SAN DIEGO -- Josh Rojas held up the baseball confidently. He was sure he caught it.

Third-base umpire Will Little looked at home-plate umpire Adrian Johnson and patted his chest to let Johnson know that he saw the play and would make the call. He then raised his fist to signal out.

Padres acting manager Ryan Flaherty called time before deciding not to challenge the call.

But what really happened on the play? Let's back it up a bit.

• Box score

With the D-backs trailing by two runs Monday night in what would become a 4-1 loss to the Padres at Petco Park, Nomar Mazara led off the bottom of the fourth inning with a pop foul toward the D-backs’ dugout.

Rojas at third was playing near the hole at shortstop. He went racing over and slid in front of the dugout reaching out to backhand the ball, which landed in his glove.

That much was clear.

But as he went to raise his glove, the ball popped out.

That much was clear.

What happened after that, however, would not become clear to the people involved until later with the benefit of multiple replay angles and slow motion.

"I'm positive I caught it," Rojas said after the game. "I caught it for sure. I was actually very surprised, it kind of just went right in my hand. I don't know how it just went into my other hand. It was crazy."

Later in the game, the Padres' television broadcast showed a replay that slowed the play down to the point where you could see the ball hitting the ground briefly and Rojas grabbing it as it starts coming back up off the ground.

A reporter showed Rojas the replay on his phone via the MLB app.

"Whoa, it does hit the ground!" Rojas said with a surprised look on his face. "For sure. I thought I caught it in the air, but that for sure hit the ground there. I really thought I caught it. Wow."

Mazara thought Rojas had caught the ball, and it wasn't until he got back into the clubhouse after the game and Padres replay coordinator Adam Hunt came over to him to apologize for not seeing the ball hit the ground, that he knew Rojas hadn’t caught it.

Replay coordinators have a tough job. They have only 20 seconds to relay to the dugout whether to challenge a call. In a case like this, it's simply not enough time.

There's also a question as to whether the Padres could even have challenged the play since catch/no catch in the infield is not supposed to be a reviewable play.

"They couldn't figure it out because it was a weird angle," Mazara said. "[Hunt] apologized right away, and I'm like, ‘Don't worry. That's a tough angle.’ He slid and he's blocking the ball. He was hiding it. I'm like, ‘It's not your fault.’

“He doesn't have 10 minutes to figure it out. He has to be quick. It's tough to do that job. They only have a couple seconds to do it, and they're trying to look at a bunch of angles at the same time to get that call right. There's no way you could see that."

Turns out the only person who actually saw the ball hit the ground in real time was Arizona backup catcher Jose Herrera, who was standing on the top step of the dugout with the play happening right in front of him.

Herrera, though, wasn't about to dispute the umpire.