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SAN FRANCISCO -- It’s been an eventful week for Luis Matos.

The Giants originally recalled Matos from Triple-A Sacramento to serve as outfield depth after Michael Conforto went down with a right hamstring strain, but the 22-year-old Venezuelan found himself thrust into a starting role in center field following the injury to Jung Hoo Lee, who is expected to undergo season-ending surgery after dislocating his left shoulder on a collision with the outfield fence on Sunday.

Matos stumbled in his second start in the middle of the diamond on Tuesday, missing a catchable drive to the left-center-field warning track and allowing it to fall for a three-base error, but he redeemed himself by making a spectacular leaping catch that robbed Teoscar Hernández of a home run the next day. Matos continued to provide a spark with his bat on Friday night, going 3-for-5 with a career-high five RBIs to help propel the Giants to a 10-5 comeback win over the red-hot Rockies at Oracle Park.

The Giants hope Matos, who entered Saturday batting .333 with a .905 OPS and 11 RBIs through his first six games of 2024, will be able to build on his recent success, as they’ll be leaning on him to fill their void in center field for the foreseeable future.

“Right now, it’s Luis’ job,” president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi said Friday. “I think there was a little bit of an adjustment those first couple of games in center field. We know he’s got the ability to play a good center field. We’ve seen it for stretches. I know our coaches are encouraged by the tools. We just want him to be really aggressive.

“Outfield play comes easy to him, so it’s easy for him to kind of glide to the ball and kind of play with that rhythm. But I think we’ve asked him to really go all-out trying to cover as much ground as he can. You saw the play that he made [on Wednesday]. That was an unbelievable play that if you’re not going all-out, 100 percent, you don’t have a chance to make. We know he can hit up here. We’ve seen it. We’ve seen good defensive stretches. He’s obviously pretty determined to establish himself. As of now, he’s going to be going out there every day.”

Matos didn’t rate well defensively in his 57 games in center field with the Giants last year, recording -4 Outs Above Average at the spot, but he’s been working hard to improve his jumps and get better reads on balls off the bat. After he struggled to chase down drives in the gaps on Tuesday, Matos started playing a bit deeper at the suggestion of bench coach Ryan Christenson, which helped him pull off his jaw-dropping catch against the Dodgers on Wednesday night.

“The intention is to play hard and try to give 100 percent on every play,” Matos said in Spanish. “What happened on [Tuesday] is part of the game. You learn from it and try to make adjustments.

“I feel good, especially now that I’ve been putting in a lot of effort there during batting practice,” he added. “That gives me a lot more confidence during the games.”