Following a 6-3 loss in which one bad inning doomed the Giants, Bruce Bochy wasn’t in the mood to sugarcoat.
Did he know the thought process that went into Mike Yastrzemski trying to steal third base?
“No, I don’t to be honest,” the manager said.
The miscommunication would burn the Giants on Wednesday at Oracle Park, putting an end to a potential threat in a game they were trailing 5-3 in the fifth inning.
Yastrzemski had led off with a double, and Pablo Sandoval followed with a strikeout. With cleanup-hitting lefty Alex Dickerson up — the team’s hottest (and newest) hitter — and righty German Marquez on the mound, Yastrzemski took off. Tony Wolters gunned him down by several feet.
“I thought I saw a sign that wasn’t there,” said Yastrzemski, who was attempting his first big-league steal. “Just need to be a little more attentive in that situation.”
He acknowledged it wasn’t the optimal time to run, with one out and the Giants down two with their No. 4 hitter up. But he also had reason to believe he could be 90 feet from home plate.
He looked at third and saw Nolan Arenado far off the bag with the lefty at the plate.
“I noticed he was off,” Yastrzemski told KNBR. “But he’s a gold Glover, so he was going to be able to get there.
“… Would love to have scored a run there. [I] was trying to find a way to spark something on the offensive side.”
The attempted spark defused the offense. Dickerson walked, and only two Giants would reach base the rest of the way. Bochy was less charitable than the 28-year-old, calling it a “mistake.”
“I talked to him about it. There was a little bit of confusion there, he thought he got released, but you can’t go there,” Bochy said. “Two runs down, we had some good hitters up there.
“Just a mistake. It’s something that shouldn’t have happened. He’ll learn from it.”