SAN FRANCISCO -- It wasn't hard to miss Jordan Hicks when the Giants took the field Saturday afternoon. The right-hander was wearing a bright orange long-sleeved shirt and surrounded by pitchers wearing black hoodies. The guys around him were all relievers, and Hicks now is, too.
Manager Bob Melvin said young right-hander Hayden Birdsong will start Tuesday against the Kansas City Royals instead of Hicks, a longtime big league reliever who will move back to that role after struggling in his second season as a starting pitcher.
"We're just trying to get it right at a particular time," Melvin said. "Jordan came in last year and signed here as a starter and came in here this year expecting to be a starter, and he was, but we're just making adjustments a couple months into the season that we think are potentially going to make us better."
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SIGN UP HERE Hicks has a 6.55 ERA through nine starts and Melvin was noncommittal when asked about his status on Wednesday, after Hicks got knocked out in the third inning. It seemed like an easy move to make, but the Giants were also well aware that some bad luck had been involved in those nine starts. Hicks has a 3.48 FIP and 3.75 xERA; he has mostly been undone by groundballs that have found holes, and his combination of throwing in the upper 90s and being among the league leaders in groundball rate is an intriguing one. But the results simply weren't there.
"He was great about it," Melvin said of their conversation. "He just said, 'Look, I want our team to win. I want to do whatever I can to help the team win.' He thought the way he has pitched was better than the numbers and I agreed with him, but again, we have a lot of quality, we have a lot of good young arms, we have a lot of starters, and we're just trying to get it right."
Hicks had always been a reliever before signing a four-year, $44 million deal with the Giants before last season. He pitched well in the first half before running up against an innings limit, and he bulked up in the offseason to handle a greater workload this season.
Now, he's back to a familiar role, although Melvin said it's too soon to know exactly how Hicks might be used the rest of this season. He is stretched out and can provide length for the bullpen in the coming weeks, although ultimately he could be back in a late-inning role, similar to what he did in St. Louis. That's to be decided, but Hicks certainly has shown the velocity this season to think he can be a big piece for what might be the league's best bullpen.
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"You look at our bullpen arms now ... It's a good problem to have that many plus arms and guys that have pitched late in games," Melvin said.
That mix includes Kyle Harrison, who was not in the conversation to take the rotation spot, Melvin said. Birdsong was always next in line after just missing out on Landen Roupp's rotation spot this spring. He pitched well when the Giants asked him to become a reliever, and he'll take a 2.31 ERA back to the rotation.
"Hayden hasn't been getting the type of regular work he was earlier in the season when the starters weren't going as long," Melvin said. "I don't think Jordan's numbers are as bad as they look. If you look at a lot of the internal numbers and FIP and so forth, he has pitched a lot better than his ERA and some numbers would suggest, but at this point in time that's what we're going to do, starting on Tuesday."