It’s unlikely that Philadelphia Phillies shortstop Trea Turner will remember Monday’s game against the Baltimore Orioles with a lot of fondness. Turner made two errors in the field. At the plate, he went 0-for-3, with his final at-bat ending in an ejection.
In the sixth inning, Turner came to the plate with two outs and a runner at second base. Turner took a 1-2 pitch from Baltimore’s Dean Kremer, which umpire Will Little called a strike to end the inning. The pitch was not in the middle of the zone. That said, while it was on the low side, it seemed to clip the bottom of the strike zone. It was no worse than a 50-50 call anyway.
Turner disputed the call, but things seemed to be going relatively calm — until they weren’t. Little ejected Turner for throwing his bat. The problem was that Turner claimed that he was just tossing his bat to the batboy. And looking at what happened, that appears to check out. He certainly wasn’t throwing it in anger.
Trea Turner ejected by Will Little.
While Turner was disputing the third strike call, it appeared that throwing his equipment triggered the ejection.
Turner claims to have thrown it to the batboy. pic.twitter.com/sTsBIuMv4r
— The Comeback (@thecomeback) July 25, 2023
In sequences like this, umpire defenders will generally bring up that it’s illegal to argue balls and strikes. That’s true it is. That said, umpires tend to give hitters a little slack on those, especially in situations like this, when the inning is over and the argument isn’t holding up the game. And to his credit, Little did that here. If he was going to eject Turner for arguing balls and strikes, it would have happened a lot sooner.
And while throwing your equipment is also not legal, it’s not uncommon to see players lightly toss a bat, batting gloves or helmet toward a batboy. That seemed to be all that Turner was doing here. So, while Little was patient with Turner’s argument, he seemed to jump the gun on ejecting him for “throwing” his equipment.
That was the sentiment baseball fans had.
Umpires being overzealous again… https://t.co/uQ8fLxtcO3
— Bony Xcribe ☠️🖤 (@bonyscribe) July 25, 2023
https://twitter.com/BVielhaber/status/1683637179682115584
pathetic https://t.co/9G7UUdlVkw
— pw (@peteywengs) July 25, 2023
Another example of umpires thinking fans paid money to see them and not the players https://t.co/30Sv21lLm9
— Art Vandelay (@KingFavre) July 25, 2023
