LOS ANGELES -- Pitcher Sean Hjelle was just told to be ready to go for first pitch on Sunday.
It was an unusual request for a few reasons, given that Hjelle’s a reliever, it was roughly 30 minutes before gametime, and he had just seen Kyle Harrison -- the Giants’ scheduled starter -- walk out onto the field to start warming up. But Hjelle didn’t think anything of it until he saw Harrison go back into the clubhouse about 10 minutes later.
Then he noticed Jordan Hicks leaving manager Bob Melvin’s office.
Word started spreading around the clubhouse that the two had been traded.
"For who?”
"Not what I had envisioned,” Hjelle said with a laugh about his first big league start in the Giants' eventual 5-4 loss to the Dodgers. “A few more kinks and hoops and whatnot to jump through on the day just as a whole team and organization.”
The full trade had Devers going to the Giants in exchange for Harrison, Hicks, Jose Bello and last year’s first-year Draft pick (13th overall) pick James Tibbs III.
Not exactly what anybody envisioned going into Sunday. Not Hjelle. Not Willy Adames. Not Logan Webb.
"Obviously going to miss Kyle a lot. I’ve known Kyle for a long time now. Hicksie too,” Webb said of Harrison and Hicks being in the trade with Boston. “Losing those two guys is obviously tough, because we’re with these guys all the time. Around them every single day for six months straight. But that’s baseball. We’re getting a guy back that changes the lineup.”
Another layer adding to the chaos of Sunday is the fact that left-hander Joey Lucchesi took the mound in relief of Hjelle in the fourth inning despite not being officially added to the team’s 40-man roster.
Apparently, Lucchesi’s contract was selected from Triple-A Sacramento and was placed on the taxi squad after Saturday night’s loss to the Dodgers, per Melvin.
"He got here earlier this morning,” Melvin said. “And there were a couple different ways he could’ve gotten on the roster today.”
That ended up happening via the Devers trade, as it created an open spot on the 40-man roster that facilitated the addition of Lucchesi.
As a top-shelf left-handed bat with power, Devers fills two of the Giants’ biggest needs at the moment. The three-time All-Star and two-time Silver Slugger is slashing .272/.401/.504 through 73 games with 15 homers, 58 RBIs and a .905 OPS in 2025.
He’s played third base for the majority of his career, but moved over to DH this season -- despite initially refusing -- after the Red Sox signed Alex Bregman in free agency. There was also a high-profile spat with the Boston front office when he publicly rebuked another move to first base.
As for where Devers will play in San Francisco, that’s a conversation that Melvin and Giants president of baseball operations Buster Posey are waiting to have with him once he arrives on Monday. (It's worth noting that Casey Schmitt, filling in for the injured Matt Chapman, exited Sunday's game after fouling a ball off his ankle and is considered day to day).
However it shakes out, Devers' new teammates aren’t concerned.
"He’s great,” said Adames, who’s known Devers for 10 years. “He’s a great guy. Obviously there has been miscommunication there. From what I know from him, he likes to know things. He wants you to communicate, talk to him, and be honest. And I feel like here with Buster, that’s all we got. Buster’s a super honest guy, he’s going to be straight up, and [Devers] is going to love that.”
With an already talented core of Adames, Chapman and Jung Hoo Lee all locked into long-term contracts and the Giants two games behind the Dodgers for first place in the heated NL West race, the front office adds another piece in Devers that they feel can put the club over the top -- for both this season and the next decade.
"It sends a message,” Adames said. “That we want to win, and [Buster]’s going to do whatever it takes to put the best team out there for us to go out there and compete.”
The mood in the Giants’ clubhouse reflected that. Nobody was really talking about how they just lost two of three to their archrivals at Dodger Stadium, but rather what awaits them back at Oracle Park.
"I know this is a crazy last few hours,” Dominic Smith, who was teammates with Devers in Boston for 82 games last season, said. “But we got a really, really, really talented ballplayer right in his prime. Can’t wait to see how many balls he hits in the Cove.”