Blue Jays manager John Schneider was not a fan of what he believed to be an unusually long warmup for Dodgers two-way star and World Series Game 7 starter Shohei Ohtani on Saturday night.
After the top of the first inning, in which Ohtani had stepped up to the plate as the Dodgers' leadoff hitter, the Japanese star emerged from the dugout with under a minute left in the countdown parameters for pitcher warmups, which are designated to be two minutes and 55 seconds for postseason games, per MLB rules.
Ohtani seemed to take about five minutes to warmup, to the chagrin of Schneider.
John Schneider spoke with Jordan Baker in-between innings after Shohei Ohtani got extra warm-up time before the bottom of the 1st
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Both Fox play-by-play announcer Joe Davis and color analyst John Smoltz were surprised at how much time Ohtani was given to warm up, particularly in light of his late emergeence from the dugout.
After Ohtani was again seemingly given extra time to warm up before the second inning, Fox brought in former MLB umpire Mark Carlson to explain why this seemed to be the case.
Mark Carlson talks about why Shohei Ohtani is being granted more warm up time in-between innings
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"Actually, obviously Shohei's a very unique player that he's a two-way player," Carlson said. "And as a pitcher, if he ends the inning at-bat, on-base or on deck, he gets the discretion of the umpires to allow him to have the appropriate time to pitch."
When Smoltz pushed back and suggested that Ohtani was "taking advantage" of the umpire's discretion, Carlson explained that he believed the umpires were being "proactive to as to avoid a potential injury given it was the World Series.”
Indeed, MLB rules state that "if the pitcher is on base, on deck or at bat when the inning ends, the timer begins when the pitcher leaves the dugout for the mound."
Schneider, during a fourth inning interview with Fox's Ken Rosenthal, was asked about what he said to the umpire.
"We were just talking about—we get that there's extra time baked in there when he's either at the plate..." Schneider said. "We were just talking about kind of the time between innings. We know he gets extra time, but it was a little bit egregious we thought. So we were just talking about that."
"That they were gonna handle it," Schneider said when asked what the umpire said to him in response. "They talked to Doc [Dave Roberts] about it. And I guess we don't have to worry about it anymore, he's out of the game."
Clearly, Schneider felt Ohtani and the Dodgers were bending those rules.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Blue Jays Manager Complains Shohei Ohtani Got Too Much Time to Warm Up Between Innings.
