Spring Training is a funny time. It’s funny for a lot of reasons, but it’s funny first and foremost games aren’t as binary. In the postseason, you either win or you lose; there’s no in between. In the regular season, you either win or you lose, but you can have relatively bad wins and relatively good losses.
But in the preseason, you can both win and lose, and you can even tie. The Giants did not tie on Saturday in their Cactus League opener, but they did both win and lose. They won in the traditional
sense, beating the Seattle Mariners 10-5 on the road in Peoria. That’s the good news, and there’s more of it to come.
Let’s talk about the loss first, though. The Giants started the game meagerly, with Harrison Bader opening the preseason with a comeback to the pitcher, before Christian Koss and Heliot Ramos struck out swinging.
That brought us to the bottom of the second, where the excitement that had been bubbling all week sat: Hayden Birdsong’s preseason debut. By now, we’re all well aware of the story of Birdsong’s 2025. The hope is that his 2026 goes much differently, and that he can play his way back into a role in the Major League rotation at some point. The fact that he was anointed the starter to open Spring was a bit symbolic, and it surely carried a little bit of meaning. The Giants have high hopes for him, and he presumably sits atop the pecking order of young pitchers as the preseason games begin.
Unfortunately, it did not go according to plan.
It started with some tough luck. Birdsong got ahead of Victor Robles 0-2, but the veteran reached on an infield single. He then got ahead of Cole Young 1-2, and that’s when the wheels started to loosen. Young fought back, ultimately drawing an eight-pitch walk. Birdsong, now struggling to find the strike zone once again, fell behind Patrick Wisdom 2-0 after missing with a pair of sliders. A get-it-in fastball was lined into the outfield for an RBI single.
He got former Giant Connor Joe to ground out, then walked former Giant Andrew Knizner to load the bases. And then the first pitch he threw to Miles Mastrobuoni was tattooed over the fence for a grand slam.
That was the end of Birdsong’s spring debut: six batters faced, one out recorded, three hits allowed, two walks issued, five runs scored, and just 14 of 26 pitches being strikes. Needless to say, not what he was hoping for.
It wasn’t all bad. While Birdsong didn’t have excellent control, he didn’t look lost, as he did for so much of 2025. His fastball, while punished by hitters who saw it coming, was decently electric, and sat around 97, and touched 98.
And most importantly, it was the first outing of the spring, and Opening Day is more than a month away. There is plenty of time for Birdsong’s Spring to be a strong one, and for him to earn his spot on the roster. But the biggest thing to look for on Saturday was how he looked and there the Giants suffered a large loss.
Thankfully, it was their only loss of the day, really. Despite trailing 5-0 after the first inning, the Giants would get right back in the game. Bryce Eldridge opened his spring by getting plunked to lead off the second, and Jerar Encarnicón and Casey Schmitt followed with strikeouts. They Giants were getting worked by Emerson Hancock, who had struck out four of the first six batters and hadn’t allowed a ball out of the infield. But, with a little help from the Arizona sun, all of that was about to change.
Daniel Susac made his Giants debut with a single, and Eric Haase made his debut with a walk. The Mariners decided that was enough for their young pitcher, and brought in AA reliever Peyton Alford. Up to the plate came the ninth-place hitter, Tyler Fitzgerald, who fell behind 0-2 before putting the ball in play. In the desert, sometimes that’s all you need to do. A towering, lazy pop-up to shallow right field stymied the Mariners defense, and fell for a two-run “double.”
Bader would follow up the Little League double with a more traditional one, blasting a 2-2 fastball 101.2 mph the other way and off the wall, scoring both runners and pulling the Giants to within a run.
They would tie the game in the third inning on arguably the two most impressive at-bats of the game for the team. Seattle brought in their bullpen weapon, Andrés Muñoz, a two-time All-Star who had a scintillating 1.73 ERA last year.
Ramos led off the inning facing the terrifying righty, and on the first pitch he saw, smacked an opposite-field double at 102.6 mph. Eldridge followed and, while he had the handedness advantage, one-upped Ramos with an opposite-field double of his own at a 104.8 mph, scoring Ramos and tying the game.
The kids are all right!
Ramos and Eldridge would both finish the day 1-2 with a double and a hit by pitch, and that’s great news. Those are two players who we all want to see have a massive spring.
The game would stay tied until late, when all of the players on both teams had been replaced, and the Giants subs ran away with it. They took the lead in the seventh on an infield single by first baseman Jake Holton, and would score four more in the eighth on an RBI single by designated hitter Drew Gilbert, a two-run double by second baseman Nate Furman, and an RBI single by Holton.
Meanwhile, the pitchers who followed Birdsong didn’t allow a run the rest of the way, though they did give up five more walks. Righty Tyler Vogel came over from Minor League camp to clean up the first, and then it was an inning each for, in order: RHP Blade Tidwell, RHP José Buttó, RHP Michael Fulmer (NRI), LHP Nick Margevicius (NRI), RHP Caleb Kilian (NRI), LHP Juan Sánchez (NRI), RHP Braxton Roxby (Minor League camp), and LHP Nick Zwack (Minor League camp). And thanks to them, manager Tony Vitello now has a win that he’ll always remember.
A few notes from the day:
- Tidwell was particularly impressive. He struck out the side in a no-hit second inning, though he issued a walk. He sat 97-98 and looked fairly filthy. That is a very exciting sign, and a nice tonic from the youthful arms after Birdsong’s rough outing.
- NRI infielder Buddy Kennedy, who replaced Schmitt at third base, showed off his impressive speed with a triple though, as is the case this time of year in Arizona, he was helped out by the sun: it was a routine fly ball to center field that simply wasn’t cought.
- This is the first year of the ABS challenge system, and the Giants started things off well, when Susac successfully called for a challenge. Things took a downturn later in the game when Buttó called one and was unsuccessful on a pitch that replay review showed to be not even close to the strike zone. Maybe we stick to letting the catcher call things.
- Vitello learned a hard lesson in his first game, as he chose the wrong spot to stand in the dugout and got drilled in the shin by a foul ball. Whoops!
- Fulmer struck out a pair batters in a perfect inning, though his fastball velocity was quite low. That will be interesting to monitor as the spring progresses.
Baseball is back, friends! Rejoice!
