Salvy's single major source of confusion 

KANSAS CITY -- It’s not often in a baseball game that every individual on the field is left in utter confusion, but that’s exactly what happened in the Indians’ 7-3 victory over the Royals on Tuesday night at Kauffman Stadium.

Let’s break down what happened:

With one out in the third inning, Royals catcher Salvador Perez lined a ball to the right-center-field wall, where it dropped on the warning track after hitting center fielder Harold Ramirez's glove. At that point, Andrew Benintendi was running to third as the ball hit the ground, but first-base umpire and crew chief Angel Hernandez held up an out signal, which Kansas City third-base coach Vance Wilson saw, and he yelled at Benintendi to get back to second base for the tag.

But when Benintendi turned, he saw the ball being thrown into the infield for a potential out, so he got caught in his own rundown as he saw the Cleveland infielders continue the play, heard Wilson telling him to tag up and heard Whit Merrifield, who had scored on the play, yelling to go to third base.

Benintendi was tagged out, but the umpires convened and ruled him safe at third because of the confusion and placement of the runners. The Royals got their second run on the board, Benintendi advanced to third, and Perez stayed at first base because he hadn’t gone to second on the play due to the confusion with Benintendi.

“Our goal was to get the play right, and that’s exactly what we did,” Hernandez said to a pool reporter. “We talk about this. Replay is an extension of what we do out there. As you saw, I got basically blinded by the outfield scoreboard. The pixels on the lights were as clear as white can be. I was trying to make out what happened out there. The harder I looked, the less I could see. So I was trying to read the players to see what they did with the ball. And I had to come out with the call.

“I basically guessed on the wrong call. So as soon as I turned around, (home-plate umpire) Edwin (Moscoso) started walking towards me. We got the crew together. And we fixed the problem.”

The problem may have been fixed in order to allow the game to continue, but Indians manager Terry Francona struggled to accept the reasoning. The skipper came out of the dugout to voice his opinions to Hernandez, and walked back to his seat in frustration.

“I just kind of told Angel, 'Why's it always happening when you're here?'” Francona said. “It's aggravating, but I don't think there was anything we could do.”

The Royals were just as confused, and made that known to the crew.

“I honestly couldn’t see if the ball was caught either,” manager Mike Matheny said. “There was no signal, no out or safe call to give the guys any guidance. The whole thing looked confusing, as it was to me as well.”

Benintendi explained to the umpiring crew that he was responding to Hernandez’s out call, which is why he got caught in the rundown between second and third base.

“On what the guys had, Benintendi was in between second and third,” Hernandez said. “He didn’t know whether to go back to tag up because, from what I heard from all the players, they also lost the ball in the same background I had. They were all confused as well as [Rusty Kuntz] the first-base coach for the Royals. So everybody basically saw what happened. And the Indians could have gone ahead and gone with the challenge. But their replay coordinator must have agreed with exactly what we [did].”

Cleveland didn’t believe it had the option of turning to a replay review because the ruling on the field was that Hernandez made the wrong call, and that Ramirez did not make the catch. The issue for Francona's team became that Benintendi was automatically granted third base instead of remaining at second.

“They said they put him where they thought he would have been,” Francona said. “I've got to look at the rule. If the baserunner doesn't actually attempt to get there, I'm not sure how you give him that base. But I was so mad at [Hernandez] that I didn't even bring that up, and it probably wouldn't have mattered.”

The Royals loaded the bases later that inning, but the play ended up not factoring into the final result, as Indians lefty Sam Hentges got Michael A. Taylor to fly out to right field to limit the damage.