Blue Jays Manager Complains Shohei Ohtani Got Too Much Time To Warm Up Between Innings

Blue Jays head John Schneider was not a instrumentality of what he believed to beryllium an unusually agelong warmup for Dodgers two-way prima and Game 7 starter Shohei Ohtani connected Saturday night.

After nan apical of nan first inning, successful which Ohtani had stepped up to nan sheet arsenic nan Dodgers' leadoff hitter, nan Japanese prima emerged from nan dugout pinch nether a infinitesimal near successful nan countdown parameters for pitcher warmups, which are designated to beryllium 2 minutes and 55 seconds for postseason games, per MLB rules.

Ohtani seemed to return astir 5 minutes to warmup, to nan chagrin of Schneider.

Both Fox play-by-play announcer Joe Davis and colour expert John Smoltz were amazed astatine really overmuch clip Ohtani was fixed to lukewarm up, peculiarly successful ray of his precocious emergeence from nan dugout.

After Ohtani was again seemingly fixed other clip to lukewarm up earlier nan 2nd inning, Fox brought successful erstwhile MLB umpire Mark Carlson to explicate why this seemed to beryllium nan case.

"Actually, evidently Shohei's a very unsocial subordinate that he's a two-way player," Carlson said. "And arsenic a pitcher, if he ends nan inning at-bat, on-base aliases connected deck, he gets nan discretion of nan umpires to let him to person nan due clip to pitch."

When Smoltz pushed backmost and suggested that Ohtani was "taking advantage" of nan umpire's discretion, Carlson explained that he believed nan umpires were being "proactive to arsenic to debar a imaginable wounded fixed it was nan World Series.”

Indeed, MLB rules state that "if nan pitcher is connected base, connected platform aliases astatine bat erstwhile nan inning ends, nan timer originates erstwhile nan pitcher leaves nan dugout for nan mound."

Clearly, Schneider felt Ohtani and nan Dodgers were bending those rules.

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