SF Giants fall back below .500 as Hayden Birdsong endures worst start of career

Hayden Birdsong allowed a career-worst seven earned runs in his seventh career start as the Giants slipped below .500 with a loss to the Nationals

A week ago, exactly, the Giants placed a world of pressure on Hayden Birdsong.

Birdsong, who began the season with Double-A Richmond, made his debut in late-June largely because the rotation was depleted. With just two starts with Triple-A Sacramento to his resumé, the 22-year-old still required polish. By late July, the Giants traded Alex Cobb with the specific intent of maintaining a rotation spot for Birdsong. Farhan Zaidi, the team’s president of baseball operations, subsequently called the rotation the best in baseball.

For San Francisco’s rotation to be the best, Birdsong will now have to rebound from a start that can be described as his worst. In his first outing since July 27, Birdsong pitched a career-low two-plus innings and allowed a career-high seven earned runs — all being scored in a disastrous 40-pitch second frame — as the Giants lost to the Nationals, 11-5, at Nationals Park.

“Obviously, I want to get to five, six, seven innings, but sometimes, it doesn’t work that way,” Birdsong told reporters in Washington D.C. “Things happen. Guys can hit it. Didn’t have my best stuff, wasn’t my day, but gotta be a little bit better than two innings. Gotta be. Can’t hurt the bullpen like that, especially with a couple more games coming up this week. Now, we’re getting deep into the bullpen and just hoping we grind out a lot of innings early in the game. Gotta eat up more than two innings.”

“There are times that he’s been scattered with his fastball, but with his offspeed stuff, he’s been able to throw it for strikes and keep them off balance,” said manager Bob Melvin. “Today, just really didn’t have command of anything early on. They put some good swings on him, put a lot of pressure on him. Never really had a break out there, but not his best.”

Birdsong’s night, his first start since July 27, began fine enough, tossing a scoreless, 18-pitch first inning. With the offense spotting him four runs of support by way of Heliot Ramos’ solo home run and Michael Conforto’s three-run blast, the rookie was on his way to securing his fourth major-league win.

In the second, the wheels fell off.

James Wood began the inning with a triple on a fly ball that left fielder Michael Conforto misread, then scored on Travis Blankenhorn’s groundout. Alex Call drew a walk. Ildemaro Vargas did, too. Jacob Young singled home Call. On Birdsong’s 29th pitch of the inning, CJ Abrams sent an eye-level fastball into the right-field bleachers for a three-run home run. The Giants’ 4-0 lead had become a 5-4 deficit.

Birdsong can hardly be faulted for the home run he allowed to Abrams. At 4.42 feet above the ground, the pitch was the highest hit for a home run this season, as well as the highest by a Nationals hitter in the Statcast era (since 2015). Regardless, the lead was gone — and there were still more pitches to throw. In total, Birdsong needed 40 pitches to complete the second, by far the most he’s thrown in a single frame in his young career.

“I had no idea how he hit that ball,” Birdsong said.

“A long time since I’ve seen that,” Melvin said. Certainly not a bad pitch if you’re trying to elevate and get a swing. Give Abrams credit.”

Despite throwing roughly half-a-start’s worth of pitches in the second inning, Melvin kept Birdsong in the ballgame, likely in an effort to save the bullpen with the Giants in the middle of playing 14 straight games. The decision backfired. On his second pitch of the third inning, Birdsong allowed a solo home run to Keibert Ruiz. Birdsong followed up by walking Wood, and Melvin pulled the plug on the rookie’s night.

“It’s move on to the next,” Melvin said of the message to Birdsong. “He’s been good for us. So, it’s just, ‘Don’t worry about that one when you’ve been good enough times to where you’re going to be out there again. We have confidence in you and you have good stuff.’”

With Birdsong only completing two innings, Randy Rodriguez (2 2/3), Taylor Rogers (2/3) and Sean Hjelle (2 2/3) were called upon to cover the remaining frames. Washington’s offense continued to tack on runs following Birdsong’s departure, the dagger being Wood’s two-run, opposite-field homer off Hjelle in the eighth inning. The Giants, by contrast, went 1-for-14 with runners in scoring position.

“Our situational at-bats were terrible again tonight,” Melvin said. “That’s been a problem here for a couple weeks now.”