Orioles beat the White Sox last night 8-6, game ending on a strange infield-fly/baserunner-interference double play.
I get why the announcers and fans don’t like it, but according to this, it was absolutely the correct call.
Rule 6.01(a) Penalty for Interference Comment: A runner who is adjudged to have hindered a fielder who is attempting to make a play on a batted ball is out whether it was intentional or not.
Pretty sure it’s just a matter of the rules not accounting for every possible combination of scenarios. Had it occurred in the 4th inning, everyone probably would have just shrugged and moved on, but because it ended the game, with the batting team down 2 runs and two runners on, it became a controversial call.
And again, I get it. If my team was on the losing end of that call, I wouldn’t like it either.
Angel Hernandez, the infamously bad-at-his-job MLB umpire, is reportedly going to retire, effective tomorrow (Tuesday, May 28th), according to multiple sources.
This article notes, from the Chicago NBC Sports website, notes:
The Mets have DFA’d relief pitcher Jorge Lopez after he was ejected for arguing an appeal to 3rd base call (he was in the wrong, that was not a swing, imho) and then throwing a tantrum and calling the Mets the worst team in the expletive MLB.
He had a magical season and a half once in Baltimore. They seem to have been the only team to have gotten the best out of him. Magic didn’t return his second time around with the O’s, but at least they flipped him the first time to the Twins for 4 pitchers, the prize being Yennier Canó (though neither team knew it at the time).
Yanks lose young starter Clarke Schmidt probably for 2 months, he hopes it will only be 4 weeks. Thus far he is 5-3 with a 2.52 ERA and 60.2 innings over 11 starts. It is a right lat strain.
At least Cole is nearing his return. He had thrown 43 pitches in a minor league game recently.
Aaron Judge has tied for the lead in Home Runs and taken #1 spot for OPS. Juan Soto is 3rd in OPS and 2nd in RBIs.
But Anthony Volpe’s hit streak came to and end last night.
The Blue Jays and Pirates went to 14 innings last night, the longest game of the season and something of an accomplishment with the automatic runner rule. The Rays and Angels played a 13-inning game in April.
The game ended on Davis Schneider’s walk off home run. Schneider played last year but not quite enough to lose his rookie status, so he is a 25-year-old rookie. The Jays didn’t really want him, because he wasn’t supposed to be part of the plan, but they kind of had to take him on the roster because of how well he played last year. In the first eight games of the season he was only allowed to have at bats in two of them; in both those games he hit a home run, and was then immediately benched the next day. The team’s absolute insistence on continuing with their original plans in opposition to actual evidence meant he wasn’t allowed to play regularly.
Eventually, though, they just didn’t have a choice, since so many of their players can’t hit (in part due to coaching, which they also refuse to change, since that would be admitting their plans aren’t working) so now he plays regularly. He’s the most underrated player in baseball and one of the few players the Blue Jays have who’s fun to watch. Toronto fans adore him. He was a C-level prospect in the minors, basically a roster filler, until 2022-2023, when he added muscle and started hitting home runs. They summoned him to the majors in the second half and he promptly homered in his first at bat. In a total of half a season’s worth of games in his career he has 15 homers, has scored 48 runs, driven in 49, and has a .904 OPS. He’s a small guy - he might be 5’9" at most - and doesn’t have blinding speed but he knows what works for him at the plate, can play multiple positions, doesn’t ground into double plays, runs the bases really intelligently, and is just generally the sort of player teams should drool over having.
Given how reluctantly the Jays were to give him an honest shot, and how overloaded the team is at infielder, if I’m a contender I’m 100 percent looking to trade for Schneider this year if the Jays are out of it in July, which they likely will be. Every team needs a player like him.
Based on what you describe, and based on his photo on Baseball Reference, Schneider sounds a bit like NFL quarterback Gardner Minshew III: not an athletic specimen, but lots of smarts, and an outstanding mustache.
