Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports
Gabe Kapler talked with Mauricio Dubon, a message the inexperienced utilityman heard well enough to apparently nearly memorize it.
“That is a really bad baseball play,” the manager said he relayed to Dubon. “… It was just a baserunning blunder that just cannot happen.”
“It was a dumb baseball play,” Dubon said over Zoom. “That can’t happen.”
It appears the message has been received, but this was not the time to learn a lesson that may have helped the Giants’ season turn in the wrong direction. Dubon has had plenty of teaching moments this year, but teaching moments are rendered as glaring mental errors when a team is less focused on progress and more focused on the postseason.
The Giants’ playoff hopes took a significant blow on Saturday, when Dubon ran them out of an inning and they could do little off San Diego pitching in a 6-2 loss at Oracle Park that dropped them below .500 and into a tie with Milwaukee for the last playoff spot. Sunday will be wild in a way they never wanted it to be.
The Giants had Dubon on second and Tyler Heineman on first with one out in the fifth and down 3-0. Mike Yastrzemski was at the plate against righty Craig Stammen, which meant the Giants were a pitch away from tying it. Alex Dickerson was on deck, which meant if Yastrzemski failed, the Giants were a pitch away from tying it.
“I was trying to get something going,” Dubon said afterward, the club having mustered four hits — all singles — and no runs up to that point. “We’re a little turned off, and I was just trying to get momentum.”
With the lefty Yastrzemski up, the Padres were shifted, but not radically so. Manny Machado was closer to third than second, and he’s a smart player who knows how quickly he can cover ground. Dubon thought he could beat him, which was a “critical mistake,” Kapler said. Austin Nola gunned to third, where Machado awaited and easily tagged out Dubon.
“There’s a tiny, tiny bit of upside, and there’s a ton of downside,” the manager said, the Giants now needing assistance on Sunday rather than just winning to get in. “We have been winning games by having big innings, and that had a chance to be a big inning.”
It’s not the first time Dubon’s baserunning has come under scrutiny, an energetic 26-year-old with 83 games of major league experience too often trying to make something happen at a time when the Giants more often want to wait for an extra-base hit to happen.
The Giants view Dubon as a long-term piece, a former shortstop and second baseman who has taken to center field and fits in nicely as both a flexible Farhan Zaidi option and a player eager to do anything he can for Kapler.
The fundamentals of getting around the bases will be an offseason focus.
“It’ll be consistently stressed; it has been consistently stressed,” Kapler said. “Inexperienced players make mistakes. This was a big one. We have to do better.”