The Chicago Cubs lost to the Detroit Tigers on Sunday to drop the three-game series. While things are still looking up on the Northside, it was a tough loss to a stellar performance from Jack Flaherty on the hill. During the fifth inning, Cubs second baseman Nico Hoerner was ejected for arguing balls and strikes. He spoke after the game on the quick hook and repeated the conversation verbatim at the podium.
“I don’t think it’s really that often you can verbatim say to the press afterwards what got you thrown out,” Hoerner said, per Maddie Lee of the Chicago Sun-Times. “I said, ‘You’re having a really bad day.’”
Cubs manager Craig Counsell popped out of the dugout to try and calm down the situation. But before he could even get off the step, Hoerner was tossed. The home plate umpire, Derek Thomas, heard Counsell out for a touch longer before the manager was tossed as well. Counsell spoke about the ejection after the game as well.
“The ejection of Nico was completely unwarranted. There’s nothing that was said that warrants an ejection. You cannot eject players and impact the outcome of games for no offense,” Counsell said, per Marquee Sports Network.
Vidal Brujan came in to replace Hoerner in the Cubs lineup, going 0-1 on the day. The Tigers finished off the shutout of the Cubs to take the series, winning the game 4-1.
While this was egregious, it was not the first umpire story to come from the Cubs-Tigers series. Saturday’s home plate umpire, Doug Eddings, received one of the worst Ump Scorecard grades of the day, causing fans to clown him on social media.
Despite the series loss, the Cubs are still comfortably in the NL Central lead and have a big series coming up. Chicago hits the road to face the scuffling Phillies for three games starting Monday.