Giants Bulletin: Borg’s time as third base coach should be up

By Jack Loder

Third base coach isn’t an easy job. Signs, situations, and most importantly, directing traffic on the bases make up a short list of the duties Hector Borg tends to when the Giants bat. All too often during a torturous two months of Giants baseball, however, Borg has made headlines for run-costing blunders. He’s far from the Giants biggest issue, but removing him from third base coaching duties may be the easiest problem for Vitello to address. 

There’s no reason everyone in baseball should know the name of your third base coach. That can only be a bad thing. And everyone who pays attention to Major League Baseball, yesterday and a handful of ugly times before that, knows who Hector Borg is for all the wrong reasons. Whether it’s an ill advised send, or an overly conservative hold, Borg has straight up cost the Giants runs this season, and arguably a couple of games. 

Tony Vitello did his best to defend Borg after the loss, a sixth straight to the Diamondbacks. He offered the questionable chaos excuse, highlighting the nature of the play with a lot of moving parts. Another cliche, the importance of aggressive baserunning, was also offered by the skipper. The line between aggressive and foolish can be a fine one. The Giants, last in the majors in many baserunning metrics, have all too often been on the wrong side of that line. 

“It was obviously aggressive.  As opposed to probably ending up with first and third there, Casey up, or you take a crack at it, Vitello explained in length as he seemed to recall the play as he spoke. Obviously, went on the aggressive side.”

The aggressive side meant that, barring a brutal error in what was an elementary relay, Adames was out by 10+ feet. What would have been a first and third one out situation with Casey Schmitt coming up was suddenly two outs with a man on second. Still an opportunity for Schmitt to tie the game with a knock, right? Wrong. Luis Arraez, in spectacularly horrifying 2026 Giants fashion, was picked off second base just moments after Adames was tagged out at home plate. 

The embarrassing saga defined the game, but it probably doesn’t rank in the top five of worst losses from the first two months of this disastrous campaign. Lucky Tony Vitello, he got to join the morning show after another sweep to the Diamondbacks on Thursday morning. 

He expanded on the Borg situation, before semi-suggesting that the Giants need to have some uncomfortable conversations with themselves in the near future. 

Check out that entire interview on the KNBR YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.