Toronto – You have to know this about Matt Vierling: The guy is a scrapper. He’s a dirtbag in the very best sense of the word. He’s not the guy who takes a play off, let alone goes in standing up on an attempted steal of second base.
And yet, with two outs in the sixth inning of a 1-1 game Wednesday, Vierling did exactly that. He seemed to have second base stolen except he didn’t slide and was tagged out.
“Guys don’t run to second and don’t slide,” a bemused manager AJ Hinch said after the game.
Hinch and Vierling met before the game Thursday.
“He didn’t deke me,” Vierling said, referring to Blue Jays shortstop Bo Bichette who tagged him out. “I thought I heard, like a foul, I thought I heard the crack of the bat. It was an honest mistake and it’s on me. It was just kind of a weird thing. I thought I heard something and there wasn’t anything.
“I read it into that and ended up standing up. I was kicking myself after, believe me. I’ve got to slide. I had that bag.”
Vierling admitted that not sliding was the second mistake he made on that play.
“I didn’t look in (to the batter), which is another thing I should have done,” he said. “I thought I heard the crack of the bat and I was thinking I was going to slow down to either round the base or stay at the base. It turned out that’s not what happened.”
Vierling said his meeting with Hinch went well and everything was sorted out.
More: ‘Didn’t get it done’: Tigers blow lead in ninth, lose 4-3 to Blue Jays in 10 innings
“He also said it wouldn’t happen again,” Hinch said with a smile. “It’s important that we learn from these mistakes. It was just a general game-awareness mistake. I don’t know if he would’ve been safe or not if he had slid. But that’s not his norm and it’s certainly not advisable to go into a base that way.
“That combined with a couple of other mistakes certainly feels worse in a close loss. These guys aren’t perfect and they aren’t going to be perfect. But those are the types of plays we have to clean up to play a better brand of baseball and give ourselves a better chance in games.”
Vierling, who along with Nick Maton came over from the Phillies in the Gregory Soto trade, was given the night off Thursday against right-handed Blue Jays starter Chris Bassitt.
“Those kinds of things, I mean, when they do happen, which they do every once in a while, I tell myself it’s not me,” Vierling said. “That’s not who I am as a player. It’s a long year. Just keep pushing it and keep doing what I’m doing and keep being the player that I am.
“It was horrible. It sucked and I own it. But I’m going to keep being aggressive. I talked to AJ about it. We’re in a good spot. I’m going to put it behind me.”
Risky business
By now you’ve probably seen the video of the Blue Jays fan leaning over the railing above the Tigers’ raised bullpen in right-center Wednesday, screaming and gesturing at reliever Chasen Shreve as he walked down the steps to enter the game in the ninth inning.
Maybe you also heard about the beer bottle that fell into the Tigers’ bullpen on Tuesday or the plastic cup.
The proximity of the fans to the Tigers’ bullpen is entertaining, for sure, but it is also potentially dangerous.
“It will get escalated eventually,” Hinch said. “You can’t play 81 home games in any ballpark – there is going to be behavior that crosses the line in a lot of ballparks. It’s kind of the nature of it. You want players to be safe and you want fans to have a good time.
“But you heard it here first: At some point there is going to be an issue around the game. It doesn’t have to be here. It doesn’t have to be at our place. But when it goes over the line, it’s going to be unfortunate for everybody.”
Shreve saw the fan pointing at him, but his focus was on the bases-loaded, no-out situation he was walking in to. But his agent sent him a picture of it Thursday.
“I knew he was there, but it was so loud I couldn’t hear him,” Shreve said. “I didn’t realize how close he was.”
Shreve said it’s not that different from the bullpens in Cleveland, Philadelphia and some others around the league with the fans being that close. But, he said, they are more on top of the players at Rogers Centre.
“It’s so loud in here during the game, you can’t really hear what they’re saying,” he said. “Maybe if I heard him and he said something mean, I probably would’ve stopped. But I didn’t even hear him.”
