Welcome To The Ump Show: Home Plate Umpire Tosses John Gibbons, Marcus Stroman, And Russell Martin
You’re gone, he’s gone and HE’S gone. EVERYBODY’S GONE! I go back and forth on how I feel about Marcus Stroman. On one hand, I always love and appreciate whenever a player shows passion and emotion on the field without caring who he’s pissing off in the process, especially when they’re a good player. Stroman certainly fits that description and checks off all the boxes. But there were a couple of things that I didn’t like about this particular display of emotion.
First, if you’re gonna flip out and get in an umpire’s face, then flip out and get in the umpire’s face. Stroman runs in from the mound and goes directly behind Russell Martin for the “hold me back” defense. Not that home plate umpire Will Little would’ve started swinging or anything, but it looks a little silly when you could’ve gone directly to the umpire, but you instead choose to use your catcher as a human shield to defend against a non-combative home plate umpire.
The other thing is that Stroman didn’t really have a super strong case here. The pitch that he got tossed for complaining about wasn’t even a strike. There might’ve been a couple of close pitches throughout the course of the day — I see about four pitches that were called balls that should’ve been strikes — but I don’t think that’s wildly out of the norm so that losing your shit would be an appropriate response. This wasn’t a CB Bucknor-type day behind the plate, but you can see for yourself: