Tag Archives: St. Louis Cardinals

by | May 21, 2013 · 8:46 am

To Bunt or Not to Bunt, That is the Question—Even if it Doesn’t Make Much Sense

Kyle LohseWe may have found a new unwritten rule in Busch Stadium on Sunday. Either that, or Kyle Lohse is completely off his rocker.

Lohse allowed six singles to the first seven batters he faced in the fourth inning (including a bases-loaded squeeze beaten out by Pete Kozma), during which time he allowed four runs. That left runners at first and second, with one out, for pitcher John Gast.

Gast squared to bunt, but pulled the bat back at the last moment to swing away. This is not an unusual baseball move, especially for a pitcher, when the opposing third baseman is charging hard. Lohse, however, was irate, and threw three consecutive pitches high and inside. Gass eventually bunted into an out.

The act might have been explainable as an anti-bunt strategy had Lohse not immediately thereafter shared some heated thoughts with Cardinals third base coach Jose Oquendo, then continued the conversation with catcher Yadier Molina when he came to the plate the following inning.

“They know what I had to say,” Lohse said in an MLB.com report. “It had nothing to do with the squeeze or anything like that. It was something that happened after that. … I’ll leave it at that. They know.”

Ultimately, St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Bernie Miklasz may have offered the clearest-eyed viewpoint, speculating that Lohse was ticked that after five seasons in St. Louis A) the Cards didn’t keep him on their roster in favor of going with young pitchers, which B) left him first in free-agent purgatory and C) then with the last-place Brewers. There’s also D) the notion that Lohse is 1-5, despite pitching well this season, and that E) three of those losses have come at the hands of two of the young pitchers chosen by St. Louis to take his place—Shelby Miller and, last night, Gast. With that in mind, it makes sense that the pitcher’s fuse is a bit short. (Miller also did the square-to-bunt-and-pull-the-bat-back move against Lohse earlier in the season.)

On strictly baseball terms, given the information that’s currently available, Lohse doesn’t have a leg to stand on. (He also positioned himself as the anti-Nolan Ryan, who was known for drilling guys who tried to bunt on him. Lohse, it seems, was perturbed that a guy tried to not bunt on him.)

Lohse didn’t hit Gast, so no harm was actually done, but he was clearly pitching angry. It does not appear to be a retaliation-worthy offense, but stay tuned—these teams play each other nine more times this year.

(H/T Bill Ivie of I-70 Baseball.)

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by | April 29, 2013 · 10:41 am

Toss Him Out! Let Him Play! The Importance of Understanding that not Every Situation is Exactly the Same

rsz_jonathan_sanchez (1)Jonathan Sanchez insists that the fastball he threw Friday—which nearly hit Cardinals first baseman Allen Craig in the head—was accidental. Sanchez was pitching inside, he said, quoting verbatim from the unofficial handbook of pitcher denials. The ball rose, he said. That was all.

Of course, given the pitcher’s recent struggles, not to mention his history with hot-headedness, questions abound. MLB certainly thought so, suspending him for six games on Saturday.

Sanchez opened Friday’s game against St. Louis by giving up back-to-back home runs to Matt Carpenter and Carlos Beltran, followed by a single by Matt Holliday. Sanchez sent his next pitch—apparently out of frustration—toward Craig’s head. (The ball ended up connecting with the spinning hitter’s shoulder.) Plate ump Tim Timmons didn’t hesitate, ejecting Sanchez without so much as a warning.

It was an abhorrent string of hitters in an abhorrent season of starts for Sanchez, who has thrown a total of only 11.3 innings over four outings, with a 12.71 ERA. Twenty-one hits and eight walks. He’s made it to the fifth inning only once. Well, of course he’s frustrated.

“You’ve got two home runs, and then you’ve got a line-drive single up the middle, and then the very first pitch is up around the shoulder and head area,” Timmons told a pool reporter at Busch Stadium. “He threw intentionally at him, and in that area I deemed that intentional, and he’s done. Very dangerous.”

