Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Mattingly stands by criticism
LOS ANGELES — A primary problem with baseball’s unwritten rules is they are unwritten, so it’s not always easy to know if you broke one.
It was these tacit guidelines that governed the Miami Marlins and Los Angeles Dodgers’ benches-clearing excitement Friday night. Marlins closer A.J. Ramos hit Dodgers outfielder Brett Eibner with a pitch. The Dodgers responded when reliever Ross Stripling threw behind Giancarlo Stanton the next inning. Stanton stepped toward the mound, and everybody else ran onto the field. The Marlins lost, 7-2.
But before all of that, Marlins manager Don Mattingly said, Corey Seager — the Dodgers’ 23-year-old star shortstop — committed his own infraction. He swung at a 3-0 pitch when his team led by five runs in the seventh inning.
The thinking behind that specific unwritten rule: When a team is up by a realistically insurmountable number of runs late in the game, looking to add on is poor sportsmanship. Whether five runs with two innings to go qualifies is up for debate.
Mattingly mentioned Seager’s swing four times Friday night, and didn’t exactly back down when asked about it again Saturday.
“They have Kenley Jansen out there,” Mattingly said, referencing the dominant Dodgers closer who the Marlins tried to woo to Miami when he was a free agent last offseason. “I’d like to see how many five-run leads they’ve blown in the last year, in the eighth and the ninth.”
Dodgers manager Dave Roberts didn’t see it the same way.
“For Corey to swing 3-0 was my decision. I had no idea that [Mattingly] took offense to it,” Roberts said Saturday. “If the tables were turned, I’d have no problem with those guys swinging 3-0 in the seventh inning. That next half inning, they had men on first and second base and nobody out. The game could have changed.
“You keep playing. I encourage our guys to continue to play. [Seager] earned an opportunity to get into a hitter’s count and so to concede that at that point in time with respect to the score, I didn’t feel it was inappropriate.”
Roberts added that in the eighth, when Austin Barnes faced a 3-0 count, he instructed him to not swing.
In the end, it’s just another case of different understandings of the same unwritten rule.
“If you’re on our side, we look at it one way,” Mattingly said. “If you’re on their side, they look at it another.”
Said Roberts: “Everyone interprets unwritten rules a different way. The way we feel in our clubhouse, I felt it was fine for Corey to swing on 3-and-0.”
Worley up next
The Marlins have selected their ninth different starting pitcher of the month: righthander Vance Worley, who will get the ball Sunday in the series finale against the Dodgers.
Worley has pitched adequately for Triple-A New Orleans (4.43 ERA, 1.43 WHIP), but opposing batters hit .305 against him in eight games. The Marlins signed him to a minor league deal right before the start of the regular season, after the Washington Nationals cut him.
“I’m not a guy that’s going to go out and strike everybody out,” Worley said. “I pitch to contact and try to go as deep into games as I can. We have a good defense here, so it should be fun.”
Worley has pitched in parts of seven major league seasons, including last year mostly as a reliever for the Baltimore Orioles, posting a 3.53 ERA and 1.37 WHIP. He enjoyed his best season with the Pittsburgh Pirates — and Jim Benedict, Marlins vice president of pitching development —in 2014, posting a 2.85 ERA and 1.21 WHIP while working mostly as a starter. Worley’s numbers slipped in 2015 before Pittsburgh let him go.
The Marlins optioned righty Odrisamer Despaigne to Triple-A New Orleans to make room for Worley. With an open spot on the 40-man roster, the club did not have to make room there.