Aldrete’s advice to Fowler

There is nothing unusual about a first-year player going through a tough time at the plate, and assistant hitting coach Mike Aldrete wanted to reinforce that to Dustin Fowler on Tuesday, citing inspiration from his early days with the Giants.

“I actually had a little talk with him about my first couple of hundred at-bats in the big leagues,” Aldrete said. “When I got sent down, I got some good advice from Mike Krukow ; he said, ‘When you walk into this clubhouse from now on, you walk in like you own this place. Because if you don’t, this thing will eat you up.’ I told Dustin that basically turned it around for me: You have to remember that you belong here.

“I could have learned that from Will Clark — he basically thought he owned every room he walked into. Was it a little bit obnoxious? Yeah, but in this game, you better have a little bit of that.”

Fowler is batting .186 since coming up May 9, but he hit .370 at Triple-A Nashville and he’s playing increasingly well in center. When Fowler first came to the big club, he appeared more comfortable going back on balls than those hit in front of him, but in the past week, he’s snaring more shallow flyballs, including a terrific diving catch on a flare by Arizona’s

Nick Ahmed on Saturday. Fowler’s surgically repaired knee had nothing to do with him failing to get to some shallow flyballs early, he said; it was a matter of positioning. He and bench coach Ryan Christenson have been working on jumps and reads, and he’s getting used to the different depth perception at big-league parks.

“I’m getting more aggressive,” Fowler said. “That’s definitely something I want to do on balls hit in — take away as many as I can.”

Reliever to start? The Rays, employing their unusual recent strategy, have reliever Ryne

Stanek on tap to start Thursday, with Ryan Yarbrough, who ordinarily would be the starter, scheduled to take the mound an inning or so after Stanek. Former Giants closer Sergio

Romo has made four such starts; he said warming up, then waiting half an inning to pitch was weird, as was pitching on a clean mound. Stranger still: being done with work so early.

“That got me a couple of times,” Romo said. “I was like, ‘So now what do I do?’ I’m sitting there twiddling my thumbs. The other night, I felt like I was still available — it slipped my mind I’d pitched, like, ‘Wait, why don’t I have my cleats on?’ ”