SAN DIEGO — San Francisco Giants shortstop Tyler Fitzgerald and second baseman Marco Luciano converged on the outfield grass. Then they converged again in the dugout.
The result was a dropped popup. Then raised voices in front of the bat rack. And third-base coach Matt Williams rushing in to separate the two rookies before a heated exchange escalated into something more.
The result also included a 7-6 victory Sunday afternoon at Petco Park and a series win over the San Diego Padres — just the Giants’ third road series victory all season against an opponent with a winning record. But the postgame clubhouse did not reflect that outcome. Instead, the Giants jetted home with a jarring reminder: They are playing a slew of rookies, including two inexperienced middle infielders who are still learning their positions at the major-league level. They are not only bound to make mistakes. Those mistakes might seem inescapable at times.
And handling frustration well is part of being a big leaguer, too.
“It’s bad communication,” Giants manager Bob Melvin said. “Doesn’t matter whose fault it was. It was bad communication. And it’s unacceptable. It’s just bad, bad baseball. We got to clean it (up). Our defense has to get better.”
The Giants did plenty of things right Sunday, too. Spencer Bivens pitched effectively into the fifth inning in a spot start. Matt Chapman hit a two-run home run, Jerar Encarnacion hit a three-run shot and Luis Matos followed with a solo homer in a six-run fourth inning. After Camilo Doval served up a two-run home run to Xander Bogaerts and then issued a walk to put the tying run on base in the eighth, closer Ryan Walker once again performed like a rising star. Walker picked off a runner while recording a five-out save.
But the last thing Melvin wanted to do was push Walker, who was appearing in his 70th game. Or right-hander Tyler Rogers, who was making his major league-most 71st appearance. For once, the Giants were coasting to a relatively stress-free victory that wouldn’t require the intercession of their two right-handed pack mules.
Then came the seventh inning. And what might rank as the worst defensive lapse in what’s been a checkered defensive season.
With two out and two runners in scoring position, Jurickson Profar lofted a pop-up to the right side. Luciano waved an arm but did not appear to call for it. Fitzgerald roamed well past second base and kept drifting when he didn’t hear Luciano’s voice. The two rookies collided, the ball clanked off Fitzgerald’s glove for an error, and two runs scored.
That wasn’t the worst of it.
Immediately after the ball fell, Luciano made a face and put his hands on his hips. Fitzgerald stood in place as well. Neither infielder made any attempt to cover second base. Right fielder Luis Matos scooped up the ball and could do nothing as Profar hustled an extra 90 feet. Profar was stranded there one batter later. But the on-field optics were as bad as they get.
Then a dugout confrontation added to the apparent disarray.
Marco Luciano and Tyler Fitzgerald exchanged words in the dugout after colliding on an infield fly that resulted in an error and two runs scoring pic.twitter.com/TSqPZR5JFd
— SF Giants on NBCS (@NBCSGiants) September 8, 2024
Fitzgerald said he was trying to tell Luciano to be louder when he calls for the ball. Luciano did not appear to receive the comments well, and some part of his reaction could be understandable. Fitzgerald acknowledged that the play was his fault, that he drifted too far to the right side of the infield, and that the ball was Luciano’s to catch.
“I’ll start off it wasn’t my ball,” Fitzgerald said. “It’s communicating. It goes back to high school and college and everything I’ve been taught in this game. Just communicating. If anything, you want to be on the loud side of things. We just don’t have that connection up the middle to where we’re communicating on the same page. But I’m not blaming it on him. I’m trying to get across the point that we have to be loud. If I don’t hear anything, I’m going to run over there and try to make a play.
“Again, it wasn’t my ball, it’s my mistake at the end of the day. Hopefully going forward, we’ll just scream as loud as we possibly can.”
Fitzgerald said he watched video after the game and he saw Luciano made hand signals, “But those are for the outfielders. I’m looking at the ball the same time he is. When I don’t hear anything I’m going to try to make a play. I’m not going to take a play for granted and assume someone else is gonna get it.”
Why did Fitz think he needed to run 50 feet to catch this ball 😭 pic.twitter.com/wl7pI1kEeO
— dylan (@sfgsalsa2) September 8, 2024
Luciano said he did audibly call for the ball.
“Just miscommunication on both of our parts,” Luciano said. “He didn’t hear me because it was loud here at the stadium. I didn’t hear him calling.”
The two rookies agreed on one thing: The matter should’ve been handled in a less public setting.
“Some things built up and we went at each other a little bit,” said Fitzgerald, who planned to hash things out with Luciano a bit later. “It’s not the first time or the last time this’ll probably happen, being teammates. It’s what teammates do. But we probably should have done it in a more private setting. So that was my mistake.”
Some errors are physical. Some are mental. This one was neither. It mostly reflected the Giants in their current form: as a team giving exposure to young players who are still learning not only to trust themselves but to establish trust with one another. Fitzgerald probably doesn’t drift so far past second base on a popup if someone like Thairo Estrada is playing across the middle infield. But Luciano’s defensive foibles in the big leagues have been both visible and damaging.
It’s even harder to build trust in yourself when you’re nowhere near gaining that trust from your teammates.
“It won’t happen again,” Fitzgerald said. “We’ll be better for it moving forward.”
Melvin agreed with Fitzgerald that the shortstop drifted too far for a ball that wasn’t his. The manager called it unacceptable for the two infielders to feud in a space where TV cameras could capture it. After a fourth follow-up question, asking if the team had moved past the incident, Melvin was ready to change the subject.
“I’ll handle it,” Melvin said. “We won. We can go on to that, too.”
Melvin also issued a light reprimand during the game to young outfielder Heliot Ramos, who didn’t hustle out of the batter’s box when Padres right fielder Fernando Tatis Jr. lost his fly ball in the bright sunshine. Ramos ended up with a double but might have taken third. But some mistakes are more understandable than others. And context matters, too.
“He said he’ll never do that again,” Melvin said of Ramos. “Look, he plays hard every single day. A fly ball to Tatis is typically an out, but we did discuss here that the sun in right field, especially early in a day game, can be tough. He couldn’t be more apologetic. He’s a guy who plays hard, he’s a great kid. He learns.”
In this trying season, even in the rarest of victories, the hard lessons never seem to end.
(Photo of Tyler Fitzgerald and Marco Luciano: Chadd Cady / USA Today)
