Dodgers' Rojas upset by handling of rain delay: 'I'm playing in a puddle'
Los Angeles Dodgers infielder Miguel Rojas was less than pleased with how umpires handled Sunday's rainy conditions for the club's series finale against the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field.
The Dodgers and Cubs tried to push through a storm for three-plus innings before umpires finally called for the tarp halfway through the fourth. By then, the field had already become unplayable.
"I'm playing in a puddle of water," Rojas told Fabian Ardaya of The Athletic. "Everybody can see it. That's not the best conditions. I slipped at home plate. Something right there could've happened, not just to me but to anybody on the team. Not just on our team. We're talking about players. We've got to take care of each other, and I feel like sometimes just to get the game in, in five innings, it's not the right way to do it."
Other Dodgers felt the same way and described the overall field conditions to Ardaya as "not good."
Dodgers infielders made three errors in the first four innings of an eventual 8-1 Cubs victory. Rojas, who started at third base, allowed a run to score with his fourth-inning error in the downpour, the final play before umpires put the game into a nearly three-hour delay.
(Video source: MLB.com)
Earlier in the game, Rojas said third-base umpire Mike Estabrook told him they were "trying to get the game in." The urgency to at least complete five innings was likely because the Dodgers don't visit Wrigley Field again this season, and the teams' schedules didn't offer many options to schedule a makeup game.
Rojas said the whole situation could have been avoided if umpires had just started the delay earlier and waited out the storm instead of interrupting the flow of the game.
"Nobody wants to sit here for two hours and have a rain delay this long anyway, but it's our job," Rojas said. "We have nowhere to go. We were going to be here until like 7 p.m. anyways, and we're going to get to Minnesota tomorrow, and we're going to play another baseball game. It would've been the same thing. Just call the game a little earlier so they can work on the field later."