Baseball can provide thrills in countless ways – a towering home run, a diving catch, a dominant pitching performance. Sometimes, the best drama is not played by the players but by managers and umpires. And to top this off, even the broadcasting booth is not behind in adding spice to an already chaotic story. And that became the focus of the April 8 game between the Baltimore Orioles and Arizona Diamondbacks.

In a tight contest, the home Diamondbacks won the game 4-3, and tensions boiled over in the seventh inning. The first base umpire, Laz Diaz, made a controversial call which resulted in fiery ejections of Arizona pitcher Merrill Kelly and manager Torey Lovullo. As Awful Announcing noted on X, Orioles announcers Kevin Brown and Ben McDonald didn’t mince words, criticizing Diaz’s “lesson in conflict moderation” that stoked the fire.

Here’s how the chaos started: The Orioles came to bat in the seventh trailing 4–2. Cedric Mullins doubled. Next up was Tyler O’Neill against Merrill Kelly. With the count 2-2, Kelly appealed O’Neill’s check swing to first base umpire Mike Diaz, who called it “no swing.” Kelly and the Diamondbacks dugout didn’t take it well. O’Neill took a walk on the next pitch, leaving two runners on and none out. Even the Orioles announcers admitted it was probably a mistake, with Brown saying bluntly, “Look, that’s a swing.” McDonald accepted that and proved their objectivity. 

Things got even uglier when manager Torey Lovullo came out to remove frustrated Kelly. Kelly kept walking off the mound and yelping at Diaz. McDonald wisely advised, “Laz just needs to turn around and walk down the right field line and stay away from him [Kelly].” But Diaz went another way. He issued a warning, and when Kelly kept talking, Diaz ejected him. Brown immediately noted, “Laz is just picking a fight right now. Just let him be mad and walk away.”

Predictably, Lovullo charged out to defend his pitcher, confronting Diaz heatedly, nose-to-nose. This led to Lovullo’s own ejection as well. McDonald put it perfectly: “Like I said five seconds ago, the best thing Diaz should’ve done was just turn and walk… But, instead, he chose to engage, and this is what you get.” As they went to a commercial break, Brown signed off with a biting, sarcastic line about viewers getting a “lesson in conflict moderation from Laz Diaz.”

Diamondbacks fallout: more than just an ejection

After the game, Diaz later justified his treatment of Kelly. “As he was walking off the mound, he looked back and kept talking,” Diaz explained. “At that time, I already gave him his warning to just knock it off. And I ejected him there.” On the other hand, despite his anger during the confrontation, Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo gave a calmer postgame response. He acknowledged Kelly probably “said something under his breath” but focused on the heat of the moment.

It was not Lovullo’s first ejection after a fiery exchange. Lovullo is infamous for protective blowups, including one in 2018 with Yadier Molina and a second this year with his own pitcher, Merrill Kelly, and it’s usually for a bad call or something he interpreted as disrespectful to his players.

Laz Diaz, too, carries a history of controversial moments beyond just balls and strikes. He has been criticized in the past for intensifying rather than calming disputes. Examples like denying Russell Martin the chance to throw baseballs back in 2012, or ejecting pitcher Shawn Kelley for making comments while leaving a game in 2014 (prompting manager Joe Girardi’s ejection too). All of this fit the pattern that Brown and McDonald noted: a tendency to confront when perhaps all that was required was to walk away.

Kevin Brown and Ben McDonald offered a raw, real-time rebuttal that went deeper than a typical fan’s rant. In criticizing Diaz for not moderating the conflict, they were flagging a vital and underappreciated part of umpiring—managing the game.