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I wasn't fortunate enough to be on hand for last night's eventful ninth inning in the game between the Hoppers and the West Virginia Power. It resulted in the eventual ejection of Greensboro manager Darin Everson, so let's try to summarize from the box score and Brian Joura's article in today's N&R.

1) The Hoppers were up 7-3 after a six-run seventh inning, only to give up eight in the ninth to go down 11-7.

2) The Hoppers put together a rally in the bottom of the ninth. A Justin Jacobs two-run double got them within two, at which point chaos ensued. Here's what apparently happened.

The West Virginia coaching staff went out to the mound for the second time in the inning to visit pitcher Yoffri Martinez. For those who don't know all the particulars of baseball's rules, you are allowed one free visit per inning to talk to your pitcher. If you switch pitchers, then that new pitcher also gets one free visit in the inning. So basically, you can visit each pitcher once within a certain inning and let him stay in the game.

On the second visit to the mound in the same inning with the same pitcher, you must remove him from the game. Here is the rule from the MLB rule book: 

8.06 A professional league shall adopt the following rule pertaining to the visit of the manager or coach to the pitcher:
(a) This rule limits the number of trips a manager or coach may make to any one pitcher in any one inning;
(b) A second trip to the same pitcher in the same inning will cause this pitcher’s automatic removal;

Now, here is rule 8.03 from the rule book, which deals with how many warmup pitches each pitcher gets upon a pitching change.

When a pitcher takes his position at the beginning of each inning, or when he relieves another pitcher, he shall be permitted to pitch not to exceed eight preparatory pitches to his catcher during which play shall be suspended. A league by its own action may limit the number of preparatory pitches to less than eight preparatory pitches. Such preparatory pitches shall not consume more than one minute of time.

If a sudden emergency causes a pitcher to be summoned into the game without any opportunity to warm up, the umpire-in-chief shall allow him as many pitches as the umpire deems necessary.

I italicized that last part because it represents the exception. If there is an emergency (usually when the current pitcher is either injured or ejected), then the new pitcher can warm up pretty much as long as he wants.

Now, here is manager Darin Everson's quote from Joura's article: 

"He had two visits....On the second visit they need to automatically bring the pitcher in and they did not go get the pitcher. They ran another pitcher out there to get ready" 

And here is another excerpt from the article: "Pitching coach Charlie Corbell indicated new pitcher Owen Brolsma was not even up when Green went out to the mound for a second time. '(The umpire) let him throw about 10 pitches,' Corbell said." 

I called Hoppers media relations intern Will Cornelius to check this because I wasn't there, and he said the issue was that when the West Virginia coach went to the mound, the umpire did not immediately signal the new pitcher into the game, who according to Everson and Corbell was not ready. Instead, Brolsma threw some more pitches in the bullpen before coming into the game and getting his allotted number of warmup pitches from the actual mound.

So presumably what upset Everson so much, and led to the ejection, was that the West Virginia coach made his second visit - perhaps accidentally - without having anyone completely ready to enter the game. It seems Everson was arguing that this was a mistake on the part of the manager, and therefore the new pitcher should not have been allowed those extra warmup throws in the pen, but should have had to immediately come into the game and throw the alloted number that a normal reliever gets.

I was down at the park talking to Everson today for another story, and he comically avoided the initial question, but said that he had never seen that specific event happen before. He did say, though, that he has seen other such procedural oddities during his time in baseball.

Perhaps only baseball nuts will find this interesting, but I've never heard of something like that happening before -- pretty comical.

--Jesse Baumgartner