“It surprised me,” Sanchez said in a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review report. “(Timmons) said it was obvious I wanted to hit him. I said no, I just missed my spot.”

Pirates manager Clint Hurdle was outraged at the quick hook, arguing vociferously enough to get tossed himself. After the game he said he was bringing his complaints to the commissioner’s office, although Sanchez’s ensuing suspension gave a pretty good indication about how much attention the commissioner was paying.

Any umpire who feels that a pitcher is intentionally head-hunting is justified in leveling ejections, with or without prior warnings. Timmons earned extra credit by keeping quiet after Cardinals pitcher Lance Lynn later hit Pirates outfielder Starling Marte not once but twice—each almost certainly incidental—even after warnings were issued. (One barely clipped Marte’s hand, the other sailed into his arm, just off the plate; the hitter barely tried to avoid either one.)

Lynn himself was brushed back by Pittsburgh reliever Jared Hughes in the eighth, avoiding a pitch that, because he was squatting while squared to bunt, came in head-high. Lynn ducked backward out of the way, ending up on his back in the batter’s box. Again, Timmons let it slide.

In the eighth, Cardinals pitcher Mitchell Boggs drilled Gaby Sanchez in the back. (This, too, may have been unintentional, given Boggs’s recent struggles and the fact that all three hitters he faced reached base.)

Watch a compendium of the action here. (In an unrelated Code note, watch Pirates catcher Russell Martin jump to get between batter and pitcher in the first clip, as A.J. Ellis wishes he had recently done.)

One takeaway from all this is that an umpire on top of his game can go a long way toward stemming future disturbances. Timmons and MLB seem to agree upon that even one head-hunting incident is too many, and there’s no better way to tamp down the practice than by making examples of pitchers who stray from the proscribed course.

By letting the rest of the game play out as it did—even what appeared to be an obvious message from Hughes to Lynn—Timmons further defused lingering resentment between the clubs. Neither of the weekend games between the team featured much of anything resembling Code-based drama, even with the ample opportunities presented by Pittsburgh’s 9-0 blowout on Sunday.

Ultimately, the situation appears to have been handled just right. The power of positive umpiring. 

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by | November 15, 2012 · 1:59 pm

Holliday’s Had It: Calls out Cain for ‘Less Than Tough’ Retaliation

For those who think that Matt Cain waited to long to retaliate against Matt Holliday—the outfielder’s questionable slide into Giants second baseman Marco Scutaro occurred in Game 2 of the NLCS, and he was drilled a week later, in Game 7, once the series was salted away—Holliday put that timetable to shame.

Precisely one month after his slide, and three weeks after Cain drilled him, Holliday addressed the topic in an Insidestl.com report, calling it, among other things, “less than tough”:

[The pitch] seems on purpose. I wish that if he wanted to hit me, he would’ve just done it on the first pitch in the next game he had pitched. You know, if you’re going to do it, do it, get it out of the way. But to do it, I don’t remember what the score was but it was out of hand, that’s about it. I thought the timing of it was….I don’t want to get into it. I wasn’t thrilled about it. . . .

If you’re going to do it, I think that is when you do it. I wouldn’t be happy about it anytime. I just thought that in the situation that it actually did happen it was less than tough.

It might seem odd for Holliday to express displeasure with Cain’s delay weeks after the fact, when he could have done it immediately following the game in which it happened. To be fair, he was answering a question, not promoting an agenda, and it’s not like Cardinals players had much media time once they’d packed their bags for the winter upon returning to St. Louis.

It’s unlikely that this will further ill feelings come 2013, but also serves to remind us that another incident—one of Cain’s pitches slips, perhaps, or Holliday again takes out a middle infielder—will not be easily digested by the other side.

(Via HardballTalk.)

 

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by | October 23, 2012 · 10:36 am

Holliday on Ice: Giants Finally Exact Revenge

Good things come to those who wait.

