KC manager calls no-hit weather delay an 'embarrassment'
A preemptive rain delay is fairly common in baseball. But the timing and result of Saturday's delay at Wrigley Field was unfortunate for Kansas City starter Kris Bubic.
The left-hander had a no-hitter working against the Cubs through six innings. In the middle of the seventh, the tarp went on the infield, a lightning warning was shown on the video board and the game was delayed for about 30 minutes.
It never rained, however. When the game resumed, Bubic went back to the hill and walked Frank Schwindel, then gave up a home run to Patrick Wisdom, which turned out to be the Cubs' only hit in a 4-2 loss.
"To be honest, that's just a shame that he wasn't able to keep rolling there," Royals manager Mike Matheny said on the postgame Zoom. "I've never seen anything like that. It's an embarrassment, I think, to the game to have something special going on that we were witnessing right there.
"You pull us off the field, that rain better hit us or something better happen, worse than what happened. I feel for the kid. Not too many people in a lifetime have an opportunity to take a run like he just did. I hope there's some sort of follow-up, because that just can't happen like that."
Bubic ended up leaving after 6⅓ innings, finishing with 9 strikeouts, 2 walks and 1 hit. He started the day with a 3-6 record and 5.09 ERA.
"A situation like that is never ideal but at the end of the sixth inning, I saw the grounds crew in the dugout and they alerted the lightning on the scoreboard," Bubic said. "But it is what it is, I'm not going to sit here and make excuses. I did go down to the bullpen., got up and down I think twice within the 30 minutes. Just tried to stay as loose as possible, just trying to do all I could to at least give myself a chance to finish that out."
Bubic ended up throwing 92 pitches, but Matheny suggested he was willing to let his 24-year-old pitcher complete a no-hitter.
"Apparently there was some (lightning) rule they've had in place here, but that rule needs to be changed," Matheny said. "I'm just going to be honest, I'd love to see what was happening if they had a no-hitter and we get some sort of lightning in some distant future spot that they're going to pull that club off the field and put at risk somebody doing something that doesn't happen very often in a lifetime. It is what it is, but it needs to be fixed because it's wrong.
"He keeps doing something special, knowing that he had a really short outing last time, knowing that since we're on a six-man rotation, he's going to get extra time. I'd have probably gone pretty far. I'm sure I would have made some people mad, but I know one particular young man who would have been extremely happy to run it as hard as he could run it."
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