‘I don’t understand’: Joey Ortiz, Brewers react to yet another critical and controversial call

DENVER – Pat Murphy paused for nine seconds and then shifted the conversation to another topic.

“What else we got?” he responded to reporters following the Milwaukee Brewers’ 8-7 extra-inning loss to the Colorado Rockies on Monday night at Coors Field.

Murphy and the Brewers were ready to move on from a loss that would have been frustrating even without one of the more controversial – as well as impactful – calls from an umpire.

With one out in the top of the fifth and the score tied, 3-3, Brewers third baseman Joey Ortiz pushed a bunt toward the first-base side of the infield. Pitcher Austin Gomber fielded it and attempted to make a tag on Ortiz, who successfully maneuvered out of the way but was ruled by first base umpire and crew chief Brian O’Nora to have gone out of his established base line.

The controversy of the play was this: Ortiz was somewhere right along the outside of the foul line when he began to deviate from his base path. When he finished his move, he was toeing the outer chalk-line.

"I don't understand," Ortiz said.

Runners, per Rule 5.09(b)(1), are allowed a move of no more than three feet out of their path to avoid a tag, with their base path established “when the tag attempt occurs.”

The outer chalk line is located three feet from the foul line.

“The first base umpire said that he went more than three feet away from (Gomber),” Murphy said, not long before declining to discuss the play further. “You guys watched it. You would know if that’s true or not. In my judgment, I felt like he didn't go more than three feet away.”

The game, which the Rockies won on a walk-off single by Jake Cave in the 10th inning, was of course not decided by one play.

Yet the Brewers couldn’t help but feel at least slightly burned considering the hitter following Ortiz in the fifth, William Contreras, hit a solo home run. Had Ortiz been on first, it would have been a two-run shot, adding another critical run in a ballgame that went to extras.

“I don’t think one play determines a game,” Ortiz said. “The whole game is what determines a whole game. I don’t think one play is where it’s at. It’s unfortunate that it didn’t go our way.”

Ortiz immediately disputed the call, motioning with one finger on both hands to exactly where he felt he was on the dirt. Murphy came out of the dugout and was ejected by home plate umpire Brennan Miller after O’Nora agreed to confer with his crew on the call.

Murphy confirmed that, on this sort of tag play, it is not the drawn-in running lane between the two chalk lines that matters; rather, it’s the three feet directly outside of wherever it is that the runner has established a base path for himself.

It just so happened to be that, in this instance, that three feet coincided fairly evenly with the three-foot-wide designated running lane.

“What I was told was from where I started running in the baseline to when he attempted to make  a tag on me, there’s a three-foot radius of the move I can make,” Ortiz said. “My foot was clearly in the baseline. Whatever he says goes.”

So it goes in this season for the Brewers that has been littered with controversial, impactful calls, from the New York Yankees’ Aaron Judge not being called for interference on a slide to Jake Bauers’ backswing interference play against the Tampa Bay Rays.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: ‘I don’t understand’: Joey Ortiz, Brewers react to yet another critical and controversial call