Determined to avoid compromising NLCS victory by retaliating for Matt Holliday’s Game 2 slide into Marco Scutaro—which was called everything from illegal (by Bruce Bochy) to dirty (by all manner of Giants fans)—Matt Cain waited until it would hurt the Cardinals most, and the Giants least, to respond.

St. Louis, trailing 7-0 in the sixth inning of Monday’s deciding Game 7 on an electric San Francisco night, appeared too stunned by the score to be able even to fully absorb the intent behind the pitch. Before the ball connected with Holliday’s left tricep, it had long since been assumed that the Giants would let his slide go unanswered.

Cain, we now know, has a longer memory than the Cardinals anticipated. (Watch it here.)

St. Louis players were already wearing long faces as they counted down outs toward what already appeared to be an inevitable, inexorable slide from the postseason. Before the drilling—as sure an intentional pitch as has been thrown all season—it seemed impossible that the Giants or their home crowd could be any more pumped up than they already were.

As soon as ball bounced off batter, however, it was clear that such a notion was folly. AT&T Park, we found out, does indeed go to 11—especially when the frontier justice runs in their favor.

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by | October 17, 2012 · 10:08 am

Slide, Baby, Slide: Holliday Hammers Home Controversy in Game 2

The Giants said all the right things Monday about Matt Holliday’s slide. Although they universally questioned its timing, placement and function, to a man they denied feeling like Holliday intended to injure Marco Scutaro.

Unfortunately, he did injure Scutaro. After Holliday took San Francisco’s second baseman out, breaking up a double-play with a chop block to the knees, Scutaro responded with two hits in three at-bats before being removed from the game and taken to the hospital for tests. (Watch it here, or a gif of the play here.)

The Giants, hewing to propriety, said all the right things. Hall of Famer Craig Biggio, however, summed up the parameters fairly neatly in an interview for The Baseball Codes.

“The only time I have a problem with any opponent is if you slide on the back side of the base—if you jump over the base and then slide,” he said. “If you slide in front of the base, even you end up against the wall in left field, I could care less—as long as you start in front of that base. But if you jump slide on the back side of that base, that shows intent to separate somebody’s knees or legs, and that’s dirty play.”

Holliday’s slide met that description perfectly: He left the ground in front of the base and landed on the back side of the bag—directly into Scutaro’s legs. Bruce Bochy called the slide “illegal.”

A counter opinion comes from Mike Krukow, the ex-Giants pitcher who called Holliday’s slide as a member of the team’s broadcast crew. From The Baseball Codes:

Low barrel rolls [are] acceptable. When A-Rod took out Jeff Kent and sprained Kent’s right knee in 1998, he [low] barrel-rolled him. On TV that night, Kuip [Krukow’s broadcast partner, Duane Kuiper, a twelve-year major-league second baseman] and I said, That’s a legit play. After the game, Kent was pissed about it. He said that was a horseshit slide. No, it’s not. Basically, a low barrel roll— anything within arm’s distance of the bag—is acceptable. (Acceptable or not, the following night, Giants pitcher Orel Hershiser drilled Rodriguez in the shoulder.)

The Giants did not respond on Monday—Holliday went 0-for-3 against Ryan Vogelsong and Jeremy Affeldt the rest of the way—even with first base open in the third, and a four-run lead in the fifth and eighth. Bochy said that Scutaro is probable for tonight’s Game 3, and downplayed any talk of retaliation, but if it’s determined that Scutaro will miss time, it wouldn’t be shocking to see some fireworks. (“If one gets away,” Matt Cain told Andrew Baggarly, “one gets away.”)

Even Cardinals manager Mike Matheny seems to understand this. “We do play hard and we understand that they play hard,” he said in a San Jose Mercury News report. “That’s the way the game goes.”

For his part, Holliday responded appropriately after the fact, checking with catcher Buster Posey about Scutaro’s well being prior to his next at-bat (asked if he scolded Holliday during the exchange, Posey laughed and said no), and calling the clubhouse after the game. (Scutaro had already left to have tests done.)

