“I mean, we get that there’s extra time involved when he’s eating – when he’s eating – JORDAN!”
That’s how it started. If you’ve ever wondered how a standard manager-referee interaction goes, now you know. It starts with the manager shouting the referee’s name at the top of his lungs and waving an arm. In the bottom of the fourth inning, as Johannes Schneider tried to lead the Blue Jays to victory in Game 7 of the World Series while enduring an in-game interview, Justin Wrobleski started Andres Gimenez off with a fastball high and tight. It looked and sounded as if the ball had struck Giménez’s elbow, so midway through a measured criticism of home plate umpire Jordan Baker for pausing the play while Shohei Ohtani switched from hitter mode to pitcher mode, Schneider indicated to Baker that he wanted to pause the game to watch the video.
The video room told the Blue Jays not to challenge. Giménez had missed the ball. A ball and a strike later, Wrobleski lost control of yet another fastball, and Schneider again asked Baker to pause the game. Visibly upset, the manager crossed his arms and stuck out his chin as he waited for word from the replay room. This throw was higher than in, and despite Giménez’s best efforts it had missed again. He had tried the classic move to earn a hit-by pitch by drifting his elbow over the plate as he turned toward the catcher and (ostensibly) away from the field. When he realized he would still be inches away from the ball, he simply extended his arm unaffectedly. Well, it was only artless in the sense that he had no more excuses. The ball was slightly above his arm, so he tried to close the distance by raising his shoulder, then his elbow, then his wrist, and finally his fingers. He was artfully popping and locking, and when that didn’t get him high enough, he jumped a few inches into the air. If he had made contact with the ball that way, Baker should have kept him at the plate, just like James Hoye did when Aledmys Diaz leaned into an inside pitch in Game 1 of the 2022 World Series. Giménez frowned into the dugout and Schneider followed suit.
You know what happened next. Wrobleski missed the ball again and this time Giménez didn’t have to try to get hit. The field came looking for him and took his padded right hand. He had had enough. He shouted, dropped his bat, then looked at the mound. “What the [EXPLETIVE DELETED]man?” he asked Wrobleski. “That is [EXPLETIVE DELETED].” Baker jumped from behind the plate and tried to lead the injured side to first base. “That’s good,” the referee cooed. Giménez still wanted answers. “What the [EXPLETIVE DELETED]?” he asked again.
Wrobleski tried to soothe Giménez’s ruffled feathers and bruised hand the best way he could. “[EXPLETIVE DELETED] you, mother[EXPLETIVE DELETED]”, he replied before asking a question of his own [EXPLETIVE DELETED] are you talking about? I’m not trying to hit you.”
I must admit that I don’t enjoy it when the benches are empty. I don’t like violence. I’d like to see all of this banished from the game. But once the benches are cleared, I can still appreciate the silliness of the thing, the attitude, the expletive-laden bromides, the relievers carefully made their way down the concrete stairs on cleats and reluctantly trotted to the infield.
One of my favorite parts of my job is describing how a manager or pitching coach walks onto the field for a mound visit. They’re usually big, sore former athletes, they’re busy thinking several weighty thoughts at once, and usually they’re purposefully dawdling to give a reliever a few more seconds to warm up. The word walk rarely captures the action. They stroll. They wander. They work. They lift themselves up. They linger.
Schneider did not delay. The former catcher hit a high jog and moved at the head of Toronto’s phalanx with enough gusto to make you wonder how he managed to steal just three bases in six seasons in the minors. At 6-foot-1, Schneider was one of the tallest men on the field, and for one alarming moment, he appeared to be preparing to wade into the action and bash a few heads together. Instead, he headed straight toward the nearest umpire, John Tumpane, who was at the edge of the main scrum on the first base line, using his conflict resolution skills. Schneider was full of questions. “The [EXPLETIVE DELETED]man?” he asked once he was within earshot. “[INDECIPHERABLE] [EXPLETIVE DELETED]? [BLASPHEMY DELETED].” Tumpane’s answer unfortunately got lost in the bickering.
