NEWSLETTER
It’s a very rare thing in baseball at the highest level to bench a guy mid-game. Fans always talk about it in the moment, spouting off, but the reality of the clubhouse over a 162-game season is a little more nuanced than that.
With David Ross, it’s a move he has deployed sparingly – once last year with Kyle Schwarber, if I remember correctly – but he did it tonight with Javy Báez after the Cubs’ shortstop forgot how many outs there were while on first base:
Ross explained the situation to Báez thereafter, and he was out of the game.
That play was obviously … not good. Cannot have that happen. Is benching Javy in that moment the right move? I can’t say for sure, because we don’t know what else might be going on that informs Ross’s decision. But it happened. We’ll hear more about this later. Sergio Alcantara took over at shortstop.
UPDATE: Each spoke about the decision here.
