A.J. Ellis takes exception to umpire Mike Winters critiquing his pitch framing

The Los Angeles Dodgers road struggles continued on Friday as they were shut out for the fourth consecutive game away from Dodger Stadium, losing 3-0 to the St. Louis Cardinals.

With that in mind, it would be only natural to expect some frustration and anger, and the Dodgers target turned out to be home plate umpire Mike Winters. Throughout the game, catcher A.J. Ellis, manager Don Mattingly and others in the Dodgers grew increasingly annoyed by Winters’ strike zone, and eventually that led to an explosive exchange that Ellis claims became personal.

It all broke loose in the seventh inning after reliever J.P. Howell walked Matt Carpenter. At that point, Mattingly had actually already been ejected by Winters for defending Andre Ethier, who was called out on a questionable strike. Ellis soon joined him and later revealed to the media he’s know only became upset by an inconsistent strike, but also by Winters criticizing his pitch framing skills when he’d questioned the strike zone.

From the Orange County Register:

Winters could not have picked a hotter button to push with Ellis. He finds himself one of the lowest-ranking catchers in baseball in the new pitch-framing statistics – playing for an organization now run by a front office that places a lot of stock in that metric.

“Their job is to call balls and strikes,” Ellis said. “It’s not their job to be a catching coach behind the plate. It’s not their job to be critical of what I’m doing. It shouldn’t even matter if there’s a catcher there or not. The ball comes through a zone and they need to take a look at that.

“People on blogs and websites can critique my framing but I’m not going to take it from an umpire because it’s not their job to do that. It’s their job to call balls and strikes based on what comes through a strike zone.”

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It’s an odd dynamic in that Ellis and Mattingly were obviously critical of Winters’ job performance, but the umpires job is obviously to remain unbiased, unflinching and professional under all circumstances. If Winters went over that line a bit, it’s understandable that Ellis would be upset, but sometimes the human element comes into play too, which Ellis also seemed to acknowledge.

“I had a rough game. Mike had a rough game,” Ellis said. “We were both out there doing our jobs, trying to work as hard as we can. But sometimes even when you’re trying to do your best you still don’t do a good job.”

In situations like this, the best place for everybody to look is in the mirror because the only thing you can control is how you react and move forward.

As for Winters, he would only say the argument was about “balls and strikes” while electing to keep the rest private. He was actually miced up for the MLB Network broadcast, so the league at least will know how the exchange went down.

Punishment for either side is unlikely, although a call or two might be made to ensure similar circumstances don’t play out in the future.

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Mark Townsend is a writer for Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @Townie813