Mariners OF Julio Rodriguez’s gesture to fans led to violation during Cubs game

Maintaining a healthy pace of play has been a huge emphasis for MLB over the past few seasons. They instituted the pitch clock in 2023 to try and speed up games, and they made the runner on second base rule in extra innings stick permanently for the regular season in the same year as well. And during the Seattle Mariners’ 19-2 thumping at the hands of the Chicago Cubs on Sunday, they were caught with their pants down in the top of the sixth inning.

To start things off in the half-inning, Pedro Ramirez came to the plate to face Jose Ferrer. Ferrer, however, immediately went down 1-0 in the count, but due to no fault of his own. The home plate umpire gave the Mariners a pitch clock violation after he caught center fielder Julio Rodriguez throwing a ball into the stands just as the at-bat was about to start.

The Mariners disputed this call, but the home plate umpire had his mind made up, as seen in the clip posted by Talkin’ Baseball on X.

Julio Rodriguez was throwing a baseball into the crowd as an at-bat started so the Mariners got called for a pitch clock violation pic.twitter.com/t7V9J96dZG

— Talkin' Baseball (@TalkinBaseball_) August 23, 2026

This is not the first time that Rodriguez ended up costing the Mariners by throwing the ball into the stands. This instance isn’t as egregious as the first one, when he lost track of how many outs there were and threw the ball to the fans, which allowed the Milwaukee Brewers to score two more runs during their 22-0 romp of the Mariners last week.

The home plate umpire was strict in implementing the rules against any delay in play, although this at least did not lead directly to runs allowed for the opposition.

However, the Cubs’ leadoff hitter reached base after hitting a single to left field on a 1-1 count, and he eventually scored — giving Chicago a 7-2 lead over the Mariners to end the sixth. Seattle ended up allowing the Cubs to score a total of 12 runs in the final two innings, leading to another blowout loss.

Rodriguez, for his part, may need to focus completely especially when the Mariners need to win as many games as they can just to keep up in the postseason race.

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