Holliday has a reputation for going in hard to bases, so Monday’s slide was not out of character in that regard. Hal McRae had a similar reputation, but he took things to such an extent that legislation was enacted to counter his tactics. McRae’s takeout slide of New York’s Willie Randolph in the 1978 playoffs helped lead to the “Hal McRae rule,” stipulating that a runner must have at least a pretense of reaching the base while taking out an opposing fielder.

At least Holliday touched the bag.

Until Game 3 tonight, settle for the below clip of Joe Morgan taking out Dick Green in the 1972 World Series (It’s the second play in the clip.), which has been making the rounds. It’s primarily valuable to help illustrate the fact that baseball has toned down its act, and that—partly thanks to things like the Hal McRae rule—significant amounts of basepath violence have been removed from the action.

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by | August 29, 2012 · 8:13 am

When is the Baseline Not the Baseline? When it’s Your Team’s Catcher Blocking it, Apparently

Cardinals catcher Yadier Molina understands the concept of blocking the plate. So does his manager, Mike Matheny, a big league catcher for 13 seasons. Which is what makes their professed confusion over the propriety of a play in which Molina was bowled over during Tuesday’s 9-0 loss to Pittsburgh so confusing.

As Josh Harrison rounded third on a second-inning single by Jose Tabata, Molina positioned himself in the baseline, awaiting the throw from right fielder Carlos Beltran.

The catcher’s positioning left Harrison little choice. A slide would have put him into the catcher’s shinguards. A wide-slide-and-swipe-tag combo was also out of the question. So Harrison—only 5-foot-8, but 190 pounds—took what was clearly his best option, and lowered his shoulder.

Molina held onto the throw and tagged Harrison out, but lay in the dirt for several long moments and had to leave the game. (Afterward, his back, shoulder and neck were sore, but he reported no concussion symptoms. Watch the play here.)

A clean, legal play resulted in an out on the basepaths. This didn’t stop Cardinals pitcher Jake Westbrookfrom meting out retaliation in the bottom of the fifth. A 3-0 Pirates lead coming into the frame had grown to 5-0 courtesy of four straight hits to open the inning, and Westbrook faced a first-and-third situation with Harrison at the plate. With second base open and the pitcher frustrated, he acted, drilling the batter in the leg. (Watch it here.)

Plate ump Adrian Johnson showed an unfortunately quick trigger, immediately warning both benches—a decision that elicited an anmiated conversation with infuriated Pittsburgh manager Clint Hurdle, whose team had been stripped of an opportunity to respond to what had effectively been the first shot fired.

A well-blocked plate.

“A baseball play was made at home plate,” he said after the game in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. “They decided to pitch Josh Harrison inside and tight. That’s a baseball play. What I was disappointed in is we didn’t have an opportunity to make a baseball play. If (Johnson) thought there was intent to hit him, throw the pitcher out and let’s move on.”

Had Molina given Harrison a lane to the plate—like the one Buster Posey gave to Scott Cousins last season when he was nonetheless knocked over and out for the year—St. Louis would have had a legitimate gripe. As it is, their confused post-game comments seemed unusually pointed. A sampling, from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

  • Molina: “I would love for him to slide, but this is baseball. It’s one of those things that is going to happen.”
  • Matheny, on the legitimacy of the play: “What do you mean by legitimate? Everybody has the option to slide. He had an option to slide and he didn’t.”
  • Unnamed Cardinals player: “He probably would have been safe if he had slid. That was not the play.”
  • Carlos Beltran: “A runner has a choice — to slide to home plate or hit the catcher. . . . It’s not a dirty play, but, like I say, you have the choice. Go for the base or try to hit the guy.”

Beltran made the point perfectly, only in reverse. By positioning himself where he did, Molina left Harrison no choice about what to do. The only way to get to the plate was through the catcher.

“When I was about (30 feet) from the plate, I saw him slide his feet back,” said Harrison. “The whole plate was blocked; there was no way to slide around him.”

Perhaps the Cardinals’ players were covering for Westbrook, who likely acted on his own. Maybe they really meant it. Either way, Johnson’s warning delayed until today—the final game between the teams this season—any response for which the Pirates may have opted. If matters are to be further settled, it will happen tonight.

