SAN FRANCISCO -- The Giants are making a big change to their pitching staff, shifting Jordan Hicks back to the bullpen and moving Hayden Birdsong into their starting rotation.
Birdsong is expected to make his first start of the season on Tuesday against the Royals, while Hicks should be available to pitch multiple innings in relief moving forward.
Hicks, 28, spent most of his first five big league seasons as a flamethrowing reliever, but he got his long-awaited opportunity to move into the starting rotation after joining the Giants on a four-year, $44 million deal last January.
Hicks got off to a hot start last season, logging a 2.33 ERA over his first 11 starts of the year, but he hit a wall once the bigger workload started to catch up to him, prompting the Giants to slot him back to the bullpen in the second half.
Hicks bulked up over the offseason to try to boost his stamina ahead of his second season as a starter this year, but he ended up struggling to a 6.55 ERA over his first nine starts, the highest mark among qualified starters in the Majors.
“We’re just trying to get it right at this particular time,” manager Bob Melvin said. “Jordan came in last year and signed here as a starter. He came in here this year expecting to be a starter, and he was. But we’re just making adjustments a couple months into the season that we think are potentially going to make us better.”
Hicks served as a late-inning weapon for the Cardinals and Blue Jays earlier in his career and has 33 career saves under his belt, but he could help give the Giants some length out of the bullpen since he’s already stretched out. Returning to his reliever roots should only further boost San Francisco’s bullpen, which entered Saturday tied with the Astros for the best ERA (2.66) in the Majors.
“He was great about it,” Melvin said. “He really was. He just said, ‘Look, I want our team to win. I want to do whatever I can to help the team win.’ He thought his numbers, the way he’s pitching was better than the numbers, and I agreed with him. But again, we have a lot of good young arms. We have a lot of starters, and we’re just trying to get it right for a particular time.”
Birdsong, 23, recorded a 2.31 ERA over his first 11 relief appearances for the Giants this year and threw 65 pitches over three innings in his last outing against the D-backs on Wednesday, so it shouldn’t take long for him to get fully ramped up again.
The Giants still have another young starter -- Kyle Harrison -- working out of their bullpen, but the 23-year-old left-hander will have to wait for another opening to arise before he’ll get his own chance to start in the big leagues again.
“It’s kind of a good problem to have that many plus arms and guys that have pitched late in games in our bullpen right now,” Melvin said.