Giants will promote Tyler Beede

The Giants will promote Tyler Beede, their top pitching prospect, to make his major-league debut later this week. Chris Haft of MLB.com was the first to report that Beede would be promoted.

Beede is in San Francisco as part of the team’s taxi squad, as NBC Sports Bay Area’s Alex Pavlovic first tweeted Monday, so he must be added to the Giants’ 25-man roster by before Tuesday’s game. While the Giants’ plan has been to insert a fifth starter into their rotation on Wednesday, it’s still possible that they could shake things up and give Beede his first start on Tuesday night against the Diamondbacks.

Beede — a member of a select group of players who have been selected in the first round of the MLB Draft twice, having been taken 21st overall by the Blue Jays in 2011 and 14th by the Giants in 2014 — has posted a 3.70 ERA and 1.33 WHIP over 72 minor-league starts. He’s ranked as the Giants’ No. 4 prospect overall and their top pitching prospect by MLB Pipeline.

He struggled a bit in his first Triple-A campaign last year, throwing for a 4.79 ERA and 1.47 WHIP over 19 starts before going down with a season-ending groin strain in late July. He posted a 10.80 ERA and 1.92 WHIP over 8.1 Cactus League innings this spring and has already made one minor-league start, pitching for High-A San Jose so that he could stay on schedule for a possible big-league promotion. Over five innings, he allowed one hit, three walks, and one earned run.

It’s unlikely that Beede will stick in the Giants’ rotation for long, and it’s quite possible that he’ll be sent down immediately after his debut. If Beede starts Wednesday, the Giants’ off day next Monday would give them the ability to proceed without a fifth starter until April 21, and it’s conceivable that Jeff Samardzija — who is currently on the DL with a pectoral strain — could be healthy enough to return by then.