Matheny Ejected in Loss

For the first time since August of 1983, the St. Louis Cardinals have lost seven consecutive games at home as they fell to Kansas City 4-2 on Thursday night. St. Louis is now 15-23 at Busch Stadium this season.

“I didn’t like some of the things I was seeing just like most of our team didn’t like things we were seeing,” said Mike Matheny afterwards. “It was a game of missed opportunities–whether guys on base, taking advantage of free bases given to us. Not taking advantage of them and then giving up some free ones. That’s kind of been this series with this Royals team. They capitalized on it and we opened the door.”

The Cardinals committed three errors in the game, which again proved costly–the first example coming as Mike Leake struck out and induced a ground ball from the first two batters he faced yet a run still scored due to misplays.

“I think we made some mistakes,” said Matheny. “Mistakes happen though, but we’ve got to fix them–we’ve been saying this for a while. I know our guys hold themselves to a high level of expectation. Some of the plays that have happened aren’t in those expectations. They haven’t met them. We have to continue to figure out how to get them right on a consistent basis.”

Matheny was ejected in the top of the 6th inning after arguing the point of procedure on the review of a double play, which was overturned.

“That’s a hazy rule if there is one,” explained Matheny. “But I know it’d have been barked at if it was on the other side.”

On the play in question, Matt Carpenter bobbled the turn on the double play at second before finishing his throw to first, where the runner was ruled out. After the Cardinals had cleared the field, Kansas City challenged the play.

“The way I was originally told this has to happen, it has to happen right away,” furthered Matheny. “Part of it is my guys already got off the field. They’re already getting their bats ready, they’re shut down mentally. I think that’s the purpose for having some sort of guidelines. With that being said, I wasn’t happy it got to that point. Somebody’s gotta catch that.

“So, is there this hard and fast rule, I’d say no. And I know that. The umpire was quick to point out that if I’d have done the exact same thing, he would have given me the same courtesy but at that point, I wasn’t interested in the courtesies. I was interested in what that was going to do to my team.”

By MLB rule, a team only has 10 seconds to request a review on a play resulting in the third out of an inning:

“In the case of a play that results in a third-out call, a Manager must immediately run onto the field to notify an Umpire that the Club is contemplating challenging the play (and in all circumstances must be on the field in less than ten (10) seconds from the Umpire’s third-out call), and in such cases the Crew Chief shall hold the defensive players on the field. The Manager will have no more than thirty (30) seconds after entering the field to notify an Umpire that he is invoking a challenge.”

Royals manager Ned Yost was not on the field within 10 seconds–or even 30 seconds to request that review.

“There’s no secret here, we’ve got to work our way through it,” concluded Matheny on his team’s losing streak. “Whether it’s physically or whether it’s mentally, and not allow ourselves to buy into the fact that when we have games that don’t look like what we want them to look like, we can’t buy in to the fact that that’s who we are because it’s not. A lot of talk that’s not meant for anybody but us and I know we have it in us.”

LONGEST HR AT BUSCH III

–Brandon Moss hit the longest home run ever recorded in Busch Stadium III with a 477ft blast that came within a couple of rows of clearing the entire lower level of seats in right field.

“It was one of those things where I felt like I had good timing against him,” said Moss, pointing out he was in a hitter’s count of three balls and a strike. “I felt like I was seeing him well, so I just got ready to hit and got really aggressive. I got the pitch I was looking for.”

photo credit: Bill Greenblatt/UPI