Reporters asked Wrobleski about the play several times after the game. Each time he responded with a wry smile. In the locker room after the game, he said, “He tried to get hit by the pitch earlier, and then he got hit, and then he was talking to me, and I said, ‘Come see me,’ and he didn’t. So whatever, part of the game.” Once the World Series celebration hit the field, he explained, “It would never make sense to hit him, especially because he’s not very good against lefties, not very good against speed. So it was really weird, and we try not to hit him there. And then the field before he waved his hand from the bat to the ball, which was a little weird. And then I hit him and he started whistling at me, and it’s whatever. I mean, I get it. But at the same time I try not to hit him. One last quote: “Right now, I’m not going to let you talk to me and try to belittle me and yell at me and swear at me and be cool with it. Because that’s not who I am. I’m a competitive guy and I’m not trying to hit you, but if you’re going to talk to me, I’m going to talk to you.”
Wrobleski made three main arguments. First, he wasn’t trying to hit Giménez. That seemed obvious, although he didn’t help his case by combining this particular argument with excavations.
Second, Giménez started the drama by yelling at him. That’s a little harder to swallow. Wrobleski chose a very convenient starting point for this particular example, as it intentionally leaves out the part where, intentionally or not, he threw a bunch of 95 mph fastballs at the guy’s head. Some would argue that if you throw three pitches directly at the batter’s hands in one strike, intentionally or not, you probably shouldn’t be throwing anymore. There’s a good chance you’ll hurt someone. You may remember watching Daniel Bard versus Venezuela in the 2023 World Baseball Classic. Bard clearly had no idea where the ball was going, and because we were all afraid he might injure someone, he did just that. He broke Jose Altuve’s thumb, requiring surgery and costing the second baseman nearly three months. Giménez may have been entitled to at least some level of ventilation.
Wrobleski’s third argument was that by attempting to be hit by the second pitch, Giménez forfeited the right to object to the location of all three pitches. It’s hard to take that argument seriously. It’s true that Giménez tried to make the second pitch hit him. But that certainly doesn’t mean he has to enjoy his tower buzzing repeatedly. This argument essentially boils down to, “How dare you make lemonade out of the lemons I threw at your head?”
For his part, Giménez told reporters: “I’m not happy [about] what I did.” But the data shows that making exceptions to these pitches may have been more justified than any of us realized at the time, because they were truly exceptional. The three pitches averaged 95.7 mph, 4 feet from the inside plate and 4 feet high, so I ran a Statcast search for fastballs at least 95 mph, at least .9 feet from the inside plate and at least 3.9 feet high. Want to know how often a pitcher threw three pitches like Wrobleski’s in the course of one at-bat during the regular season? It happened twice. Twice! Out of 182,925 record appearances. That’s 0.001% of the time. In fact, during the regular season, a player would only throw this way three times – and not just to one player – in an entire game. Gimenez was right. It was [EXPLETIVE DELETED].
In one of those two at bats, the pitcher was Wrobleski’s teammate Michael Kopech. Do you know how Kopech handled the situation? After the third near beanball, he apologized, possibly with words and certainly with gestures. Here he is with his arms outstretched to conciliate an understandably aggrieved person Elias Diaz.
That is most certainly de-escalation body language. Now compare it to Wrobleski’s demonstration after actually hitting Giménez. This screenshot comes before Giménez had said a word, so keep in mind that according to Wrobleski’s accounting, the incident hasn’t technically started yet.
I don’t mean to make Wrobleski a villain. (Although I should probably point out that he told reporters the night before the game, “I’m enjoying this atmosphere, playing here, being the bad guy, so to speak, here.”) For what it’s worth, when a team of MLB.com reporters broke down the craziest plays of Game 7, the incident only came in fifth. Judging by the curve of one of the most eventful games and series in recent history, it amounted to minor disaster.
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