Buck Showalter seemed to try for a Hail Mary with his offense dormant in game three of the Wild Card Series, asking the umpiring crew to check Padres starter Joe Musgrove for foreign substances with Musgrove working on five shutout innings, having allowed just one hit.
After the thorough search, which included a rubdown of the ears, the umpires cleared Musgrove to continue, and left many on MLB Twitter criticizing Showalter for what seemed to be a desperation attempt.
Musgrove’s RPM were up from his league average on nearly every pitch type on Sunday, but his velocity was up as well, likely the result of added playoff adrenaline, and the extra speed would have resulted in more rotations per minute. So, the uptick was explainable, though Showalter could have simply been displaying similar gamesmanship as the Padres hitters when they called a plethora of timeouts and stepped out of the box to disrupt Mets starter Chris Bassitt’s timing.
Regardless, many weren’t a big fan of Showalter’s attempt.
Follow Ryan Chichester on Twitter: @ryanchichester1
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