CLEVELAND — A strange scene unfolded at Progressive Field in the sixth inning of the Diamondbacks’ 5-0 loss to the Guardians on Sunday.
The benches cleared and gathered around home plate as the Cleveland grounds crew pulled the tarp for a rain delay.
At the center of the scrum was Stephen Vogt. The Guardians’ manager was one of several Clevelanders who may have taken exception to a bunt attempt by D-backs center fielder Tim Tawa, which came as starter Gavin Williams had a budding perfect-game bid.
Williams was perfect entering the sixth inning after he retired the D-backs’ first 15 hitters, including nine on strikeouts. Tawa led off the sixth, and he fouled off a bunt attempt on an 0-1 offering from Williams.
Guardians catcher Patrick Bailey appeared to have some words for Tawa after the foul went back out of play. Tawa lined Williams’ next pitch to right field for a single to end the perfect-game bid.
Tawa was forced out at second base moments later on a fielder’s choice ground ball by Ildemaro Vargas. Guardians shortstop Brayan Rocchio (who threw his arms in the air in annoyance when Tawa fouled off the bunt attempt) had some words for Tawa at second base.
The game went into a rain delay after Williams struck out Tyler Locklear and walked Corbin Carroll. Vogt came out of the dugout looking clearly upset while gesturing to the D-backs’ dugout, which cleared as the two clubs gathered around home plate.
Vogt’s issue at the time was not the bunt attempt and he wanted to have a word with Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo.
“When things happen on the baseball field, tempers can flare sometimes,” Vogt said. “I was upset just because there were people talking to our players that shouldn’t be. So that was what my grief was about.”
Lovullo managed Vogt in Arizona and the two are close. Lovullo was not the one Vogt had an issue with, saying he simply wanted to de-escalate the situation and suggested that he and Vogt talk.
“At one point, I just signaled over to him and said, ‘Come on, let’s talk about this, you and I,’” Lovullo said. “And I heard him saying to the umpire, ‘I just want to go talk to Torey,’ so I appreciated that. Like I said, through some hard lessons and suspensions and fines, I’ve learned the hard way to de-escalate instead of amplify it, and in that case, I felt like that was my job. Vogt and I got together and talked about it. And he saw it the same way I did. He had no problem with what Tawa did based on the conversation there at home plate.”
Of course, as it always is with unwritten rules, different people have different views on exactly what they are.
“Obviously, when things like that happen, some people are going to have opinions one way or the other,” Vogt said. “I can only control how we play. That’s not a knock on how anybody else goes about it. That’s the facts. But obviously, when there’s a perfect game going, some people are going to be very upset at that. But again, that wasn’t the crux of my frustration.”
All the while, the tarp covered the infield before meeting the skirmish at home plate. Both managers were so focused on what was going on during the scuffle, they didn’t even notice that the grounds crew were waiting for the players and coaches to move from the home-plate area.
Perhaps adding to the Guardians’ frustration is this isn’t the first time someone has bunted during Williams’ attempt at a perfect game. The right-hander had a perfect-game bid on July 9 against the Twins when Royce Lewis fouled off a bunt attempt with one out in the fifth. Lewis went on to end the bid with a single in the same at-bat.
Bunting is part of Tawa’s game, and he checked with Lovullo before he went up to the plate to make sure he wasn’t violating any unwritten rule. From the D-backs’ perspective, bunting to break up a perfect game is fine as long as it’s before the seventh or eighth inning and it’s a player who bunts on a regular basis.
Tawa, though, understood the frustration from the Guardians.
“I think everybody’s just competing,” Tawa said. “I understand the unwritten rules of baseball, and that’s a thing. And at the same time, I’m just trying to get on base and help the team and gain us some momentum. And yeah, I think everybody’s competing, tensions happen like that sometimes in baseball. So I get it.”
