CLEVELAND — White Sox left-hander Anthony Kay thought something nefarious was going on Friday night when the Guardians’ grounds crew headed to the tarp while Miguel Vargas was still rounding the bases on his three-run blast in the fifth inning.
Vargas was allowed to complete his riveting 10-pitch at-bat while rain began to fall and the wind began to whip. The heavy rain hadn’t arrived yet, and Kay didn’t want his start to end early. He’d thrown only 48 pitches in four innings.
“I was hoping to go six, seven, eight innings, give the bullpen some help, but I think they messed around with the tarp,” Kay said after the game. “We probably had at least 20 to 30 minutes of light rain that we could’ve played through.
“But the second that Vargas hits that home run, they pull the tarp. So there definitely was some bull— on their part to get me out of the game. It’s pretty messed up for them to do something like that and get me out of the game that way.”
Teams are not supposed to influence decisions to stop play because of the weather. Those belong to the umpires, who were made aware before the game that a storm was coming. Crew chief Vic Carapazza called the players off the field, but not without consultation from MLB.
Kay knows that, but it didn’t stop his mind from wandering into conspiratorial corners.
“Of course, it’s up to the umpires at the end of the day,” he told the Sun-Times on Saturday before the game against the Guardians. “The thing that ticked me off the most was that we still had like 20 to 30 minutes of light drizzle that I feel like we could’ve played through. I feel like most rain delays you see don’t start until the actual rain comes.
“I feel like once they saw that, I feel like as a home team, you do have a little bit of a say when the rain’s going to come. You can get into the grounds crew’s ear a little bit to kind of influence it. Maybe they didn’t do that; I don’t know. I think I was mostly just frustrated that my outing got cut short. That was probably my most efficient outing of the year.”
Manager Will Venable didn’t learn about Kay’s postgame comments until Saturday afternoon. So he hadn’t talked with Kay about them — and he disagreed with them.
“That’s a perspective I don’t share,” Venable said. “But these guys can say whatever they want in the media. They’re all adults. I have a really good understanding of how the process goes, which is why I don’t share that perspective.”
That process is a layered one overseen by Matt McKendry, MLB’s vice president for umpire administration. He connects with umpires, general managers, meteorologists and groundskeepers to make sure everyone is on the same page. After all, he’s trying to ensure that 2,430 major-league games are played.
“We were in touch with the Guardians the whole time,” McKendry told the Sun-Times. “They started getting alerts from their local meteorologists about having a severe weather watch and having lightning in the area of the ballpark, and we knew we had some severe weather behind.
“It’s the discretion of the umpires to determine at what point they want to stop the game. I know that Vic probably went a little longer than the groundskeeper would’ve been comfortable with because they were concerned about, once the wind kicked up, being able to get the field tarped. And they had some trouble getting that tarp on once they got there.”
With the potential for more bad weather, McKendry said MLB was a bit more aggressive about restarting the game than the Guardians’ grounds crew was comfortable with. But McKendry thought it was best to play in a dry window, though the drenched outfield might have played a part in left fielder Sam Antonacci’s error that allowed the tying run to score in the seventh.
“That’s where they dumped all the water,” Venable said after the game. “It was a mess out there. He’s coming in hard trying to make a play, and it just got by him.”
But it was nothing nefarious. That’s where the water drains. And it’s very unlikely, if not unfounded, that the Guardians’ grounds crew went rogue.
“We haven’t had a situation where a groundskeeper, you know, inning ends and they go out and put the tarp on without anyone being on the same page,” McKendry said. “Usually everything’s done in consultation.”
Usually?