ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — The San Francisco Giants' losing streak continued on Saturday with a 5-1 loss to the Tampa Bay Rays, and it featured a significant point of contention early in the game.

In the top of the second inning, Giants left fielder Heliot Ramos sent a high fly ball toward the ceiling of Tropicana Field that made Tampa Bay center fielder Cedric Mullins retreat toward the warning track in pursuit of it. The ball, however, bounced off the cat walk and caused Mullins to backtrack to catch it.

The nature of Ramos’s hit colliding with the cat walk compelled the umpires to review whether or not it was a home run. Eventually, it was decided that Ramos flew out to Mullins.

The decision caused anger to rise within the Giants’ dugout, as right-hander Adrian Houser and director of major-league pitching Frank Anderson expressed their frustrations, which subsequently led to their ejections.

Manager Tony Vitello was also involved in the verbal altercation with the umpires. After the game, he commented on what happened.

"I mean, it all kind of got pretty hot pretty quick," Vitello said. "I was just trying to figure out, you know, can we take a look at it and what can be done from there?"

The issue, according to Vitello, reached a boiling point when words of provocation came from the umpires.

"And then, I kind of blacked out, to be honest with you, amongst all the extra riffraff after something about 'rah-rah and pom-poms,'" Vitello said. "Which I assume was something to do with either college or my behavior in the dugout, but I've been at the field a lot of days in my life. 

"So, anytime I actually get to participate in the game, I get a little excited in the dugout. So, maybe that was part of it, but I didn't have anything contestual, just wanted to know what happened."

At the time of Ramos’s overturned home run call, the Giants were experiencing a significant scoring drought, and Vitello talked about how deflating it was to have a play that would have ended that skid taken away from them.

"Yeah, I mean, you speak a little bit in delicate terms, whether it's anyone that's involved in the situation," Vitello said. "You don't ever want to be on a team where one pitch or one play decides a game.

"There's however many pitches, depending, I mean, we just played an extra inning game, so I don't know if there's 400 pitches plus in that game or not, but they all weigh the same. The ball weighs the same on every play. So you want to feel like you can overcome anything."

Despite the frustrations felt as a result of the decision, Vitello does not feel that it was intentional.

"If you get robbed, it means someone broke into your house and they took something or a variation of that," Vitello said. "So,I don't think anyone was out to get us or anything like that. It is easy to kind of say that kind of falls in line with how things have gone for us, but I think regardless ... We can't change that right now."

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