After Sunday’s loss to the Pirates, David Ross, Willson Contreras and the Cubs were left wanting an explanation for why Contreras was called out at second base in the 3rd inning of Sunday’s 7-1 loss to the Pirates. 

With one out and runners on first and second, Anthony Rizzo hit a grounder to Pirates’ first baseman Colin Moran who flipped it to shortstop Kevin Newman, who jumped over a sliding Contreras and whipped the ball back to Moran errantly and allowed Ian Happ to score from second and Rizzo to advance to second. The Pirates challenged the play and after review, