The New York Mets lost to the Los Angeles Dodgers on Saturday night, but that was overshadowed by the ejection of Noah Syndergaard.
In the third inning of the New York Mets’ loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers, Noah Syndergaard threw behind Chase Utley and was immediately ejected from the game. Usually, when a pitcher hits or throws behind a batter, umpires usually issue a warning before they are tossed from the game, but Syndergaard didn’t have that luxury, as he was ejected right away.
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After the game, crew chief Tom Hallion explained the decision to toss Syndergaard from the game following the pitch to NJ.com.
“The ruling was that he intentionally threw at the batter, and with that, we have a judgement of whether we thought it was intentional, and if it was, we can either warn or eject. And with what happened in that situation, we felt the ejection was warranted.”
Obviously, because Syndergaard threw the pitch behind Utley was what caused so much controversy. In the playoffs last season, Utley had a late slide into second base, which broke the leg of shortstop Ruben Tejada. Even though Tejada isn’t on the team anymore, the Mets still have a lot of bad blood with Utley. According to Hallion, what happened in the playoffs last season had nothing to do with the ejection of Syndergaard.
“We handle our games separately for all individual games. So we take each game individually.”
“We have to make a snap decision. We can’t think about, OK, well this guy did this or he did that in game six of whatever. We don’t have enough time to think that way. We make a decision on what happens in the game.”
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“We take each game individually. It’s its own game. We react to what happens on the field when it happens.”
While Syndergaard was likely sending a message to Utley, it was shocking to see him get tossed right away. Terry Collins came to the defense of his player and was tossed as well, and the Mets were never able to recover by having to use a lot of their bullpen.