A bit of drama unfolded late in the Diamondbacks’ 10-4 loss to the Kansas City Royals. A beanball war involving Royals superstar shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. late resulted in Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo’s ejection in the seventh inning.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!Witt has become one of the top players in the American League, entering play with a .337/.382/.575 slash line and 17 home runs. He was their starting shortstop in the All-Star Game and is a top candidate for the league’s Most Valuable Player race, along with Aaron Judge and Gunnar Henderson.
Witt came up to bat in the sixth inning a single shy of the cycle, with Arizona trailing 9-3. Kansas City fans were eager to watch him hit a single to complete the cycle, which would have been the first by a Royal since George Brett in 1990. Instead, Humberto Castellanos plunked him with a first-pitch sinker and ran up and in. That drew a visceral reaction from the Royals’ dugout.
“I hate that he got hit by that pitch, I hate that part of the game,” Lovullo told Dbacks TV reporter Jody Jackson. “It just unfolded a different way, went down a different road for sure.”
As the inning continued, Castellanos got showered with boos by Royals fans for the rest of the inning, upset their star player didn’t get a chance to bat with a cycle on the line. The only break came when Witt scored on a sacrifice fly two batters later.
The hit-by-pitch didn’t sit well for the Royals. In the following half-inning Diamondbacks catcher Gabriel Moreno was hit in the back by a John Schreiber sinker. The umpiring crew huddled together and issued warnings to both teams. That didn’t sit well with Lovullo, who felt that both Schreiber and manager Matt Quartaro should have been tossed from the game for throwing at one of his players. As he tried to lobby his case to home plate umpire Jordan Baker, Lovullo did not get a satisfactory explanation and was subsequently ejected.
“I got a little more heated as I was getting explanations from the umpire. One of the umpires said to me ‘If it was your player, you would have done the same thing.’ Does that mean every time Ketel Marte gets hit by a pitch that we need to hit somebody back? We don’t believe in that here, we don’t do that type of stuff here.”
As the Diamondbacks manager prepared to give Baker a piece of his mind, he invited Royals catcher Salvador Pérez over to listen to what he had to say.
“What I said was ‘If you think in your right mind that I was going to ask my team to hit the future of Major League Baseball, one of the best players in Major League Baseball, you’re crazy. You lost control of that situation and you got it wrong.’ That’s exactly what I said to Jordan Baker, and I wanted Salvy to hear that. I want him to take that back to their dugout to make sure he understood that that’s how I felt about the situation and how I feel about Bobby Witt Jr. He’s an unbelievable player, and I would never ever endorse hitting another player.”
As MLB tries to eliminate the beanball wars, Lovullo has stated he likes that rule and that it wasn’t followed or enforced correctly by the umpiring crew.
“At the end of the day, I’ve got to protect my team. I didn’t like Gabi getting plunked, and it seemed like there was intent there.”
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Michael McDermott covers the Arizona Diamondbacks, Arizona Cardinals, and more for Burn City Sports. You can follow him on X via @MichaelMcDMLB
