It wasn’t too long ago that San Francisco Giants youngster Hayden Birdsong was doing more than just pitching.
When he was figuring out what the next step in baseball career would be following high school, he began his career at a junior college.
Upon enrolling, Birdsong was still playing as a two-way player, in the lineup sometimes playing the field and others on the bump.
However, coaches at that level quickly realized that there was more value in his arm as a pitcher than as a positional player doing both.
As a result, he transition to being a pitcher full-time and once he was a college-level player in 2020, he was no longer hitting and hasn’t stepped in the batter’s box since.
Is being able to step into the box as a hitter something that the Eastern Illinois product misses?
While he admits being a hitter is cool, he enjoys being the person who is throwing the ball 100 mph than the one who is attempting to hit it.
“I’m basically all-time defense — something that most people don’t think they want to do for the rest of their life,” Birdsong said, via Theo DeRosa of MLB.com, in a recent piece about MLB pitchers talking about being hitters. “It’d be cool if I could hit, but at the same time I don’t really want to see 100 mph [from the batter’s box].”
There are some pitchers who miss being able to receive regular at-bats, but Birdsong does not fall into that category.
He believes with the improvement pitchers are making with their arsenals nowadays, that there would be a lot of strikeouts being racked up by people in his position being asked to hit regularly, which was the case before the universal designated hitter was implemented in 2022.
However, if a need ever arose that Birdsong was in a position he had to take an at-bat, it is something he would jump at the opportunity to do.
“If the opportunity comes, that would be awesome,” he said.
That situation has arisen on a few occasions during the 2025 campaign.
Ryne Nelson of the Arizona Diamondbacks had an RBI single on March 30 in the eighth inning of a game as a pinch hitter, taking his first at-bat since 2018.
In a matchup between the Texas Rangers and Baltimore Orioles on June 30, both teams made lineup decisions that left pitchers having to take at-bats.
Jack Leiter for the Rangers and Trevor Rogers for the Orioles combined to go 0-for-3 with three strikeouts, providing some evidence to Birdsong’s hypothesis that there would be a lot of strikeouts occurring.
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