The San Diego Padres’ season ended Thursday. They appeared to have some complaints on the way out.
A video has emerged of Padres players Xander Bogaerts and Jose Iglesias getting in a heated confrontation with home plate umpire D.J. Reyburn as the latter exited the field through the San Diego dugout at Wrigley Field following the Padres’ Game 3 loss to the Chicago Cubs on Thursday.
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The tension gets to the point that Iglesias had to be held back.
Per The Athletic, Shildt said Friday that his club hasn’t heard from MLB or the umpires about the altercation. While it isn’t confirmed what triggered it, one blown call by Reyburn in the ninth inning clearly stands out.
After eight innings of getting shut down by the Cubs, the Padres got on the board in the ninth inning with a solo homer from Jackson Merrill. The next batter, Xander Bogaerts, worked the count full against reliever Brad Keller, whose payoff pitch was tracked as a ball.
Bogaerts certainly seemed to think it was a ball, as he started walking across home plate before Reyburn punched him out. Bogaerts then had words for Reyburn and was briefly joined by Padres manager Mike Shildt before walking to the dugout.
That call wound up being pretty significant. Keller hit the next two batters to put two runners on base with one out and a two-run lead. Had Bogaerts reached base, it would’ve been bases loaded and no outs.
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At that point, Andrew Kittredge entered the game for Keller and got the next two batters out, ending the Padres’ season with a 3-1 Cubs win. There’s no telling how the inning would have played out had Bogaerts drawn the walk, but the incident was a perfect example of why players are looking forward to the automatic ball-strike challenge system coming to MLB in 2026.
Bogaerts was still upset about the call after confronting Reyburn, telling the San Diego Union-Tribune he was looking forward to the advent of ABS:
“Talk about it now: What do you want me to do?” Bogaerts said. “It’s a ball. Messed up the whole game, you know? I mean, can’t go back in time and talking about it now won’t change anything. So it was bad, and thank God for ABS next year, because this is terrible.”
Shildt was similarly critical, via The Athletic:
“Looked down to me,” Shildt said after the game, but before video of the altercation gained traction. “You know, but I don’t see great, and I am kind of far away. But most importantly, Bogey felt like he was down. He is not a guy — you know, not any of our guys really, but Bogey in particular — is not a guy that’s overly dramatic about close pitches. It’s a big pitch. It’s a big swing pitch. You know, it turns the tying run and what would have unfolded after that could have been very impactful, but we had other opportunities, too.”
Xander Bogaerts’ ninth-inning at-bat might have swung the Padres’ season. (Photo by K.C. Alfred / The San Diego Union-Tribune via Getty Images)
(The San Diego Union-Tribune via Getty Images)
That ball-strike call obviously wasn’t the only reason the Padres lost the game. There were also the eight innings in which they failed to score against Cubs starter Jameson Taillon and the Chicago bullpen, and Yu Darvish’s one-inning start that put even more pressure on a gassed bullpen. Still, it’s tempting to think about the day when this kind of thing can be corrected with a hand signal from the batter.
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For now, a difficult offseason for the Padres is set to begin after a frustrating season in which they made big moves at the MLB trade deadline but fell short of the Los Angeles Dodgers in the NL West.