Cardinals fans triggered as home plate umpire ejects Nolan Arenado and Oliver Marmol: "Was holding a grudge from last night's game"
St. Louis Cardinal's Nolan Arenado and manager Oliver Marmol were both ejected from the game against the Cincinnati Reds as they got into a spat with home plate umpire Will Little.
The incident happened in the third innings of Tuesday's game as the Cardinals' third baseman was backing to the dugout after a double play by the Reds ended the innings. He was chirping some words against Little who had given two very questionable strike calls against him during his at-bat.
Little called a strike on a 1-0 cutter that seemed to be higher than the strike zone and then proceeded to call a strike near the lower corner. Arenado seemed to be unhappy with both calls as he stepped out of the batter's box to regain composure.
After the ground-out double play, he gave a mouthful to the home plate umpire, who would have none of it.
While walking back to the dugout with first base coach Stubby Clapp, Arenado was shown the tossed sign. He immediately protested charging towards after which Oli Marmol stepped in for his player. Both were shown the door by the official.
Oli and Arenado both get tossed from this one. #STLCards
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Fans were quite furious at the decision and took to Twitter to comment on the issue. Some of them pointed out that Will Little was holding a grudge against Arenado since the previous game when he was at first base for calling a looking strike on the Cardinals infielder.
@BallySportsMW If you look at an ump, you're gone
And if you *don't* look at him, you're GONE!
@BallySportsMW Little was holding a grudge from last night's game when he was at first.
@umpjob @BallySportsMW They get worse and worse the closer we get to robo
@BallySportsMW +1 robo-umps
@BallySportsMW He was walking away, such garbage
@BallySportsMW can't wait for these umps to be in the unemployment line
@BallySportsMW @mlb doesn’t give a crap. They’ll keep running him out there to act like a big man.
@BallySportsMW Awful umpire. Makes Angel Hernandez look like a genius.
@BallySportsMW The only good umpires are the ones we don’t know by name. You NEVER hear anyone talk about umpires that quietly do their job the correct way. There needs to be accountability for these umps. They ain’t all bad. But some are really bad.
Nolan Arenado's incident another instance of umpires acting without accountability
Nolan Arenado's ejection made plenty of the St. Louis Cardinals' faithful livid and quite rightly so as it marks another incident where umpires have given erratic decisions against players and managers.
In recent times, the number of ejections in an MLB season seems to have increased with umpires removing players from games for somewhat minor or often inconsequential incidents.
However, this decision didn't affect the game as much as the Cardinals held on for an 8-5 victory over the Reds.