Who Started It?

“I mean, we get that there’s extra time kind of baked in there when he’s either on the plate – when he’s either at the plate – JORDAN!”

That’s how it started. If you’ve ever wondered how a standard manager-umpire interaction goes down, well, now you know. It starts with the manager screaming the umpire’s name at the top of his lungs and waving an arm. In the bottom of the fourth inning, as John Schneider attempted to manage the Blue Jays to victory in Game 7 of the World Series while enduring an in-game interview, Justin Wrobleski started Andrés Giménez off with a fastball high and tight. It both looked and sounded like the ball might have clipped Giménez’s elbow, so midway through a measured critique of home plate umpire Jordan Baker for pausing the game while Shohei Ohtani switched from hitter mode to pitcher mode, Schneider signaled to Baker that he wanted to pause the game for a moment to check the video.

The video room told the Blue Jays not to challenge. The ball had missed Giménez. A ball and a strike later, Wrobleski lost control of yet another fastball, and Schneider once again asked Baker to pause the game. Visibly upset, the manager crossed his arms and stuck out his chin while he waited on word from the replay room. This pitch was more high than inside, and despite Giménez’s best efforts, it had once again missed him. He had tried the classic move of earning a hit-by-pitch by letting his elbow drift out over the plate in the process of turning back toward the catcher and (ostensibly) away from the pitch. Then, realizing that he’d still be a few inches shy of the ball, he just stuck his arm out artlessly. Well, it was only artless in the respect that he’d dispensed with subterfuge. The ball was slightly above his arm, so he tried to close the distance by raising first his shoulder, then his elbow, then his wrist, and finally his fingers. He was popping and locking, artfully, and when that didn’t get him high enough, he hopped a few inches into the air. Had he made contact with the ball that way, Baker would have been forced to keep him at the plate, just as James Hoye did when Aledmys Díaz leaned into an inside pitch in Game 1 of the 2022 World Series. Giménez looked into the dugout with a frown, and Schneider followed suit.

You know what happened next. Wrobleski missed up and in again, and this time Giménez didn’t need to try to get hit. The pitch came looking for him and caught his padded right hand. He’d had enough. He shouted and dropped his bat, then looked out to the mound. “What the [EXPLETIVE DELETED], man?” he inquired of Wrobleski. “That’s [EXPLETIVE DELETED].” Baker jumped out from behind the plate and attempted to usher the injured party to first base. “That’s alright,” the umpire cooed. Giménez still wanted answers. “What the [EXPLETIVE DELETED]?” he asked again.

Wrobleski attempted to soothe Giménez’s ruffled feathers and bruised hand the best way he knew how. “[EXPLETIVE DELETED] you, mother[EXPLETIVE DELETED],” he replied before posing a question of his own. “The [EXPLETIVE DELETED] are you talking about? I’m not trying to hit you.”

I should confess that I don’t enjoy it when the benches clear. I’m not into violence. I’d love to see all this legislated out of the game. But once the benches clear, I can still appreciate the silliness of the thing, the posturing, the expletive-laden bromides, the relievers carefully picking their way down concrete stairs in cleats and trotting reluctantly toward the infield.

One of my favorite parts of my job is describing how a manager or a pitching coach walks out onto the field for a mound visit. They’re mostly large, achy former athletes, they’re busy thinking several weighty thoughts at once, and they’re usually dallying deliberately in order to give a reliever a few more previous seconds to warm up. The word walk rarely captures the action. They amble. They trundle. They labor. They heave themselves. They dawdle.

Schneider was not dawdling. The former catcher kicked into a high jog, moving at the head of the Toronto phalanx with enough alacrity to make you wonder how he managed to steal only three bases over six seasons in the minors. At 6-foot-3, Schneider was one of the largest men on the field, and for one alarming moment it looked like he was preparing to wade into the action and knock some heads together. Instead, he headed straight for the nearest umpire, John Tumpane, who was on the outskirts of the main scrum on the first base line utilizing his conflict resolution skills. Schneider was full of questions. “The [EXPLETIVE DELETED], man?” he asked as soon as he got within earshot. “[INDECIPHERABLE] [EXPLETIVE DELETED]? [BLASPHEMY DELETED].” Tumpane’s reply was sadly lost amid the kerfuffle.

Reporters asked Wrobleski about the play several times after the game. Each time, he answered with a wry smile. In the locker room after the game, he said, “He tried to get hit by the pitch before, and then he got hit, and then he talked to me, and I said, ‘Come see me,’ and he didn’t. So whatever, part of the game.” Once the World Series celebration had poured onto the field, he elaborated: “It would never ever make sense to hit him, especially because he’s not very good against lefties, not very good against velocity. So it was very weird, and we’re not trying to hit him there. And then the pitch before he kind of flailed his hand off the bat at the ball, which was a little odd. And then I hit him and he starts chirping at me, and it’s whatever. I mean, I get it. But at the same time, I’m not trying to hit him.” One last quote: “In that moment, I’m not going to let you talk to me and try to belittle me, yell at me, and curse 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’ll talk back at you.”

Wrobleski made three main arguments. First, he wasn’t trying to hit Giménez. That seemed obvious enough, though he didn’t help his case by sandwiching this particular argument with digs.

Second, Giménez started the drama by shouting at him. That’s a little tougher to swallow. Wrobleski picked an awfully convenient starting point for this particular sample, because it intentionally leaves out the part where, intentionally or not, he threw a bunch of 95 mph fastballs toward the man’s head. Some would argue that if you throw three pitches directly at the batter’s hands in a single plate appearance, intentional or not, you probably shouldn’t be pitching anymore. You’re likely to hurt someone. You may remember watching Daniel Bard facing Venezuela during the 2023 World Baseball Classic. Bard clearly had no idea where the ball was going, and as we all worried that he was going to injure somebody, he did exactly 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 amount of venting.

Wrobleski’s third argument was that by trying to get 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 Giménez tried to let the second pitch hit him. But that certainly doesn’t mean that he has to enjoy having his tower buzzed repeatedly. This argument essentially boils down to, “How dare you try to make lemonade from the lemons I hurled at your head?”

For his part, Giménez told reporters, “I’m not glad [about] what I did.” But the data show that taking exception to these pitches was maybe more justified than any of us realized at the time, because they really were exceptional. The three pitches averaged 95.7 mph, 1.2 feet off the plate inside, and 4.4 feet high, so I ran a Statcast search for fastballs at least 95 mph, at least 0.9 feet off the plate inside, and at least 3.9 feet high. Would you like to know how many times during the regular season a pitcher threw three pitches like Wrobleski’s over the course of one plate appearance? It happened twice. Twice! Out of 182,925 plate appearances. That’s 0.001% of the time. In fact, during the regular season, only 11 times did a player even throw three pitches like that – not just to one player – over the course of an entire outing. Giménez was right. It was [EXPLETIVE DELETED].

In one of those two plate appearances, the pitcher was Wrobleski’s teammate Michael Kopech. You know how Kopech handled the situation? After the third near-beanball, he apologized, possibly with words and definitely with gestures. Here he is with his arms out to conciliate an understandably aggrieved Elias Díaz.

That’s very definitely deescalation body language. Now compare it to Wrobleski’s demonstration after he actually hit Giménez. This screenshot comes before Giménez had said a word, so keep in mind that according to Wrobleski’s accounting, the incident has not technically started yet.

I don’t mean to turn Wrobleski into a villain. (Though I should probably point out that the night before the game he did tell reporters, “I enjoy this atmosphere, playing here, being the villain, 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 at fifth. Grading on the curve of one of the most eventful games and series in recent memory, it amounted to minor mischief.