BALTIMORE – Marcus Stroman and the Toronto Blue Jays may be denying any intent in throwing at Caleb Joseph, but the Baltimore Orioles certainly aren’t buying it.
Manager Buck Showalter believes the rookie right-hander’s pitch over his catcher’s head in the sixth inning of Monday’s 5-2 win by the American League East leaders was “intentional” and described it as “borderline professionally embarrassing.”
And Joseph, for his part, couldn’t understand why the Blue Jays were so upset about the incident that apparently triggered the hostilities, a play at home in which a sliding Jose Reyes had his left middle finger stepped on.
“There’s life outside of baseball, you know?” Joseph said when asked if Stroman had violated baseball’s code by going to the head area with his purpose pitch. “I have a wife and a baby on the way. Those are the type of things that go through your head when that kind of stuff happens. I am glad it didn’t hit me. So, yeah, there’s a code. Every baseball player knows there’s a code. I’m not the judge here to judge intent or any of that stuff. I’m just glad it didn’t hit me.”
Showalter didn’t have any issue judging intent and went right into attack mode.
“If you look at the history of what’s going on, it should never happen, especially at the head,” he said. “You look at what’s happened with (Chase) Headley and (Giancarlo) Stanton. It’s a hot button, especially for what reason? Let’s face it, he’s 23 years old, emotional, you see him coming off the mound doing his little whatever.
“I’ll let Toronto take care of that, and I’m sure the league office will do what needs to be done. Caleb made a perfectly legal play the way it’s supposed to be done. I’m still trying to figure out what they’re mad about. Caleb is right where he was supposed to be.”
An inning earlier, Reyes slid home on a Danny Valencia single and felt Joseph didn’t give him a proper lane to the plate and then stepped on his hand. He immediately popped up to complain to home plate umpire Ted Barrett and while walking to the dugout, turned around to trade words with Joseph.
Blue Jays manager John Gibbons eventually stepped in between and led him to the dugout.
“(Joseph) turned around to say something, so I had to respond,” said Reyes. “In the beginning I thought that wasn’t right because I think I made it to home plate easy, he didn’t even have the baseball in his glove when I touched home plate. But it’s in the past, it is what it is, that’s part of the game, stuff like that is going to happen sometimes.”
Joseph wasn’t sure if he stepped on Reyes’ hand and didn’t understand why he was so upset.
“It all happened so fast,” said Joseph. “All I knew is we had a play at the plate. I tried to put myself in a position at home plate there and we’ve been communicating a lot of things and trying to get in the right position and I felt like I was in a good position. The throw came in and I tried to make a tag. And then after that try to get the next guy out.
“I’m not really sure (what he was mad about). You’ll have to ask him. I was just trying to make a play there. We had a chance really. I didn’t think it was going to be that close at the beginning, but it was actually close. So I wasn’t sure.”
Gibbons offered no comment on either the Reyes play or the errant pitch by Stroman, who insisted that it wasn’t intentional.
“Fastball in that kind of slipped out of my hand,” he said. “It’s late in the game, I got two big strikeouts, I’m a little excited and trying to get out of the inning, I know it’s possibly my last hitter. I tried to execute a fastball in, I know if I throw that pitch in that location I have a chance to get out of that inning pretty quick, maybe one, two pitches, and it just kind of slipped out of my hand.”
Said Reyes: “I think the pitch for sure got away from Stroman. There’s no way he had any intention to hit the guy there. I was holding my head there because that pitch was close to the head, you don’t want see anyone hit in the head. Like I said, Stroman, I don’t think had any intention to hit that guy there in that situation. We’re trying to win here, we’re not trying to hit no one. That team is in first place and we’re trying to earn a spot for October.”
Stroman ended up striking Joseph out to end the sixth, and heard from several Orioles players as he walked back to the dugout. Eventually, he turned around and said a few things back.
“I looked over there and they were chirping at me a little bit,” said Stroman. “That’s baseball.”
Barrett issued warnings to both teams after the ejection and once the inning ended got an earful from Showalter.
“I understand that warning,” he said. “There were grounds there for ejection. It kind of puts us more in harm’s way than them. He certainly would have been correct either way.”
Still, he was pleased things didn’t escalate any further.
“You’ve got keep some sanity,” said Showalter. “I have probably had more conversations over the years telling somebody not to do something. I’ve never told somebody to throw at somebody. I’m not going to tell you what I told Brad (Brach, the Orioles pitcher at the time). You let your emotions take over and all of a sudden someone’s lying at home plate in a pool of blood with a blow to the head. How really manly do you feel? Was it really worth it?
“If you don’t have the command to throw the ball where you’re supposed to, to deliver a message then you shouldn’t be throwing at all there. It really pushed the hot button with all of us because it certainly wasn’t called for. That was obvious. It was borderline professionally embarrassing.”