AJ: "You gotta throw me out RIGHT NOW!!" Ump: "Hmm... nah..."
In the 7th inning tonight, the Diamondbacks trailing by a run, Augie Ojeda dove into first base to avoid a tag, but was called out by umpire Paul Nauert. He immediately protested the call, but was held off by first base coach Lorenzo Bundy while DBacks manager AJ Hinch did the yelling.
Hinch did everything in his power to get tossed on behalf of Ojeda, but failed. Nauert just stood there, yelled back, and eventually backed away to his umpire’s position. Hinch was left standing there only to return to the dugout and, get this, continue managing the team.
Good move by Hinch, trying to get tossed. He’s a new, young manager, and needs the team on his side. The sad thing is shots of the team during the argument showed some looks of shock mixed with awkward laughter, as if they were saying to each other, “uhh… is doing what I THINK he’s doing?!” In the end, Hinch would have probably needed to go track and field on the base and discus the thing into right field a la Tommy Lasorda in order to be thrown out.
Now that I would’ve liked to see.
In other news, the DBacks allowed two runs in the bottom half of the seventh, and eventually lost 6-3 to the Padres. Turns out Hinch’s little stunt didn’t help his teams poor fielding and awful bullpen. Bummer.
Oh and the instant replay showed that, yeah, Ojeda was out.