The beer bottle was flung into the bullpen inadvertently. Shreve said two guys were arguing and one of them swiped the bottle out of the other guy’s hand and it dropped into the bullpen.
“I think it’s a pretty good atmosphere,” said reliever Jason Foley. “I feel like it was built that way. It wasn’t the worst chirping I’ve ever heard. It’s just fans having a good time. I kind of makes it fun to be down there, for the most part.
“As long as they aren’t being mean or being jerks. They’re just being light-hearted and saying funny stuff. It’s good banter. It’s more enjoyable than having no one out there.”
Still, it seems like a slippery slope.
The fans were chanting, “Turtle neck, turtle neck,” when Alex Lange was warming up before the ninth inning Thursday. Lange always wears a sleeveless turtleneck under his jersey. They kept chanting as he set down three straight batters in the ninth to earn his first save of the year.
“Nah,” he said, when asked if the jeering motivated him. “Just go get three outs. That’s the job.”
Lesson learned
Tigers third baseman Ryan Kreidler took a crash course on the vagaries of baseball’s obstruction rule Wednesday night. Third base umpire Erich Bacchus cited Kreidler for obstruction in the fourth inning and awarded Vladimir Guerrero, Jr., home plate and the Jays’ first run of the game, even though he had retreated to third base and was out in a rundown.
“The interpretation was whether or not an obstruction of his path was made,” Kreidler said. “That was the call. He thought I obstructed his path, so that was his call.”
Guerrero was running on the pitch so Kreidler was already moving toward third base. Then he stayed at third after shortstop Javier Báez made a slick, sliding pick of the ball in the hole. Watching the replays, Guerrero had leaped to avoid running into the ball and took an odd angle around the bag.
“I would argue after watching the video that Vlad didn’t even break stride,” Hinch said. “But that’s not my judgment. That was (Bacchus’) judgement. Once he determined that he changed his path, there’s no longer going to be an out.
“His interpretation is that Vlad would have had a chance to score. That’s what I was arguing. Like there is no way he was going to score.”
There wasn’t much Kreidler could have done differently. Except, as Hinch said, maybe stay inside the bag.
“I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, I guess,” Kreidler said. “I just kind of got unlucky the way that play developed. I was looking at Javy to see if he was going to throw me the ball…It was a weird play. I’d never seen anything like that on the field.
“I guess I could’ve just run toward our dugout (laughing).”
Around the horn
… Right-hander Michael Lorenzen (oblique) threw a bullpen here Thursday and barring any setbacks should make his Tigers’ debut on Saturday against the Giants.
chris.mccosky@detroitnews.com
Twitter: @cmccosky
ON DECK
Giants at Tigers
Series: Three games at Comerica Park
First pitch: Friday – 6:40 p.m.; Saturday-Sunday – 1:10 p.m
TV/radio: Friday – Apple TV, 97.1; Saturday-Sunday − BSD/97.1.
Probables: Friday – LHP Sean Manaea (0-0, 4.50) vs. LHP Joey Wentz (0-2, 10.29); Saturday – RHP Anthony DeSclafani (1-0, 0.73) vs. TBA; Sunday – RHP Logan Webb (0-3, 6.35) vs. Matthew Boyd (0-1, 4.00).
Manaea, Giants: He’s given up some loud contact in his two starts (92 mph exit velocity) but not many hits (.179 opponent batting average). With his usual sinker-changeup-slider mix, he’s getting a lot of ground balls (53%). His sinker velocity has been up so far – 94 mph, up from 91 last season — though it’s just eight innings of work.
Wentz, Tigers: He’s coming off a rough one against the Red Sox. After a clean first inning, he lost his mechanics and the strike zone abruptly, walking four hitters in the second inning, two of them with the bases loaded. He didn’t get out of the inning, allowing five runs. He’s been mostly unhittable when he’s ahead in the count (opponents are 0-for-11 in pitcher-friendly counts, 3 for 13 when he gets two strikes).