Guardians lose momentum, series after Arias' batter interference

CLEVELAND -- When the Guardians continue to find themselves in one-run games, they need everything to fall in their favor. When the eighth inning went against them, they weren’t able to recover.

The Guardians fought back from a three-run deficit in the sixth and seemed to be gaining steam in the eighth before a batter’s interference call halted that momentum. It was the Brewers who then plated a run in extra innings, handing Cleveland a 5-4 loss in the 10th on Sunday at Progressive Field.

The Guardians have had a handful of occasions over the last few weeks when they channeled their 2022 comeback mentality. It appeared as if they were manifesting that energy once again after an Andrés Giménez triple, a wild pitch and a Will Brennan single put three runs on the scoreboard to tie the game at 4.

In the eighth, the Guardians got the leadoff man aboard via a Tyler Freeman single. Myles Straw pinch-ran for Freeman and was clearly ready to swipe second base to get the go-ahead run on second base.

After a Brennan fly out, Gabriel Arias came to the plate. After seeing four pitches, Arias swung at a 95.6 mph sinker, as Straw broke for second.

Brewers backstop Victor Caratini popped up from his catcher’s crouch and fired to second base, but Straw slid under the tag and was ruled safe. That was, until the Brewers bench asked for a second opinion on whether Arias interfered with Caratini. The umpires huddled and when they walked back to their respective positions, they ordered Straw to go back to first base.

Arias had nicked Caratini on the follow through of his swing.

“The umpire didn’t explain anything to me at all,” Arias said through team interpreter Agustin Rivero. “But I felt after my swing my bat touched the catcher somewhere, but I don’t know where.”

The Guardians knew Arias made contact, the reason manager Terry Francona came out of the dugout to talk to home plate umpire (and crew chief) Lance Barksdale was to get clarity as to how the field umpires would be able to make that call.

“I just think when they make the call from out there from 100, 110 feet away, you better be sure,” Francona said. “From what I saw, I don’t see how they could know that. That's a hard one to swallow. That’s a tough one. And that’s all I tried to tell Lance.”

Here’s the rule written out from Major League Baseball regarding this specific batter interference:

Rules 6.03(a)(3) and (4) Comment: If the batter interferes with the catcher, the plate umpire shall call “interference.” The batter is out and the ball dead. No player may advance on such interference (offensive interference) and all runners must return to the last base that was, in the judgment of the umpire, legally touched at the time of the interference.

When a batter makes a movement that gets in the way of a catcher, then the batter would be called out. Because this was part of Arias’ swing and no extra movements were made, it fell under this “exception” category, which allowed Arias to stay at the plate, but caused Straw to retreat to first base.

This interaction took the wind out of Cleveland’s sails that inning. Straw was at first, Arias had a 3-2 count at the plate and whiffed at an 85.5 mph slider from Brewers reliever Joel Payamps at the bottom of the zone.

Straw, who was taking off as Payamps went into his motion, attempted to swipe second base again, but was thrown out and the inning ended.

“Those are things out of your control,” Arias said. “You are not there to be arguing with umpires. They’re making their decisions and you just have to keep playing the game.”

The Guardians failed to gain momentum again, as the team went down in order in the bottom of the ninth and only got one runner on (aside from the automatic runner who started at second at the beginning of the inning) in the 10th on a hit by pitch.

This led Cleveland to its 33rd one-run game of the season and 18th loss in such contests -- both of which are the most in the Majors. But the Guardians continue to look at this as a positive and hope the competitive atmosphere will pay off as the season moves forward.

“I think we’re never out of a game,” starter Aaron Civale said. “They had a lead early and we bounced back. Never gonna quit.”