Chris Mezzavilla/KNBR
There were plenty of incidental supporting contributions to Tyler Anderson’s ejection Thursday.
That didn’t much matter to Anderson, who wanted to absorb the full blame.
Sam Coonrod had beaned Seattle’s Dylan Moore a night prior, and the Mariners were probably on edge. Anderson tried to come inside to Kyle Seager and hit him to begin the second, leading to chirping from the Mariners dugout and Anderson to respond.
“I basically just tried to say to them: That wasn’t on purpose,” Anderson said after the Giants’ 6-4 win at Oracle Park. “It’s a lefty leading off the inning. I want to face this guy, I don’t want to put him on.”
In a season played in front of cutouts instead of fans, noises that were muted are now amplified. So when a pitcher who had been going back and forth with the opposing dugout did not get the strike three he thought he deserved on Kyle Lewis to begin the third, his scream at home-plate umpire Edwin Moscoso was heard loud and clear.
Moscoso put up his arm, the universal symbol for stop. Anderson turned his back toward him and, in his mind at least, stopped. But in a San Francisco park where sound travels just as well as balls this year, what he uttered next apparently also got to Moscoso, who threw him out.
“I wasn’t directing anything at him — I was saying something but it wasn’t at him, it was nothing intended for him,” Anderson said after his two-plus inning, four-run disappointment. “But it just can’t happen.”
It happened at the wrong time, the Giants on Day and Game Two of a 13-games-in-12-days stretch in which their bullpen won’t get a break. They had to use five relievers to not just eat up innings but save the game against Seattle, Wandy Peralta leading the charge of a pen that pitched seven scoreless innings.
Tyler Anderson gets tossed in the 3rd inning for arguing with the ump ? pic.twitter.com/WCmfN5ijDr
— SF Giants on NBCS (@NBCSGiants) September 17, 2020
Anderson was appreciative of a group he left “out to dry like that,” the lefty said. He was complimentary of the Mariners — “We respect the way they play the game” — and, as much as the elements were in place for a hook, wanted to take all the responsibility.
“Whether or not that would have happened in a regular season, I don’t know,” said Anderson, who was tossed for a second time in his career, the first coming in 2016. “But it just can’t happen in the first place. It was too loud and aggressive, you can’t do that.
“The guy’s back there and working hard, he’s doing his job, and it was a close pitch.”
Anderson is a passionate pitcher who said he will have to make adjustments when everything he says can be heard.
After he was ejected, two Giants — Evan Longoria and Brandon Crawford — were hit by Seattle’s Yohan Ramirez. Gabe Kapler said the Giants didn’t think there was any intent with Anderson’s or Ramirez’s pitches, and Ramirez more seemed wild.