OAKLAND – Trey Mancini believes first base umpire Rob Drake made the wrong call. When he was called out on the play in the top of the fourth today, it led to his first career ejection in the bottom half. It also – and these two may have been related – led to the Orioles scoring in three of their next four at-bats.
And while they lost to the Athletics 6-4 today, Mancini hoped his ejection not only may have lit a fire under his teammates on offense today, but that the fire keeps burning this weekend for the next series against the Angels.
With two outs and none on in the fourth, and the O’s down 2-0, Mancini’s grounder up the middle bounced off pitcher Paul Blackburn toward second base. It was fielded by the A’s Nick Allen, but his low throw went behind first baseman Seth Brown. But not far enough for Mancini to take another base on a play scored E4. Mancini had one small sort of jab step where he was just inside fair territory. As he strolled back to first after running through the bag, catcher Sean Murphy grabbed the ball and tagged him.
Drake called Mancini out for apparently attempting to go to second base. Two pitches into the last of the fourth, Mancini was jawing at Drake from the dugout and was ejected. Moments later, so was O’s manager Brandon Hyde.
The O’s offense, which to that point in the series had produced three runs in 31 innings, then produced four in the next four innings, but they lost to fall to 4-9, going 1-3 in this series while scoring seven total runs.
