Lonnie Chisenhall surprised Yankees didn’t review call
CLEVELAND — Lonnie Chisenhall had a simple answer when asked if Chad Green’s pitch hit him in the bottom of the sixth inning: “I’m not the umpire.”
Home plate umpire Dan Iassogna said it did hit Chisenhall’s hand — not his bat — and awarded the Indians pinch-hitter first base to load the bases. The call changed the course of Friday’s ALDS Game 2, as well as the course of the Yankees’ season, as they went on to lose 9-8 in 13 innings.
Replays appeared to show the pitch hit Chisenhall’s bat, and because Gary Sanchez caught the ball, Chisenhall should have struck out to end the inning.
Instead, Francisco Lindor came to the plate and hit a grand slam off the right-field foul pole to get the Indians to within a run.
Joe Girardi opted not to challenge the hit-by-pitch call, which caught even Chisenhall off guard.
“With the amount of challenges we have, it was surprising,” Chisenhall said. “On the video, apparently you couldn’t tell yes or no. If it would have gotten overturned, I don’t know. I’m not the umpire.”
Neither is Sanchez, but he tried to get Girardi to challenge the play.
“I just screamed, ‘Foul!’ [to the umpire],” Sanchez said through an interpreter. “I thought I heard something. I wasn’t sure what.”
Sanchez looked over to the dugout, but Girardi didn’t go for a review.
“There was nothing that told us that he was not hit on the pitch,’’ Girardi said. “By the time we got the super slow mo, we are beyond a minute. It was way too late. They tell us we have the 30 seconds. They will take longer in replay. … And probably being a catcher, my thought is I never want to break a pitcher’s rhythm. That’s how I think about it.”
Girardi finally removed Green, and David Robertson ended the inning by striking out Jason Kipnis, but the damage had been done.
Both Sanchez and Chisenhall noted Chisenhall didn’t react on the pitch, another sign that the ball didn’t hit him, since it was a 97-mph fastball.
“I definitely heard something,” Sanchez said. “I wasn’t sure if it hit the bat. I don’t think it hit him because he never reacted to that. He stood still there.”
“I didn’t react at all,” Chisenhall said. “I go with what the umpire says. I felt some vibration down there in your hand and you go down to first base and you let the replay take care of itself.”
In this case, though, there was no replay, and Chisenhall acknowledged the break.
“Absolutely,” Chisenhall said. “I stabbed at the ball there and got first base and we took advantage of it.”
As for his lack of reaction, Chisenhall said: “Sometimes you don’t even know [if you got hit]. With replay now, you don’t try to sell anything. You don’t try to play anything off. You just run to first and let replay take care of it.”