No expletives, nothing loud or overbearing – but no warning either, and when speaking about his ejection from Thursday’s game, Anthony Rizzo had a damning comment about the situation:
“I don’t think (there were any expletives), and all I said was that’s the same pitch,” Rizzo said, “and if that warrants an ejection, you better keep your mouth shut in this league, or else guys will be getting ejected left and right.”
Rizzo was tossed from the dugout for that comment made in the eighth inning, yelling after seeing a similar pitch to the ones called strikes on him in his at-bat called a ball on Giancarlo Stanton.
Replays and MLB.com’s Statcast pitch chart both seemed to indicate Rizzo was correct that all three pitches were balls – and in fact, the 0-2 pitch he saw looked to be closer to the zone than the previous two, but was called a ball.
“Obviously the replay shows they were clearly balls, and the first pitch to G was pretty much the same pitch. All of a sudden that pitch is a ball?” Rizzo asked. “As a team, when we mention something, I don’t think I’ve seen one guy be wrong yet.”
Not to mention that Rizzo all but admitted he felt home plate umpire Manny Gonzalez might have doubled down on the second pitch just to stay consistent, even if his consistency was wrong.
Related
“I’m leading off the inning, one of the best players in the world hitting behind me, and I should’ve had a 2-0 count. When he missed the first one, I stepped out to reset, and I felt he called the second one a strike to prove he was right about the first one,” Rizzo said. “That’s why I was upset. I have the utmost respect for these umpires, but strike two, I didn’t even react, I was just like, ‘are you kidding me?’”
The other problem, he noted, was that when he and Aaron Boone went out to discuss the ejection with Gonzalez, the plate umpire seemed to admit the fact that players can see the pitches in almost real-time played a role.
“We know that now with iPads in the dugout, there’s a lot of sensitivity. Boonie asked if it was because of the iPad, and he said yes,” Rizzo said. “We just changed the iPad thing so you don’t get the live feed until the next inning, and while we expect them to be 100 percent every time, we know they’ll miss calls, but with our team, we’re not complaining about strikes.”
And Boone’s biggest problem, other than all that, was “a quick trigger” from Gonzalez.
“Obviously, I never want our guys to get thrown out – I’d rather it be me – but it wasn’t overly emotional or referencing anything, so for me, it was a quick trigger,” Boone said. “Usually, when you say what he said in not an overly aggressive manner, you get a “that’s enough,” but we didn’t get that.”
To compound matters, Rizzo’s ejection may have cost the Yankees both offensively and defensively in the ninth inning. Joey Gallo, who came into Rizzo’s spot in the order (with Marwin Gonzalez moving from left field to first base), did draw a walk to load the bases with two outs in the ninth, and Rizzo was upset he didn’t get a chance in that spot even if it worked out in theory.
Defensively, though, because Gonzalez cramped up a bit in his at-bat earlier that inning and came out of the game, DJ LeMahieu moved from third to first (Josh Donaldson, who hit for Kyle Higashioka, went to third) – and a ground ball to third ended up with Austin Hays reaching on an error, as LeMahieu couldn’t scoop the short-hop on Donaldson’s throw.
“Frustrating because my spot comes back up…but there’s a defensive play I feel like I can clearly make,” Rizzo said, “but I got ejected because I said ‘same pitch?’”
Whether or not, or how much, that affected Lucas Luetge going forward to the walk-off home run he surrendered to Anthony Santander will never be known, but Rizzo feels like he knows one thing: he’ll be proven right in the end.
“I have the utmost respect for all umpires, with what they do and their schedule, because their grind is probably harder than ours,” he said. “I have a good relationship with them, Manny included, but I’m sure the next time I see him, he’ll say they were down and he got them wrong.”
Follow Lou DiPietro on Twitter: @LouDiPietroWFAN
Listen live to WFAN via:
Audacy App | Online Stream | Smart Speaker
Follow WFAN on Social Media:
Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube | Twitch