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by | January 15, 2012 · 3:24 pm

Yes, There’s a Chance that Tony La Russa, Baseball’s Resident Expert on Retaliation, May Soon Get Even More Verbose on the Topic

They say retirement softens people. It remains to be seen whether Tony La Russa might fall into this category, but in the short term, his newfound freedom seems to have loosened his lips.

While managing the Cardinals last season, La Russa was in no position to discuss the detailed merits of various incidents that were widely construed to be retaliation on the part of the St. Louis pitching staff. Now that he’s beyond repercussions from the commissioner’s office, however, state secrets may be beginning to spill.

It started Friday, when La Russa opened up a bit about a game last year in which Cardinals reliever Jason Motte drilled Ryan Braun, an inning after the Brewers had—unintentionally, by all indications—hit Albert Pujols. Looking back, the ex-manager said, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, that it had been his “responsibility” to respond.

It shouldn’t be all that surprising, really. Even at the time of the incident, La Russa pressed the boundaries of what he could get away with, saying, “We threw two balls in there real good just to send a message. If he ducks them, it’s all over and we don’t hit him.” If anybody in baseball has a deeper love of eye-for-an-eye on-field justice, he has yet to be found.

Heck, an entire book—Buzz Bissinger’s Three Nights in August—is devoted to intricate detail about La Russa’s inner machinations as he pondered whether or not response was merited in various situations. To believe the book, the guy likes to ponder. A lot.

La Russa has yet to go into too much detail about anything untoward, and his consideration for a VP post within Major League Baseball could well change everything, but at the very least, Friday gave us an inkling about what it could be like should the reigning master of retaliation ever decide to truly speak freely on the topic.

We can only hope.

- Jason

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by | October 13, 2011 · 8:47 am

We Must Be in the Front Row: Not First Time for Ticket Mixup at Busch

The view shared by members of the Brewers' traveling party?

Between the name-calling and the occasional hit batter and the Beast Mode, this Brewers-Cardinals NLCS has not been short on tempestuous fun.

Wednesday, however, things took a bit of a different turn. Whether it’s a bizarre form of institutional retaliation or simply shoddy planning, St. Louis’s decision to forgo the standard seating section for the families of Brewers players and staff—opting instead to spread them out around the ballpark—has been met with considerable anger.

“It’s bush,” said Nyjer Morgan in an ESPN.com report. “Our families, they’ve got to be secured. It’s kind of garbage. We put their [families] in a secure section and then they want to spread ours out. I don’t know why they play the mental games, but that right there, they shouldn’t play the games right there because that’s our family and our family has got to be secure. But that’s just them, that’s how they operate right there I guess.”

Leading to the theory that the decision was directly influenced by the team’s dislike for the Brewers is the fact that St. Louis reserved precisely such a section for its opponent in the NLDS, the Phillies. Cardinals GM John Mozeliak denied that gamesmanship was behind the decision, but at the very least, the club has some precedent on which to build.

During the 1987 NLCS against San Francisco, Giants players were dismayed to find out that their families had been relegated to the far reaches of the ballpark. The incident was referenced briefly in The Baseball Codes; here’s a more robust version of the story:

Giants slugger Jeffrey Leonard introduced the phrase “one flap down” into the American lexicon during the playoffs in 1987. That was the name of the peculiar home-run trot he had devised (but rarely used) the previous season, during which he let his left arm dangle limply at his side while dipping his inside shoulder into the turn at each base. The slugger decided to resurrect the practice after he and teammates noticed that the Cardinals organization placed Giants family members and friends in nosebleed seats for the first playoff game in St. Louis.

“We peeked out of the [Busch Stadium] dugout and saw where they were sitting, and we all got angry,” he said. “So I said to myself, if I hit a home run I’m just going to clown this fool out there.”

