In a wild and extremely frustrating first inning for the Mets against the Pirates on Sunday afternoon, manager Luis Rojas found himself ejected.
Rojas was livid after he believed home plate umpire Jeremy Riggs called a foul ball down the third base line fair. Taijuan Walker, who didn’t even make it out of the first inning, had sprinted and flipped it toward the Pirates dugout, thinking it was already in foul territory.
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No Mets player went after the ball and three runs scored to make it 6-0. Rojas proceeded to give it to Riggs and was thrown out almost immediately.
“Obviously, I thought it was foul,” Walker said after the game. “It was so close. So, I mean, it is what it is.
“I flipped the ball and tried to get it out because obviously it was so close. I thought I flipped it in the dugout, I didn’t realize it was still in play.”
Bench coach Dave Jauss and third base coach Gary DiSarcina needed to hold Rojas back before walking down into the clubhouse.
Rojas said he still sees the ball as foul when he looked back at the replay. Though video review can’t be used in that situation, Rojas felt there should’ve been a meeting between umpires to figure it out.
“It’s not a play you see every day right? It’s not replayable and I think we deserve a chance where the umpires can meet, at least the two that have the angle of the play,” he said. “The home plate umpire made the call and the third base umpire. That’s what I tried to get and I was denied. That got me fired up.”
“He was fired up for sure and that got the whole team fired up,” Walker added. “To see him have our backs out there, he’s usually cool-mannered.”
After giving up nine runs in two innings on Saturday night to lose to the Pirates, this is the exact opposite way the Mets wanted to start this one.
Fortunately for the Mets, the bats picked up Walker and Michael Conforto‘s two-run homer in the ninth was the game-winning blow at the end of the day.