Turner, Martinez steamed by yet another interference call

The play looked vaguely familiar. The interference call on Trea Turner that followed most definitely looked familiar. And the tirade Davey Martinez subsequently went on in defense of his shortstop certainly brought back some familiar memories, until the Nationals manager took his displeasure to a whole new level with an epic tirade.

Yes, Turner, Martinez and the Nats were victimized yet again by Rule 5.09a(11), which allows an umpire to call a batter running down the line out if he does not remain inside the marked 3-foot-wide lane and interferes with the first baseman attempting to catch a throw.

This time, it happened during the seventh inning of the Nationals' eventual 4-3 win over the Cubs on Wednesday night. Leading off the inning, Turner struck out on a pitch in the dirt that bounced to the backstop at Wrigley Field. He took off for first base as Cubs catcher Willson Contreras retrieved the ball and tried to throw him out.

Turner appeared to beat the throw, which was well wide of the base, but plate umpire Chris Conroy immediately ruled him out for interference, harkening back memories of Game 6 of the 2019 World Series.

Turner left the field shaking his head, but his manager was far more vocal in arguing the call. Martinez ran out to the first base line, marched down the exact path Turner took, then picked up the bag and slammed it to the ground in foul territory before giving it a firm kick for good measure. Conroy wasted little time ejecting him for it.

Afterward, Martinez didn't hold back in berating the call and the rule that has bothered so many in baseball for so long, yet still hasn't been changed.

"Honestly, I am beside myself now with this whole out-of-the-baseline thing," Martinez said during his postgame Zoom session with reporters. "I think it's awful. There's two parts to the rule, I get it: The second part of the rule is the judgment call. For me, it's a bad judgment, plain and simple. If you want to run on the other side of the baseline, put the base over there (in foul territory), plain and simple. I argue that all the time. But if he's running straight down the line, and the catcher makes a bad throw, what do you do? What do you do? He didn't even run hard, and he made it to first base, and he's going to come out and call him out?

"I'm over it. Really, I'm over it. I'm tired of it. I'm going to argue 1,000 times when that happens, I really am. I'm sick of it. You guys saw it. It's a brutal call. And I'm done hiding it. I don't know what they're going to do about it, but it's awful. And it wasn't just today. I've seen it go on and on and on. They need to do something about it."

Turner, clearly just as upset by the interpretation of the rule as his manager, was a bit more careful with his words afterward. Even so, the star shortstop made it clear he felt this call was even worse than the similar call that cost him in the World Series.

"Oh, by far," he said. "I don't even know where to start. ... It's bad. It's just bad. I know they're trying out there, this and that, and they're trying to do their job. But it's terrible. It's bad. I think it was worse than Game 6."

Turner said he hasn't changed his technique running down the base line since getting called out in the World Series, believing there's no other viable path for him to take. He also thinks umpires are not correctly applying the rule, which he believes rewards the defensive team for bad throws.

"Running in a straight line to the base, I don't know why I would bother doing anything different," he said. "It comes down to a bad throw. If the guy makes a bad throw, then you're out. ... So, he might as well just pick it up and throw it in the stands, and then the umpire gets to call you out. It's the only difference in the rule."

Turner's solution for the problem?

"Replay opinion plays," Turner said. "If it's an opinion rule for an umpire, be able to replay it."

Judgment calls, of course, have never been reviewable under Major League Baseball's replay system.