Pirates, Hayes 'move on' from sunflower seed video

NEW YORK -- Ke'Bryan Hayes may not have touched the ball during the play in question, but once the postgame video circulated on social media, he became the center of attention.

In the third inning Friday, Mets base runner Eduardo Escobar was able to score from first on a bloop single to right. There was never a play at third base, so when Escobar was rounding the bag, the camera angle showed that Hayes had taken off his glove and popped in a handful of sunflower seeds.

Talking with traveling media, Hayes did not have much to offer about what the video showed, saying he knew he wasn't going to be involved in the play, but that "I can see how someone would say something."

And when it's one of the faces of the franchise that's caught, it's not a good look, something that Hayes acknowledged was probably part of the reason for the visceral reaction.

“I am ready every pitch," Hayes said. I don’t really have anything to say on it, really.”

"Going forward, I can't do that in the middle of the play, regardless of where the ball is," he added later. "Just moving forward, just be more mindful of that."

Hayes and Derek Shelton had a meeting before Saturday's game to discuss the video and the play. Most of it is staying behind closed doors, though Shelton did tell him that he had to be closer to the bag in case a play did come to third.

Hayes will not be disciplined for the incident.

"This was an outlier play," Shelton said. "We talked about where he should have been. He took ownership of it. I think he talked to you guys and took ownership of it. We move on."

The players in the clubhouse are taking a similar stance to the manager.

“I think it was a reach for somebody to point it out," Wil Crowe told me. "He has no play there. He has no responsibility. I didn’t see anything wrong with it, and I don’t think any of us do either.”

If there was one thing that did draw some ire from Shelton was SNY broadcaster Todd Zeilie's closing job of the video: "That's September baseball when you're in the Pittsburgh Pirates organization."

In response, Shelton mentioned some plays where the Pirates had hustled, including Hayes reaching via an error Friday and scoring on an infield Michael Chavis hit, or Kevin Newman cutting his finger in Cincinnati while trying to make a play.

"That's Pirates baseball in September," Shelton said. "... People making comments about how we play, I think the important thing is that people who watch us every night, they know the effort we give. I think it speaks for itself."

It's not the first time the Pirates have come under criticism from an opposing broadcast team, most notably last month by Dennis Eckersley of the Red Sox broadcast who called the team a "hodgepodge of nothingness."

"The people that watch us every night know that our effort is never anything that comes into question," Shelton said. "We've had like three times all year long where effort has come into question and we dealt with it. In one situation we dealt with it fairly drastically. People that don't watch us play on a nightly basis, I can understand how you may have an opinion on that, but the opinion that matters to me is within the clubhouse and within our group."

That one drastic situation most likely refers to the team optioning Rodolfo Castro to the minors after he did not run out a pop out in May.

As for Hayes, he pops sunflower seeds periodically through the game, but he'll make a change moving forward.

"I guess I'll only go to get seeds in between plays," Hayes said.