Sometimes, the charms of baseball’s rules mean that you get one pitch in 21 minutes because the umpires are quibbling over whether a substitution is legal.
Here’s what the Rays tried to do against the Red Sox Wednesday in the eighth inning: With Mookie Betts, a righty, coming up to bat against Adam Kolorek, a lefty, Tampa Bay manager Kevin Cash brought in Chaz Roe, a righty. All good? Good.
Cash then moved Kolorek to first base and brought him back in to pitch for the next batter, Rafael Devers, a lefty.
Before Devers could hit, though, the Angel Hernandez-led umpire crew, needed to figure out what the Rays’ lineup looked like after all of these moves.