SF Giants forced to demote feel-good story due to young phenom's return

Sadly, the Giants demoted pitcher Spencer Bivens.

Nick San Miguel

Los Angeles Dodgers vs San Francisco Giants / Andy Kuno/San Francisco Giants/GettyImages

The SF Giants have been forced to make difficult roster decisions as their starters have returned from injury. With the return of their promising young starting pitcher Kyle Harrison, they were forced to send down Spencer Bivens who has been great.

SF Giants forced to demote feel-good story due to young phenom's return

Bivens has done a really good job with the Giants. In 17 innings he has recorded an ERA of 2.65. The highlght of his time in the big leagues has certainly been his phenomenal 5 inning start against the Los Angeles Dodgers which allowed the team to win the series and also allowed him to have a pretty awesome reaction when he struck out Shohei Ohtani to qualify for the win.

The reason why Bivens was called up in the first place was because the Giants sustained several injuries to their starting rotation, including Harrison and Blake Snell. The Giants were forced to be creative with their pitching staff in order to eat up innings because of their dearth of starting pitching.

Now, with Harrison's return the Giants had to demote Bivens even though he has done an outstanding job. This will certainly not be the last we see of him this season, but it is definitely a tough break for a guy who has done pretty much everything right in the big leagues only to be sent down.

But the Giants need their starting pitchers back. Their entire staff has been under a lot of strain this past month so they are going to need their starters to come back and eat up innings for them in order to preserve the bullpen going forward.

Blake Snell's return will be soon, so the Giants will have to demote someone when that happens as well. These are not easy decisions for the Giants to make, but they will definitely be eager to have some fresher arms as they approach the All-Star break.

This is a minor setback for Bivens, but he should be proud of the way he has pitched in the big leagues so far this year. The Giants' coaching staff and front office certainly took notice as well and this will almost certainly not be the last we see of Bivens in 2024.

Nick San Miguel

Nick San Miguel has been writing at FanSided since 2017. He began as a contributor writing about the San Francisco Giants at Around the Foghorn and became a Site Co-Expert for AtF in 2024. A die-hard Bay Area sports fan born 10 minutes from Levi's Stadium, he has also written about the San Francisco 49ers for Niner Noise as a contributor since December 2023. In October 2025, he joined Blue Man Hoop as a contributor to write about the Golden State Warriors. He graduated with a degree in History from San Diego State University and is now based out of Chicago. He is the same age as Oracle Park.