Leonard had plenty of opportunities to clown plenty of fools in the coming days, as he hit four homers over the seven-game series—a performance so dominating that he was named series MVP, even though his team lost. For each of those homers, his arm hung low to his side, which infuriated the Cardinals and their fans. (As did the fact that Leonard’s teammate Chili Davis called St. Louis a “cow town” to the press, a comment that got considerable run near the Gateway Arch.)

Leonard had come upon his trot by accident during a 1986 game, after he hit a home run against Chicago’s Scott Sanderson. First base coach Jose Morales, who usually met passing runners with an arm raised for a high-five, this time had his hands at his sides. It wasn’t until Leonard was atop the bag, ready to turn toward second, that Morales’ arm shot into the air in a belated attempt at congratulation. Leonard’s instinctive response was to duck under it, dropping his left shoulder in the process and letting his arm dangle as he rounded the base. Then, for reasons he can’t much explain, he held the pose as he continued the circuit.

The Brewers have plenty of ready-built responses of their own to call upon, starting with various permutations of Beast Mode and ending with Morgan’s T-Plush signs.

They should be wary, however: Leonard was drilled for his actions by Bob Forsch in Game 3 back in ’87; a similar response from Tony La Russa’s Cardinals would hardly be unusual.

Update (10-18): Apparently that wasn’t all of it. Now that the NLCS is complete, we hear that Zack Greinke‘s wife, Emily, was none too pleased with her seats, tweeting during a game in St. Louis that she’d been relegated to a spot down the left-field line. The tweet has since been deleted, but Larry Brown Sports saved the accompanying picture, allegedly shot on location.

- Jason

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by | September 8, 2011 · 10:53 am

Big League Chew: Morgan Pulls Out All the Stops (Among Other Things) to Get into Carpenter’s Head

This is what happens when baseball’s premier red-ass butts heads with one of the game’s loosest cannons. As if there wasn’t enough tension built in to St. Louis’ desperate chase of the Brewers in the waning days of the NL Central, Nyjer Morgan threw decorum—and his chew—to the winds Wednesday, shouting down Chris Carpenter as the Cardinals ace tried to finish a complete-game shutout.

After the right-hander struck out Morgan for the first out of the ninth inning, he directed an inflammatory comment toward the plate (at least according to Morgan), to which the hitter replied—and I lean here on my decades of experience reading lips via sports telecasts—“fuck you.” (Watch it here.)

Morgan, it seems, had been swiping at low-hanging fruit throughout the game, trying to rattle a pitcher who’s proved susceptible to such tactics in the past. To Carpenter’s credit, he didn’t cave.

“He was yelling at me at second base,” said the pitcher in an MLB.com report. “He was yelling at me down the line when he hit the double. The whole game he’s screaming and yelling, the whole game. I’m not going to allow it to happen. I don’t know if that’s the way he plays, to try to get guys out of their game or what. But I’ve been around too long to allow that to happen, I can tell you that much.”

As Morgan strode purposefully back to the dugout following his at-bat, he dismissively tossed his wad of chewing tobacco toward the mound. It didn’t come anywhere close to Carpenter, but that wasn’t Morgan’s intention. It was simply as dismissive a message as he could send in that moment.

Albert Pujols responded by charging in from first base, Prince Fielder raced to restrain Morgan, and the benches emptied. (No punches were thrown or shoves exchanged.) Morgan was eventually tossed by the umpires, at which point he could be heard on the telecast saying, “He said it first, he’s got to go, too.”

Were it only that simple. Morgan knows—and was likely trying to exploit—a history with the Cardinals that dates back to August, 2010, when the outfielder—then with Washington—went out of his way to senselessly collide with Cardinals catcher Bryan Anderson in a non-play at the plate.

That was followed this spring by an exchange that started when Morgan ran into Pujols in a play at first. Morgan and Carpenter got into a verbal spat during a series at Miller Park earlier this season. The teams also had tension over a tit-for-tat hit-batter exchange involving Pujols and Ryan Braun.

