After SF Giants blow another game, ex-pitcher drops epic rant on postgame show

Former San Francisco Giants pitcher Shawn Estes could barely hide his disgust on the NBC Sports Bay Area postgame show after the Giants blew another game, with most of his ire focused on manager Tony Vitello.

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The Giants had gotten eight innings of stellar pitching from Logan Webb and took the lead in the bottom of the eighth with two runs, including one on back-to-back bunts. But Vitello’s decision to go to Keaton Winn for a third game in a row backfired, as Winn allowed three runs and Washington held on for the 4-3 win. For a Giants team trying to win their fifth game out of the last six and start digging out of the deep hole they’ve been in, losing this game in an incredibly predictable way — a blown save from a pitcher in their incredibly shaky bullpen — simply feels cataclysmic. 

All of that set up the postgame show on NBC Sports Bay Area, with host Kylen Mills introducing the show before teeing up Estes. The one-time All-Star then spoke almost uninterrupted for the next 2.5 minutes, unleashing an epic rant where he never directly said Vitello’s name but made it clear who he felt did wrong.

“I give Keaton Winn no blame in this game.” @sestes55 disagrees with Tony Vitello’s handling of the ninth inning in tonight’s loss pic.twitter.com/kqQijaj5vc

— SF Giants on NBCS (@NBCSGiants) June 9, 2026

“Keaton Winn is going to get a lot of blame in this game, and he shouldn’t,” Estes said before breaking down Winn’s two prior appearances in Chicago on Saturday and Sunday. “… The guy’s arm is tired, and you could tell in the ninth inning based on the mistakes he was making with his split. He just didn’t have it, his arm was beat, right?”

In the rant, Estes made it clear he wanted to see Webb go back out for the ninth inning, even with his pitch count at 99, added that the Giants should have used an ABS challenge to get a strike 3 to end the sixth inning for Webb without allowing a run and even criticized the decision to pitch to Nationals star C.J. Abrams after a passed ball left first base open. (Abrams hit a game-tying two-run single.) After all of that, Estes concluded the point with a sharp critique of Vitello. 

“I don’t want to be the ‘hindsight is 20-20’ guy, but it just seems like that last inning, it was, it was lost when the inning started, just based on how it was managed,” Estes said. “And I hate to say that, but like, that’s a win you got to have right there.”

Mills stepped back in from there to talk over some highlights from the game and the two had more of a conversation. Still, the left-hander continued to show his frustration throughout the rest of the opening segment, which took up more than half of the 30-minute postgame show. 

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Later in the long opening segment, NBC Sports Bay Area showed Vitello’s explanation for using Winn, with the manager saying Caleb Killian was unavailable (he had also thrown in both weekend games in Chicago) and that the team “needed experience” in that moment. While Vitello didn’t elaborate on why one pitcher was available and one wasn’t, Estes pointed out that Winn had thrown more pitches in his two appearances over the weekend than Killian had thrown.

Estes acknowledged he was strongly advocating for Winn to not pitch in the game, but ended the segment back where he had started.

“I feel for the kid, I feel for him,” Estes said. “He’s put in a tough position and now he’s going to get the blame for tonight’s game.” 

With the loss, the Giants are now 27-40 on the season, the third-worst record in all of baseball.