Cardinals: Johan Oviedo yells expletives at Giants player

Cardinals right-hander Johan Oviedo is a competitor and he sure as heck showed it when a Giants player attempted to steal signs from second base.

Johan Oviedo was dealing against the San Francisco Giants. The St. Louis Cardinals right-handed pitcher was firing on all cylinders, once again flashing the promise that has the organization so high on him, and then Mike Yastrzemski got to second base.

Yastrzemski was relaying the signs that catcher Yadier Molina was putting down to his teammates, which prompted Oviedo to step off the mound and yell “Shut the (expletive) up! Shut the (expletive) up!” to Yastrzemski.

The video, which you can watch here, was something you rarely see from a rookie and underscores the kind of competitor that he is on the mound.

“I think they had the signs,” Oviedo said, via Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “Not only that guy. Maybe the guy at second was trying to steal signs. I was changing the signs the whole time. In that moment, the way he was taking my pitches I was (sure) he’s got to have it. That was what I thought. I got upset, said a couple of things to him, and that was it.”

Oviedo, who threw 80 pitches in four innings, took the loss and fell to 0-5 on the season. He, like some of the other Cardinals’ young pitchers, has dealt with inconsistency, which was once again the case Wednesday when he loaded the bases in the first inning and then recorded two outs before hitting Brandon Crawford with a pitch to give the Giants a 1-0 lead.

The Cardinals, however, will need Oviedo to step up as their entire rotation besides Adam Wainwright and Kwang Hyun Kim sit on the injured list. But the most realistic outcome is that he continues to go through growing pains, which is normal for a young starter, and the team goes outside the organization for upgrades.