Ump Show: Rob Thomson ejected following umpire’s failure to reset pitch clock for Aaron Nola
The Philadelphia Phillies had their six game winning-streak snapped by the Los Angeles Dodgers in front of a sold out crowd at Citizens Bank Park, losing 9-0.
Heading into the game, the Phillies’ rotation had only allowed two earned runs in their previous 34.1 innings. Aaron Nola cruised through the first two innings before everything unraveled in the third.
Nola ended up pitching 6.1 innings, allowing even hits, and a season-high six earned runs while walking two and striking out seven. To put that into perspective, Nola allowed more earned runs in his first four innings yesterday than the entire Phillies’ rotation has allowed over their previous six starts.
Of course, none of that matters if you’re not going to put runs on the board. Offensively, the Phillies only mustered up six total hits while striking out 10 times during the game.
- Trea Turner: 1-4
- Bryson Stott: 3-4
- Kody Clemens: 1-3
- Edmundo Sosa: 1-3
Kyle Schwarber, Nick Castellanos, Bryce Harper, and JT Realmuto combined to go 0-12 with 4 strikeouts. The Phillies won’t win many games with that type of production from the Big 4 in their lineup.
The highly touted rookie Bobby Miller was on the mound for the Dodgers and certainly lived up to the hype. Miller worked himself in and out of trouble Saturday afternoon before settling in to continue his historically dominant run to begin his career.
The 24-year-old right-hander tossed six scoreless innings to lower his ERA to 0.78 becoming the
Ump Show: Nola “Stalling” by Requesting New Baseball
During the game, Rob Thomson was ejected after arguing with Bill Miller’s umpiring crew.
With two outs in the top of the sixth, the Phillies were down three and Nola tossed away a baseball he was given, requesting a new one. Home plate umpire Roberto Ortiz didn’t reset the pitch clock after Nola requested a new baseball because they believed it was a scheme to “game the pitch clock” by stalling the game with a new baseball request.
Nola, who has requested baseballs several times during the MLB season, was confused as to why yesterday was any different.
“Balls are slick and need to rub them up,” Nola said. “Just like every game, I rub balls up after I get a new one in. Sometimes they are chalky, sometimes they are slick, sometimes the seams are bigger than other seams, and sometimes they are smaller.
“I don’t know how you are supposed to slow the clock down when you’re in the wind-up because we don’t get to step off, and there’s times where I need to rub the baseball.”
With the new pitch clock rules, it is the umpires judgement to make a decision on any player, at any time, attempting to stall the baseball game by messing with clock regulations.
Much like everything else with the new pitch clock rules, that leaves a ton of gray area regarding the rules. Here’s what Rob Thomson said following the game.
Thomson cited a rule that players can be called for a violation by causing a delay, but said, “It doesn’t specifically talk about throwing out baseballs. Baseballs are all different, they feel different in a pitcher’s hand, and plus sometimes they get slick in the bags after six or seven innings. Umpires sweat too. I was upset at the fact that they weren’t going to let him switch out the baseball.” via NBC Sports Philly
Hard to argue with Thomson on this one.
Pitchers have been asking for new baseballs for a variety of reasons since the beginning of time. It’s literally nothing new and is only brought up at this point because of the fact that pitchers now only have 15-seconds to throw a pitch (20 with a runner on base).
That’s the gray area. An umpire really can’t make a judgement outside of their own opinion on whether or not a pitcher is trying to stall the game so it really doesn’t make sense to even call that in the first place.
Just give Aaron Nola, or any pitcher, another baseball and keep the game moving. It’s a non-issue.
Regardless, the game was basically over at that point anyways, so it really didn’t matter.
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Dodgers-Phillies Rubber Match 1:05PM
The Phillies will now regroup and send Taijuan Walker to the mound in the series finale against the Dodgers today at 1:05PM. Walker will look to build off his last performance against the Tigers when he allowed just two hits in seven scoreless innings while striking out eight.
Rob Thomson had every single right to be angry at the home plate umpire. First, there is no rule or limit on how many balls a pitcher can thow out. Second, they should have reset the pitch clock and let Aaron Nola have extra warm up pitches. Sometimes throwing out a ball you don’t like helps to restart the pitch clock. Umpire was wrong.