First steal of season comes in 13th game
Finally, the San Francisco Giants stole a base. It took 13 games, but Tyler Fitzgerald finally legged out the Giants’ first steal of the season Wednesday. And their second steal, too, in their 7-1 win over Washington at Oracle Park.
The Giants finished with three steals; Matt Chapman had the other.
Before Wednesday, the Giants weren’t exactly taking advantage of MLB’s rules put into effect last season to benefit base stealers. They had made two attempts and were caught both times. Last year, they were last in the majors in steals.
By comparison, the Nationals entered Wednesday having stolen 23 bases in 25 tries.
“We don’t have a ton of team speed, but we need to push the envelope a bit more,” manager Bob Melvin said before the Wednesday series finale against the Nationals.
Melvin rested leadoff hitter Jung Hoo Lee, his first break of the season, but it’s not as if the speedster from South Korea has been a base-stealing threat. Melvin said Lee will be pushed a bit more to steal bases in the right situations, though the most bags Lee swiped in Korea was 13 in 2019.
Thairo Estrada could emerge as a threat after leading the Giants last year with 23 steals (no one else had more than four), and Austin Slater has been efficient on the bases during his career, but injuries have detoured his running game.
Last year, MLB introduced bigger bases and restrictions on pickoff attempts to boost the running game — the league-wide success rate was a record 80.2%, compared with 75.4% in 2022 — but the Giants have been slow to capitalize.
“Stolen bases became a little bit more important last year, and you saw the success rate go up, too,” Melvin said. “It’s something that if given the opportunity, we need to be able to steal some bags, hopefully some big bases at times. But we haven’t done that. That’s been a deficiency for us.”
It’s not the only one, of course. The Giants entered Wednesday’s game 27th in the majors in hitting with runners in scoring position. After homering 10 times on the season-opening, seven-game trip, they went homerless in their first five home games.
“We’re all frustrated with our record right now,” Melvin said of the 4-8 start. “You look at some of our numbers, we really haven’t excelled in any area. That’s the reason for our record. We have to be better across the board.”
In particular with runners in scoring position, Melvin said, “We have to be a little bit grittier in those types of situations.” Not long after Melvin’s pregame interview, the Giants collected three hits with runners in scoring position during their three-run second inning. They went 6for-8 in RISP at-bats Wednesday.