PITTSBURGH — Despite the issues his bench coach had with the Washington Nationals leading up to a pair of bench-clearing incidents Thursday, Cubs’ manager Dale Sveum said he saw nothing wrong with how the Nationals played.
Bench coach Jamie Quirk was the first of three Cubs ejected Thursday night, after yelling from the dugout at Nats third-base coach Bo Porter during the fifth inning when Washington players stole two bases and, with the bases loaded, swung at a 3-0 pitch with a five-run lead.
“I didn’t have any problem with it,” Sveum said. “It was the fifth inning. I don’t expect my team to stop playing in the fifth inning up [by five runs]. There’s a time when you stop, but a five-run lead to me – I didn’t have any problem with anything they did.”
Sveum stopped short of criticizing Quirk.
“You have to talk to Jamie about that, but me, personally, I don’t want my guys to stop playing at that time,” Sveum said.
Quirk reiterated Friday that he doesn’t want to talk publicly about the incident until he has a chance to talk to league officials first.
One issue at play is why Porter was not ejected along with Quirk after approaching the Cubs’ dugout to confront Quirk.
Umpire Jerry Layne said Thursday night Quirk was tossed because he was judged to have “instigated” the incident.
For all the jawing and shoving Thursday night – along with a four-game sweep/beating – Sveum said he doesn’t see any bad blood lingering between the teams.
“That was a strange occurrence the way that all happened, but there’s no bad blood going forward,” he said, “even though there might be, or something. It was just a very strange occurrence, [boiling over from] the frustrations the players are going to have – not only obviously getting beat up the last few games of that series but just all the losses going into it ain’t fun for a team either.”
