In business, it’s called a Friday news dump: companies will wait until 5 p.m. Friday to announce the latest round of layoffs, cutbacks or other bad news. The thought is that most people will be headed home from work and won’t notice, or will have the weekend to cool down about it before they have to be in the work environment again.
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The Rangers pulled off something similar in San Diego: They spent most of Sunday afternoon playing a neatly stitched baseball game in San Diego, riding another strong Mike Minor start into the ninth inning when — with the Rangers holding on to a 3-2 lead, the stitches began resembling knots, then spaghetti, then growing into a sentient interstate mixmaster, which consumed all onlookers as it imploded into itself.
Even our own app got in on the mix, sending out an erroneous push notification saying the Rangers had won the game 3-2, thanks to an issue with one of our data service providers. A few minutes later, Francisco Mejía hit a walk-off grand slam, making the final score 7-3 Padres.
Whoops.
Fortunately for the Rangers, it happened on a Sunday afternoon in September, about an hour before the Cowboys kicked off. If ever there’s a time to announce that a baseball game has mutated into a sinister abstraction, that’s probably as benign an hour as you’re going to find.
It’s a real shame, since the first eight innings were imminently watchable baseball by a team that trotted out a lineup that probably more closely resembled Opening Day 2020 than Opening Day 2018.
I’m weirdly excited about this lineup for a few reasons:
– Odor leadoff
– Profar second
– Gallo cleanup
– Kiner-Falefa back at third
– Calhoun gets a start pic.twitter.com/z3bGBev80Y— Levi Weaver (@ThreeTwoEephus) September 16, 2018
Exchange Robinson Chirinos for, say, Jose Trevino, slide Gallo to left field, Calhoun to DH, and put either Delino DeShields or (if you want to get wild) Julio Pablo Martinez or Leody Taveras in center field, and you might have something resembling game one in the new domed Globe Life Field in late spring of 2020.
Mike Minor on the mound? That might be a scene from Opening Day 2019. Minor continued his strong second half with yet another strong start, going 6⅓ innings and allowing just two runs on four hits and a walk, with seven strikeouts.
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Meanwhile, the Rangers got home runs from Jurickson Profar (18) and Willie Calhoun (2) for the first two runs of the game.
To tell you about the third run, however, will require an explanation of a sixth inning that — in retrospect — was a harbinger of the chaos to come.
Joey Gallo led off with a double, and Isiah Kiner-Falefa did what you’re supposed to do with a runner on second and no outs in a 2-1 game: he hit the ball on the ground to the right side. But Eric Hosmer made a nice snag and an even better throw to third base. So good, in fact, that Gallo stopped and turned around. In the ensuing rundown, Kiner-Falefa (again) did what you’re supposed to do: he tried to advance to second base.
None of it worked. It was a 3-5-6-5-3 double play.
Ronald Guzmán followed with a double off the wall to start the next rally. And it worked: Robinson Chirinos hit a bloop single to right field that Franmil Reyes gathered up and threw to the plate. It was too late. Guzmán scored, and the Rangers led 3-1. But Chirinos, running hard the whole way, rounded first and headed for second on the play.
9-2-6 RBI single, out advancing to second base.
To recap: that went double, fielder’s choice, double, single, end of inning.
But it was the top of the ninth when everything started glitching. With one out and a 2-2 count, Larry Bird Trey Wingenter threw a pitch that appeared to hit the handle of Chirinos’ bat and go into fair territory. Wingenter fielded the ball and ran to first for what he thought was the out, but everyone else just … stopped. There was no signal from home plate umpire Ryan Blakney, who just stayed in his crouch, as if something in his code was malfunctioning, causing him to lag.
Chirinos stayed at home plate and shook his hand slightly. Soon, Padres Manager Andy Green emerged from his dugout, ostensibly to ask what the call was, or if the game was going to continue, or if some unseen witch’s curse had rendered all parties catatonic and unable to proceed.
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“I was pretty adamant telling them it’s not a reviewable call as it stood on the field,” Green said after the game. “You have to fix the call on the field; it has to be a fair ball or a hit batter. It can’t be a foul ball.”
After some discussion, the other three umpires also gathered around Blakney, and it was decided that they would put on their headsets.
“I’m not quite sure how we arrived at where we arrived,” Green continued. “But they didn’t want to fix the call on the field, they wanted to go to the headset, which I was very adamant about ‘You can’t go to the headset for this, there’s nothing to fix right now. It’s a foul ball; it’s not reviewable.’ So, I’m not sure how we got to where we got to.”
It’s still cloudy, but it seems that the first headset huddle was to get a ruling on whether or not it was a reviewable call. It apparently wasn’t, presumably since [null] isn’t technically a call.
What is reviewable is whether Chirinos had been hit by the pitch. So after it was ascertained that the umpires could not ask for a review on Green’s behalf, Banister sent them back to the headsets for another few moments, so that New York City could inform them that the ball had, in fact, hit Chirinos.
Andy Green was then ejected as part of the explanation process and could be seen yelling “I DIDN’T ASK FOR A REVIEW” at Blakney after the ejection.
Somewhere, an algorithm decided that it had seen just about just enough from this particular game.
Unfortunately for the Rangers, it wouldn’t be fair to ask for a review to overturn an incorrect call, but then call “no takebacks” when a score gets prematurely announced, so the game proceeded.
Delino DeShields walked, then so did Shin-Soo Choo to load the bases. But Rougned Odor struck out, and Jurickson Profar hit a flare that third baseman Wil Myers was able to flag down. So it remained 3-2.
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“We weren’t going to use (Jose) Leclerc three days in a row, with the volume of pitches,” Jeff Banister explained after the game. Likewise, Connor Sadzeck was unavailable. So Jeffrey Springs — most recently in the headlines as the Rangers’ “Opener” for Yohander Méndez, and the owner of a 1.82 ERA in 24⅔ big-league innings — was going to get a shot to be the closer.
Seven hitters and 30 pitches later, Francisco Mejía hit a grand slam to left field and the game was over.
This has been your Sunday night news dump.There are thirteen games remaining in the Rangers’ season; the next three will be against the Tampa Bay Rays, starting on Monday and kicking off their final homestand of the season (the Seattle Mariners are the other visiting team) before traveling to Anaheim and Seattle to wrap up the season.
(Photo by Jake Roth-USA TODAY Sports)