Baseball etiquette

[just another ref]

Last night, bottom of the 1st, my team down 2-0. (13-14 boys) Well, their ace pitcher couldn't throw a strike and things got ugly rather quickly. 45 minutes and a pitching change later, we finished the 1st up 16-2. Now, I thought that I was conscious of the situation from the beginning. When we got up 10, we stopped stealing home on passed balls,
(there were a bunch of them) but we did still let runners advance to 2nd and 3rd. In the 2nd and 3rd innings I gave the bunt sign to a couple of my best hitters. I thought that it was obvious that we pulled off a bit. The game finished 20-4 in 3 1/2 innings. (10 run rule and time limit)
When we met after the game, the other coach starts the traditional speech: "One of those nights.....we couldn't do anything right....next time it could be you on the short end, etc." I agreed with him. I thought that he was going to thank me for trying to pull off, but his last line was
"...and when we are up 15, we are going to steal some bases, too," or something like that. I was shocked, but let it drop. Shall I just write it off as the raving of a frustrated coach going through a hard time, or are there some unwritten nice guy guidelines that I am unaware of?