven. But youth fades fast…

2024 stats: 16 GS, 72 IP, 4.75 ERA, 4.65 FIP, 7.1 H/9, 1.4 HR/9, 11.0 K/9, 5.4 BB/9

Hayden Birdsong turned 23 on August 30th.

He’s the spitting image of my college friend Antony when he was 20: those wide-set eyes and Cabbage Patch Kid nose… Youth incarnate. Youth that can throw letter-high cheese averaging 96 MPH. Could Antony do that? No, Antony could not do that — though in his early-20s, Antony did win his B-League intramural basketball championship, as well as pass his undergraduate film photography class.

Could Hayden do that?

The San Francisco Giants rotation already has four arms in Logan Webb, Robbie Ray, Jordan Hicks and Kyle Harrison that feel pretty established. Pitching is the path of least resistance for the Giants to get back into the postseason, so this winter would also be perceived as a disappointment if another established free agent arm like Blake Snell or Corbin Burnes or Sean Manaea wasn’t picked up. And don’t forget the likes of Keaton Winn and Tristan Beck who are vying for innings and desperate to get healthy after a disappointing season.

Despite a crowded field, it doesn’t take much of a cognitive leap to see Birdsong wriggle his way onto next season’s roster. On the level of stuff — what he’s working with feel more developed and are far more compelling than Winn’s or Beck’s. He’s got an above-average fastball in terms of velocity that can chew up the top of the zone with more rise and ride than your typical four-seamer. He’s got a slider and change-up that can be used to varying effectiveness against righties and lefties, keeping hitters from jumping fastball, as well as an attic-to-cellar curve that could become one of the best in the game.

Maybe this is wishful thinking, drawn forth by proximity and association, but I think Birdsong can be compared to starters like Snell or Ray. His stuff stuffs. We’ve already seen it overwhelm hitters. His 7.1 H/9 is up there with the best rates in the league while his 11 K/9 is much closer to Snell’s than other Giants starters.

When Birdsong was called up this past June, Harrison, Snell and Winn were all on the IL. The call-up was a bit of a surprise just because of how quickly it came, not because it wasn’t earned. Birdsong was drafted after the release of the COVID-19 vaccine. He K’ed 149 over 100 innings pitching in A, A+ and AA ball in 2023. Over 57 innings across AA and AAA in ‘24, he was averaging 11-plus strikeouts over 9 innings,and had only pitched two starts in Sacramento before his June debut against the Cubs.

On July 21st, Birdsong, in his fifth career start, struck out 12 Colorado Rockies over six innings while giving up 2 runs on just 2 hits. Against the Rockies again a week later, he K’ed 8 over five shutout innings. Now facing one of the worst line-ups in baseball certainly helps level-up the dominance, but even against the softness of the Colorado offense, those two starts introduced Birdsong’s potential to the league.

He generated 27 swing-and-misses in that first outing by essentially pitching backwards. He threw his four-seamer a season low 28% of the time while relying on both his slider and curve 33% of the time. The heavy breaking ball usage was an impressive adjustment for a young pitcher known to rely heavily on his fastball. On that day, the pitch ended up being effectively wild. Errant but present, nibbling at the zone just enough to set up the heavy North-South break of the curve and the sharp cut of the slider. In his next start, the mix reverted to more typical ratios. The breaking ball usage dropped below the fastball’s, while the slider rode pine in order to highlight his offspeed. The change-up missed bats on 67% of swings taken.

Three wins in July were followed up with four losses in August. The 2.97 ERA Birdsong entered the month with inflated to a bloated 5.14 by the summer’s end. He allowed 7 runs on 5 hits, including 2 homers, and 3 walks against the Nationals on August 6th, needing 66 pitches to get through 2 innings. Detroit piled on 5 runs on another pair of homers over 4.1 innings in his next start. He took a hard-luck loss against Oakland and pitched four shutout innings against Seattle but was dogged by pitch-counts, before taking another one on the chin against Milwaukee. Inefficiency and lack of command limited him to just 18.2 innings over his five August starts in which he allowed 18 runs and walked 15 batters.

September turned more temperate. Walks still stunted starts, but the arm wasn’t a loose cannon. It wasn’t that he filled up the strike zone with more pitches, it was when he attacked the zone. First-pitch strikes increased, meaning the count played to his favor more. When an arm like Birdsong has four different ways to get a batter out, an 0-1 count starts to feel less like a hole and more like a canyon. They either get fidgety in the box and chase, or shorten up to create often toothless contact. The gears were turning. Birdsong matured in front of our eyes. There are other ways to get a hitter out other than a strikeout. Not all contact is bad. On September 12th, facing the Brewers again, Birdsong rebounded nicely, allowing just two hits over 5 scoreless innings. Milwaukee’s rate of contact (82%) was more than ten points higher than it was two weeks prior when they bludgeoned Birdsong for 5 runs, coaxing 92 labored pitches out of him over 3.2 long innings of work. Just 68 pitches were required to throw 5 complete frames.

Birdsong pitched through the 5th in three consecutive starts and bagged back-to-back wins against Baltimore and Arizona without over-the-top strikeout totals. He became less of a “thrower” in these outings, and more of a pitcher. That changed for game 162. Birdsong gassed up for his final start of 2024, punching out 11 Cardinals in just 4.1 innings — a strikeout shy of his 12-K record in 1.2 fewer innings of work.

Perhaps this is horribly reductive, but it feels like most of the recurring problems in Birdsong’s performance this past season could be blamed on over-throwing. I wonder if his early 20-K gutting of Colorado sent him on a bit of a spin through August. That kind of whiff-y “dominance” is certainly fun to watch when it works, but it probably does more harm than good to a young arm. Frequent hard-contact (there was a lot of that) or the loss of control made him gun-shy with the fastball, fostering doubt in his mix which led to unnecessary tinkering, perhaps an over-reliance on his curveball. Uncle Charlie is Birdsong’s most dynamic pitch, but such a tool requires discernment.

The beak is wet. With 16 starts under his wing, all of the peripheral distractions and acclimations and extra-ness of the rookie year is out of the way. There will still be some leeway, but the rope won’t be as long. Youth fades. Giving up five walks in three innings won’t get him very deep into games let alone deep into 2025 wearing a Giants uniform.

Birdsong has his brief, his to-do list: fastball command, get more comfortable and consistent with secondary pitches, trust your stuff. It’s on him now to make the logical yet dynamic step in his development.

He could either become this Beatles song.

Or this song.