San Francisco Giants reliever Shaun Anderson threw another fastball near Mike Trout‘s head on Thursday, two days after throwing two fastballs near Trout’s head.
The latest incident drew a warning from the umpiring crew and more pointed words from Los Angeles Angels manager Joe Maddon, who previously identified Anderson as “a young man who’s not ready to be here.”
“Enough is enough,” Maddon said after Thursday’s 10-5 road loss dropped the Angels’ record to 8-18. “This is the major leagues. There’s a level of accountability here also. I don’t wanna use the word ‘irresponsible’ loosely, but in that situation, you pretty much knew it was gonna happen again. And I’m not accusing the guy of doing anything on purpose; I’m just saying he doesn’t command his fastball enough in order to know where it’s going.”
Giants manager Gabe Kapler, who played for Maddon on the Tampa Bay Rays, said Tuesday that Anderson was “a little jumpy” on the mound and that there was no malicious intent behind his pitches.
With the Giants holding a six-run lead and Trout up to begin the seventh in Thursday’s series finale, Kapler turned to Anderson once again. At that point, Maddon said, “My antennae were up.”
When Anderson’s second pitch, at 96 mph, came too close to Trout’s head once again, Maddon became enraged, getting into a heated exchange with the umpiring crew. Two pitches later, Trout drove a slider to deep left field that fell a couple of inches short of leaving for a home run and instead went for a triple.
Kapler chose not to speak on the matter postgame, saying he didn’t want to detract from Joey Bart‘s debut and Brandon Crawford‘s 100th career home run.
Anderson, 25, pitched 96 innings for the Giants last year but entered Thursday’s game averaging 7.7 walks per nine innings in 2020. He has thrown less than 50% of his four-seam fastballs in the strike zone this season.
“You just can’t permit that to happen,” Maddon said of Anderson throwing up and in Trout. “You can’t. You cannot. People get hurt like that. And again, there’s an anomaly moment that it’ll happen once in a while. I get it. I get it. It happens to everybody. But too often, not good. Didn’t like it.”