Ultimately, Morgan is either genuinely off-kilter or wildly canny, using the tactic of supreme annoyance to get his opponents off their collective game. (The former was bolstered by his recent run-in with fans in San Francisco. The latter has been ably demonstrated for years by A.J. Pierzynski.)

No matter the answer, it comes down to Nyjer being Nyjer. He said after the game that the confrontation “was over with”—but he wasn’t quite telling the truth.

Not long afterward, Morgan sent out a series of tweets referring to Pujols as “Alberta” and saying “She never been n tha ring.” (See below.)

Ozzie Guillen once described Pierzynski this way: “If you play against him, you hate him. If you play with him, you hate him a little less.”

Through Morgan’s tenures in Pittsburgh and Washington, that appeared to be the case with him, as well. The Brewers, however, seem to love the guy.

He’d be well-advised to keep it that way.

Update: Morgan is headed in the wrong direction. Brewers management is not taking kindly to his act.

- Jason

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by | August 3, 2011 · 10:04 am

Hey Jered Weaver, this is Where Message Pitches are Meant to be Delivered

Ryan Braun: not happy with the way things played out.

As far as retaliation goes, it was awkward, it was ugly and if it wasn’t embarrassing to more than one party, then by all rights it should have been.

But at least it got the job done, within the boundaries of reason.

In the bottom of the seventh inning last night, Cardinals reliever Jason Motte wanted to deliver a message to Milwaukee. Brewers reliever Takashi Saito had drilled Albert Pujols a half-inning earlier, in his tender left wrist. It was clearly unintentional, as the rising fastball hit Pujols only after the hitter pulled his hands in to his chest and was spinning toward the backstop.

Sometimes intent doesn’t make a lick of difference. When Pujols goes down, reparations are frequently in order.

Never mind that it was a 7-7 score; when Ryan Braun led off the home half of the inning, Motte got right to it. And whiffed. Braun evaded Motte’s 98 mph inside fastball, which should, for practical purposes, have ended the hostilities. The pitcher had his shot and missed his mark.

This was plate ump Rob Drake‘s moment to step in and put an end to things. Players frequently appreciate some leeway when it comes to umpires’ warnings, at least to the point that each side is allowed their due shot. Drake, however, missed that mark by a mile.

Allowed a second chance, Motte drilled Braun in the ribs with a 97 mph four-seamer. Braun looked stunned after the first effort; when the second one found purchase without a peep from Drake he was downright flabbergasted.

Even at that point, Motte failed to get booted. (He did end up hitting the showers, but only because Tony La Russamade a pitching change. Based on La Russa’s history with these things, it seems likely that Motte started the inning solely because has the best fastball on the team, with the plan being to pull him after one hit batter. “We threw two balls in there real good just to send a message,” the skipper said afterward, in a semi-denial. “If he ducks them, it’s all over and we don’t hit him.”)

Only after Milwaukee skipper Ron Roenicke came out for a chat with Drake—presumably to fill the ump in on all he was missing—were warnings issued to both benches. (It was odd timing on Roenicke’s part; unless he was looking to get Motte retroactively bounced from the game, his discussion served little purpose beyond costing his own pitchers a chance to respond on Braun’s behalf.)

“That was ridiculous,” said Brewers catcher Jonathan Lucroy in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. “We didn’t hit Albert Pujols on purpose. Are you kidding me? In that situation? If we wanted to put him on base, we would have walked him. That’s ridiculous. . . . We shouldn’t get punished for something we weren’t trying to do on purpose. Look at the situation. If we were getting beat by a lot or we were beating them by a lot and that happens, maybe we did it on purpose.  I mean, come on. We weren’t trying to hit anybody. It’s unbelievable.”

Lucroy is entitled to his opinion, but it’s tough to fault a pitcher for protecting his superstar. That Milwaukee’s best player led off the next inning made the timing perfect. That Motte was given two chances by an apparently clueless ump, however, is worth getting ticked off about. If the situation has anything working in its favor, it’s that, unlike Jered Weaver and Carlos Carrasco, Motte came nowhere near his target’s head.

The teams meet again today, then again at the end of the month.

- Jason

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