Vitello Got Run Again, and This Time He Took Logan Webb With Him

Third inning, Arizona up four, Basabe punched out on a pitch nobody liked, and here comes the manager. Alan Porter tossed him. Jim Wolf tossed Webb. I'm watching this with my dinner going cold and I've got nothing left.

He's gone again.

Bottom of the third, Osleivis Basabe strikes out swinging, and before the ball's gone around the horn Tony Vitello is up the steps and Alan Porter has run him. Two days. That's how long it took. Two days after he torched a getaway day game in the first inning and then wasn't around when the bullpen handed back six runs in the ninth, he did it again, in the third, down four, in a game his team still had six innings to fix.

And Jim Wolf threw Logan Webb out with him.

Logan Webb, who isn't pitching tonight. Who threw six innings Wednesday and gave up two runs and got absolutely nothing for it. Our best pitcher watched the rest of this on a clubhouse TV, because the manager decided months ago that yelling from the top step is how this team does business, and the bench follows him into it now.

I don't even have the anger tonight. That's the honest part. Wednesday I was furious and I wrote it that way and I meant all of it. Tonight I sat here with a plate on my lap and said out loud, to nobody in the room, oh, again.

Again.

Five ejections. Fifty five wins. I keep setting those two numbers next to each other because eventually the ratio is the season. Nobody's going to remember a fifth place club in the last week of August. Everybody remembers a manager who spent his summer getting thrown out of games he was already losing.

And look at what he walked out on. Carroll hits a two run shot in the third. Perdomo singles, Arenado doubles off the wall in left, Tim Tawa hits a three run homer, and it's six to two before anybody in that dugout takes a breath. That was the half inning that needed a manager. A visit, a change, a plan, a hand on somebody's shoulder, any of the things he's actually paid to do. Instead he saved it for a strike three call on the guy hitting eighth.

The kids answered anyway, and that's the part that'll make me feel stupid by midnight. Devers wears a pitch, Bryce Eldridge lines one into center to score him, six to three, and the manager's already up the tunnel. Eldridge got activated yesterday and he's already the whole reason to leave the TV on. Twenty one years old, playing like the score matters, in a ballpark where the guy who writes the lineup card had checked out by the third.

Do you know how hard it is to explain this team to somebody at work? A guy asked me Thursday what happened to the Giants and I got four sentences in and quit, because every version of it sounds like an excuse.

I liked the fire in April. I'll own that. I defended the first one in this space and I already took it back once this week and I'm taking it back harder now. Fire without a plan is noise. This is noise. It's a man doing the one part of the job that ends up on TV and skipping the parts that decide baseball games, and Buster's already told us he's back in 2027, so we're doing this again next April, and next May, and next August.

The game's still on as I type. Six to three, top of the fourth, Blade Tidwell out there trying to hold something together for a manager who isn't in the building.

I'll watch the rest. I always do.

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