It’s not unusual to see hitting coaches get tossed from a game. It is highly unusual to see one get tossed the way A’s hitting coach Chris Cron did on Wednesday night.
Cron earned an early trip to the showers after protesting Royals pitcher Michael Wacha being allowed to put a broken chain in his back pocket and then immediately throw a pitch.
Wacha fired the pitch in there for a called strike, while A’s slugger Carlos Cortes stood there with the bat on or near his shoulder. Appearing as though he were taking on the pitch, when, in reality, he wasn’t expecting one to be thrown at all.
That brought Cron out of the dugout to protest, and home plate umpire John Libka was having none of it.
“I’m not listening to you, not you,” a fired-up Libka shouted before the ejection. “Get out of here.”
The basis of Cron’s complaint seemed to be that the ump let Wacha hurry the pitch without pausing to re-engage with Cortes, who was in all likelihood not expecting a pitch to be thrown that quickly.
A reasonable position.
Pitchers and hitters are supposed to visually engage with each other before a pitch is thrown, both for competitive and safety reasons.
“What (Cron) is upset about is the fact that Cortes was standing in the box and then he waited because Wacha was clearly dealing with an issue, dealing with something, didn’t step off and all in one motion took the chain off, put it in his back pocket and then stepped right into his windup, delivery and came home,” A’s broadcaster Dallas Braden explained.. “At no point was Cortes engaged after Wacha decide to get the motion going.”
It all worked out for Cron, however. Cortes ended up walking, and the A’s won the game, 5-2.