Wednesday, April 17, 2013

MLB Ejection 009: Brian Knight (1; Joe Maddon)

2B Umpire Brian Knight ejected Tampa Bay Rays Manager Joe Maddon for arguing an out call in the top of the 5th inning of the Rays-Orioles game. With none out and one on, Rays batter swung at and missed a 3-2 curveball from Orioles pitcher Chris Tillman for a strike three swinging as Rays baserunner R1 Kelly Johnson attempted to steal second. Replays indicate Orioles shortstop J.J. Hardy's tag from catcher Matt Wieters appeared to touch Johnson's left shin prior to Johnson's foot touching second base, the call was correct. At the time of the ejection, the Rays were leading, 4-2. The Rays ultimately won the contest, 6-2.

This is Brian Knight (91)'s first ejection of 2013.
Brian Knight now has 4 points in the UEFL (0 Previous + 2 MLB + 2 Correct Call = 4).
Crew Chief Gerry Davis now has 1 point in the UEFL's Crew Division (0 Previous + 1 Correct = 1).

This is the 9th ejection of 2013.
This is the 2nd Manager ejection of 2013.
This is the Rays' first ejection of 2013, 1st in the AL East (TB 1; BAL, BOS, NYY, TOR 0).
This is Joe Maddon's first ejection since September 19, 2012 (Bob Davidson; QOC = N).
This is Brian Knight's first ejection since September 16, 2012 (Jim Leyland; QOC = Y).

9 comments :

Lindsay said...

Great call Brian!

Lindsay said...

Well maddon had to do this. He probably told himself a couple days ago he was going to get tossed on the next close play. On a side note, when was the last time Maddon was ejected on a correct call, He is usually pretty good at knowing whether the call was right or not?

Lindsay said...

If I remember correctly, the Bob Davidson call last labor day was correct. Like this one though it was really close and looked like it may have been wrong in real time. You are right that Joe is very good at arguing. He usually will only argue if it is obviously incorrect (Tumpane 2011), very close that could have gone weither way (Davidson last year, Knight Today) or an overturn of an original call after Umpire consultation (Demuth and West 2011). He is probably diffivult to deal with for Umpires but he is one for the best Managers in the MLB at picking the right time to argue.

Apparently Muchlinski blew a call Yesterday on a steal attempt also in favor of the Orioles so that might have played into him getting ejected Today. Reading Maddon's lips he continues to say "every f'in time" which leads me to believe he was saying something along the lines of not every close play has to be called an out.

Kudos to Knight for an excellent call. He has been very inconsistent the last two years. He has shows flashes of this and he worked the All Star Game in only his second season but he has shown to have a short fuse, high ejection number and sometimes bad body language. He did a nice job here. Gave Maddon plenty of time to argue and when it became obvious Maddon wasn't leaving he tossed him. It will be interesting to see how the rest of the year goes for Knight. Davis's philosophy has always been don't eject unless you absolutely have to so I want to see if Knight follows along. While this ejection was well handled he has had some questionable ones the last two years. I really hope he continues the good work. He is someone I have always wanted to do well.

Lindsay said...

So why couldnt they show 30 more seconds in the video so we could actually see maddon get ejected?

Lindsay said...

this article has the ejection
http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20130417&content_id=45081746&vkey=news_tb&c_id=tb

Lindsay said...

Its also weird to see joe get tossed without any antics. He just said his piece, waited to get tossed and walked away

Lindsay said...

Typical of the defiant homerism in the Rays commentators assuming that Knight was wrong by the naked eye, without seeing the replay. Great call by Knight.

Lindsay said...

Why consult a replay when there is raw, blind accusings that can be tossed toward an umpire?

Lindsay said...

If you watch the reply of the game on mlb.com the Tampa Bay announcers admit that Knight got the play correct after they see it in slow mo. The mlb network commentators also said it was a great call. Kudos to Brian Knight.

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