Welcome to spring coaching, the place the principles are made up and the video games don’t matter.
The Orioles and Pittsburgh Pirates performed the underside of the ninth inning of Tuesday’s exhibition at LECOM Field with out umpires. The half-inning was unofficial, as the highest of the ninth ended with Baltimore, the street staff, dropping 7-4. In a typical recreation, the underside of the ninth wouldn’t must be performed, however as a result of that is spring coaching, the Orioles had one other pitcher they needed to verify received his work in and thus requested the Pirates to play one other three outs.
The umpiring crew was tired of being concerned, Orioles supervisor Brandon Hyde mentioned.
“We were told by the league that we could clear it by the umpires and pitch the bottom half of the ninth inning,” Hyde mentioned, “and I guess [crew chief] Chad Fairchild felt that we couldn’t.”
Umpires are underneath no requirement to participate in any unofficial play. As Baltimore right-hander Ofreidy Gómez and his teammates took the sector, the umpires left it.
Without an umpire behind dwelling plate, Hyde and Pirates supervisor Derek Shelton agreed to have catcher Maverick Handley name balls and strikes. The follow of a catcher having that duty is widespread in spring for stay batting classes between one staff’s personal hitters and pitchers however not often seen when gamers in several uniforms are going through one another.
“A little backfield action,” Hyde mentioned.
The LECOM Park scoreboard featured a picture of the Pirates emblem with a background of palm bushes, that includes no info on who was pitching or hitting, the depend, or the variety of outs. The pitch clock, a brand new rule this season to enhance tempo of play, was turned off.
A handful of Orioles executives who had gone into the staff’s visiting clubhouse after the highest of the ninth returned to the stands, as shocked because the followers who initially headed to the exits.
The Pirates’ tv broadcast was additionally caught off guard, with Joe Block and Neil Walker discussing their takeaways from the 8 1/2-inning recreation as gamers for each groups meandered of their respective dugouts. Then, Baltimore’s Daz Cameron started to expire to heart subject, marking the start of a half-inning that may by no means seem in a field rating. Gómez retired three of the 4 Pirates he confronted, permitting a single that Block famous “won’t count in the games that don’t count.” On the primary pitch of that very same at-bat, Handley framed a borderline outdoors pitch, and after throwing the ball again to Gómez, he deemed it a strike.
The inning ended on a floor ball to 3rd. Josh Lester threw throughout to first baseman Curtis Terry, and though nobody was there to formally rule Jason Delay out, everybody accepted it as truth.
Only in spring coaching.
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Source: www.bostonherald.com