Giants' fifth-starter battle isn't as simple as trusting Cactus League results

New York Times

17-03-2025

You should ignore most Cactus League box scores.
Last spring, Logan Webb allowed 37 hits in 21 1/3 innings and finished with a 10.97 ERA. He wasn't worried about it. His manager wasn't worried about it. His catchers weren't worried about it. Webb would make his first All-Star appearance a couple months later. You're allowed to be intrigued, interested, curious or confused by spring results, but you should almost never feel educated by them.
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On Sunday, though, the Giants generated a box score that you should actually care about. The regularly scheduled March nonsense was still there — 10 Giants hitters finished the game with a batting average of .300 or better, for example — but there was something of interest toward the bottom:
• Hayden Birdsong, five innings, two hits allowed, no walks, no runs and a spring ERA of 0.75.
• Kyle Harrison, three innings (in relief), four hits allowed, no walks, three runs and a spring ERA of 10.80.
Those numbers might not predict the regular season, but they sure paint a meaningful picture of what's currently going on with the fifth starter competition in March. As soon as the Giants signed Justin Verlander, the starting five was set in stone. Then came the first Harrison start of the spring, and the starting five was set in mostly dry (but still a little wet) cement. Then there was another start, and the rotation was suddenly set in mud. The rotation isn't currently set in an Etch A Sketch, but that's the direction it's been trending. There's an honest-to-goodness battle going on, and the odds are suddenly against Harrison to open the season as the Giants' fifth starter.
Hold on, though. The bulk of the pessimism regarding Harrison has to do with his fastball, which had been sitting at the same lower velocities that he finished the 2024 season with. There was hope that he would benefit from his early end to last season and a full offseason of preparation, but he still hadn't unlocked the missing speed. He might be closer now:
Kyle Harrison allowed an RBI double in his first inning of work, but he also hit 95 mph while striking out Max Muncy looking to end the sixth, which is the highest velocity we've seen from him this spring.
— Maria I. Guardado (@miguardado.bsky.social) March 16, 2025 at 2:39 PM
Touching 95 isn't the same as 'pumping 97' or whatever the kids are saying these days, but it's a good sign from a pitcher who has already shown that fastball velocity isn't his most important attribute. If Harrison can get his radar readings back to where they were when he was a prospect, he would move from 'promising young pitcher' to 'established rotation mainstay,' and he probably deserves some patience.
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Go back to the Logan Webb example from last year. The 10-something ERAs from both him last year and Harrison this year help us remember that most obvious and important point: You should ignore most Cactus League box scores. If Webb gets a pat on the butt and the benefit of the doubt when he's rocked in spring training, Harrison should get at least some of benefit of the doubt.
Except you saw that line from Birdsong. His stuff looks amazing, and he's having an impressive spring, just like Landen Roupp. If you want to make the case that the Giants rotation is better with either Birdsong or Roupp in there over Harrison, there's evidence on your side. Either one of them might be one of the five best starting pitchers in the organization right now. Both of them might be.
Welcome to the bittersweet problem the Giants are likely to face all year. They have options in the rotation, but it'll be impossible to know exactly when to use them. It's easy to replace a pitcher on the IL, but it gets trickier to swap pitchers out for performance reasons. What if a pitcher's velocity is down, but he's not allowing crooked numbers … yet? What happens if one of the grizzled Cy Young winners isn't effective for a month? Does everyone hope it gets better in the second month? What if they're not effective for two months? What if any of this is happening when one or two River Cat starters are carving up the Pacific Coast League and wasting their best pitches away from Oracle Park?
It's a bittersweet problem that extends beyond Harrison. Almost every starting pitcher in baseball will have ups and downs this year, but maybe a team pays more attention when those ups and downs are coming from a 42-year-old, like Verlander. Maybe a team pays more attention to the erratic starts when they're coming from a pitcher whose last full, healthy season was 2022 (like Roupp), or when the pitcher is a converted reliever (like Jordan Hicks), or when the pitcher is still young and unproven (like Birdsong or Harrison). You can play this game with everyone except for Webb.
It's one thing to have capable young pitchers in Triple A in the event of an emergency, but it's another thing to know what constitutes an emergency with any precision. And we're doing these thought experiments on easy mode because the contrast between Roupp and Birdsong's dominance and Harrison's quadruple-digit Cactus League ERA is so obvious. Imagine how complicated it will get with differences that aren't as stark. Or consider some of the pitchers we haven't named yet, like Tristan Beck, Keaton Winn, Trevor McDonald and the assorted Carsons. It'll get confusing if one of them is having an excellent season while someone in the major-league rotation is pitching only slightly worse than expected.
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It's a fine line between patience and intransigence, but it's also a fine line between knee-jerk reactions and proactive ones. The Giants have arms that they'll want to mix and match over the next weeks, months and years as they build the best possible rotation they can build, but there's no instruction manual on when to start that mixing and matching. It might be right now, with Harrison looking vulnerable and his two competitors looking invulnerable.
It might not be right now, though. Harrison was expected to be a part of the Giants' rotation for years to come, and he showed enough promise last year to stick with that plan throughout the entire offseason. Some spring hiccups in 6 2/3 innings shouldn't undo all of that. The Giants will have more information than we do, especially without Statcast in every park, and they'll have watched every side session under a microscope. It's still hard to imagine the decision being easy, though. They have two young pitchers dominating in March and a struggling incumbent who seemed like the future of the rotation just three weeks ago. It might be a sign that the Giants need to pivot. Or it might be a reason to tap the sign that reads, 'You should ignore most Cactus League box scores,' especially when the most recent evidence we have is of Harrison throwing a livelier fastball with better command. He allowed runs doing it, but don't make me tap the sign even harder.
My guess is that Harrison gets some of that benefit of the doubt and starts the season in the rotation, which is a split from Baggs' roster projection. If in Harrison's final outing he looks like the pitcher the Giants were expecting to see all offseason, there's a long history of ignoring spring results to stick with the plan. But if Roupp and Birdsong keep looking like the future of the Giants rotation, that would mean there are reasons why they should be the present of the Giants rotation.
Don't worry, though. It might only be the season in the balance. Seasons can absolutely be won or lost in the first month of the season, and the incorrect decision could directly lead to the Giants missing the postseason by a single game. The incorrect decision could also stall or hinder the development of some of the organization's best young arms. There's a blinking red button in front of the Giants, and they know that if they mash it, something will happen. They just don't know if that something is good or bad.
(Photo of Harrison: Patrick McDermott / Getty Images)