San Francisco Giants Dugout Altercation Raises Cause for Concern

The youthfulness of the San Francisco Giants has been shining through with their lack of communication on the field.

Sep 8, 2024; San Diego, California, USA; San Francisco Giants shortstop Tyler Fitzgerald (49), left, and second baseman Marco Luciano (37) collide while trying to catch a fly ball from San Diego Padres left fielder Jurickson Profar (not pictured) during the seventh inning at Petco Park. / Chadd Cady-Imagn Images

The San Francisco Giants had a very successful weekend series against the San Diego Padres.

For only the third time this season, they won a series on the road against a team that was over the .500 mark.

What should have been positive and joyous postgame reactions were marred by a single play.

In the team’s 7-6 win on Sunday, shortstop Tyler Fitzgerald and second baseman Marco Luciano both were moving into the outfield on a pop-up.

They collided and the ball was dropped.

It was the start of what could have been an ugly scene had third base coach Matt Williams not intervened once voices were raised and things got heated in the dugout.

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

It was a microcosm of what the Giants are dealing with down the stretch of the season. There are a lot of young players who are learning on the fly how to handle themselves as Major Leaguers.

This is all a learning process, but manager Bob Melvin deemed this instance as “unacceptable.”

“It’s bad communication,” Melvin said, via Andrew Baggarly of The Athletic. “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 miscommunication between Fitzgerald and Luciano overshadowed a game that had so many positives for San Francisco. The team was rolling before things got dicey because of the lapse defensively, the latest in what has been a year full of them.

To make matters worse, the mistake was compounded when neither player covered second base. That allowed Jurickson Profar to take advantage of the miscue and advance an additional 90 feet with his hustle.

He ended up being stranded on base, but that doesn’t change how bad of a look it was for the Giants' middle infield.

Fitzgerald explained he was trying to tell Luciano to be louder when calling for the ball during their exchange in the dugout, which was something the second baseman didn’t respond to well.

After the game, the shortstop took responsibility for the mishap.

“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.”

Luciano says that he did call for the ball out loud in addition to the hand signals he was giving the outfielder.

Fitzgerald didn’t hear him and it nearly cost the team.

Fortunately, San Francisco held on to win, which makes the mistake easier to handle.

They just have to learn from it and do their part to ensure it doesn’t happen again.