LOS ANGELES — About 30 minutes before the beginning of the game, Sean Hjelle was told that he would be making his first career start on Sunday Night Baseball at Dodger Stadium. Ten minutes later, he found out why.
Kyle Harrison had been in the bullpen getting ready for one of the biggest starts of his own career when he was called back into the clubhouse. Along with Jordan Hicks, he was traded to Boston for Rafael Devers, and as players prepared for the Dodgers, they also gave out hugs and said their goodbyes to the two pitchers.
The Devers trade is a season-altering moment for the Giants, but as it happened, it also was pure chaos.
Bob Melvin had known for a while that Buster Posey was on the prowl, but he didn’t hear that the deal was officially done until he was walking into the dugout for the start of the game. Willy Adames was so fired up that he forgot to stretch. Hjelle started his own warm-up routine as the national anthem was being performed.
“It was a new experience for me,” Hjelle said. “I’ve never really been in the clubhouse when there’s a trade done, especially a so-called blockbuster trade like what happened today. It’s a little unfortunate that I didn’t get to give Harry and Jordan a fair goodbye and farewell, so I’ll be reaching out to those guys later.”
The news became public exactly 20 minutes before first pitch, and as reporters scrambled to get confirmations, it wasn’t hard to see that something was in the works. Hjelle easily is identifiable as he gets loose, even from 400 feet away, and he then went out and gave the Giants 3 2/3 innings a day after their bullpen had to soak up a heavy workload in a blowout. Hjelle said he told Melvin and pitching coach J.P. Martinez that he would “empty the tank.”
“Just run me,” he told them. “Squeeze me dry.”
Hjelle threw 54 pitches, his most in two years. Then, it got really strange.
As he worked his way through the third inning, an unfamiliar face got up in the bullpen. The scoreboard at Dodger Stadium put up a graphic announcing that Joey Lucchesi — who hadn’t been announced as being on the roster, and wasn’t known to be on the 40-man roster — was warming up. Lucchesi was in big-league camp, but he had spent all season in Triple-A before quietly joining the Giants in Los Angeles as a member of the taxi squad.
The Giants got all the necessary paperwork to MLB in time, but it was close. Lucchesi took Harrison’s roster spot before the deal was announced by both teams.
“It was a lot, and it was late,” Melvin said, smiling. “You know what, to get it done, though, this is something we really needed.”
Melvin met with both departing pitchers, along with team leaders Matt Chapman and Adames. Word spread quickly through the clubhouse and on the field, where some position players were stretching. Adames at some point found a few moments to exchange texts with Devers, who told him he would fly to San Francisco on Monday.
“It just happened so quickly before the game and it just spread out quickly here in the clubhouse,” Adames said. “It was a mix of feelings in the clubhouse because some of the guys were getting ready to start the game and we just found out like that. Obviously it’s a mix of feelings for (Hicks and Harrison) … everybody was here, it was like 20 minutes before the game and everybody was about to go out and it was like, ‘Oh wait, Harrison is not pitching anymore. He got traded. Oh, what’s going on, for who?’ Everybody was all over the place but everybody got excited.”
A couple hours earlier, Melvin had sat in the dugout and given a coy answer when asked for his rotation for the upcoming series against the Cleveland Guardians. He said Robbie Ray would start Tuesday, but it was TBD after that. The Giants expect Justin Verlander back in the coming days, and there’s now no question about how they’ll open a rotation spot.
Harrison had hoped to pitch well enough Sunday that he would stay in the mix, but he’s now a member of a new organization. That spot goes back to Verlander, but for one night at least — and on national TV — it belonged to Hjelle, a last-minute fill-in who was drafted and developed as a starter but made his first 85 big-league appearances out of the bullpen.
“Not what I had envisioned, no,” Hjelle said. “A few more kinks and hoops to jump through on the day as a whole team and organization. That was the first one down, and if it happens again, it happens again — great, my name is called and I’ll grab the ball, but it was cool that I got to have my first one. I got to have a start in the big leagues. That’s pretty awesome. Not everybody that plays this game can say that. I’ll take that, absolutely, and for that little small reason, it’s a special day.”
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