The San Francisco Giants fell to the San Diego Padres 12-7 in additional innings on Thursday night after a landslide atop the tenth that featured an implosion by Tyler Rogers and an embarrassing brain fart by Gabe Kapler.
Rogers, the reliever who was enlightened by the Los Angeles Dodgers in the season opener, was charged with five earned runs and was unable to get one out in the tenth after retiring from the side in the ninth. His ERA in the young season is now 20.25.
With Rogers struggling, Kapler stepped out onto the field and moved to replace him with right-handed reliever Rico Garcia, but apparently didn’t realize the fact that pitching coach Andrew Bailey had just completed his own visit to the mound. Under MLB rules, if a pitcher receives two visits to the mound in the same inning during a batting turn, the pitcher must face the batter until the batter is retired or reaches base.
The umpires then ordered Tyler Rogers to retake the mound against Padres catcher Austin Hedges, who quickly delivered a successful pressure hit that brought in another run.
After the game, Kapler took responsibility for the “mistake”.
“That was just a mental mistake on my part,” he told reporters. “I’ve been in the game for a long time and I only had a memory lapse on the bench. We were talking about a lot of different things and I showed up and went looking for it and obviously that was just a mental problem. Damn it on my part. I just wanted to own it. of that. It’s 100 percent my responsibility. “
Kapler had a similar mishap in the bullpen during his first season as manager of the Philadelphia Phillies, when he called a reliever who hadn’t even been warming up to get into a game, and was subsequently eliminated by the MLB.
Eric Ting is a SFGATE reporter. Email: [email protected] | Twitter: @_ ericting
