On Saturday, MASN broadcaster Melanie Newman was working from the camera well close to third base at Boston’s Fenway Park when a foul ball off the bat of Rob Refsnyder came screaming toward her head. She saw the ball and did her best to avoid getting hit, but there wasn’t enough time or space to avoid it. Thankfully, she moved just enough to create a glancing blow and, after a trip to the hospital, was back at work on Sunday in the same camera well.
Broadcasters Ben Wagner and Ben McDonald interviewed Newman, who was in good spirits but couldn’t wear the headset over the left side of her head, where she had been struck. McDonald held up a catcher’s mask that he was going to send her way for extra protection.
In the third inning of Sunday’s game, Orioles catcher Adley Rutschman took a direct hit — a foul tip off the bat of Boston’s Rafael Devers caught him squarely on his mask. Home plate umpire Emil Jimenez checked on him immediately, walking in front of him and giving Rutschman time to determine if he could continue. Rutschman indicated he could, but the MASN camera showed him squinting and blinking, as if he were shaken up.
He caught Dean Kremer’s next pitch, and the game moved on.
But why didn’t interim manager Tony Mansolino and his medical staff move from the dugout to ensure that Rutschman was OK? Why did it take until the fifth inning for Rutschman to come out of the game?
On Monday, a day removed from the play and still waiting to see if Rutschman will need to go on the 7-day concussion injured list, Mansolino had second thoughts.
“If I could do it over again, I would have went out there myself,” Mansolino said. “But it didn’t look like much initially. We still feel like it might not be much. There’s no assumptions that it’s anything more than a foul tip at the moment. It’s hard to tell sometimes.”
He pointed out that the Orioles’ staff did respond, even if not immediately.
“They’re on top of it,” Mansolino said. “Every medical staff in baseball, and especially ours, they’re on top of it. They’re aware of what those are and what it is. We happen to have [bench coach Robinson] Chirinos, who had a history of it himself as a catcher in the big leagues. [Head athletic trainer Scott Barringer] was all over it. We’re aware. We sit there. We look at it. We use our professional judgment, and we go from there.”
But the Orioles appeared to put Rutschman in harm’s way by not reacting more quickly to a possible head injury. Catching is the last position you want a player who might have a concussion. And it’s the manager’s job to protect the player in those circumstances.
It’s not in a player’s competitive nature to take himself out of a game. One only has to go back to last season when backup catcher James McCann was struck in the face by a pitch that broke his nose. It was in the first game of a doubleheader, and McCann dutifully caught the rest of the game, endearing himself to fans.
Sunday’s incident was different. McCann got medical attention immediately, and it was clear, even in the bloody aftermath, that he was clear-headed. Rutschman looked dazed and not in a state to make a decision on whether to stay in the game.
The Orioles reacted but not at the speed that was required for someone dealing with 90-plus-mph fastballs. They put Rutschman at further risk, and let’s hope the outcome is similar to Newman’s.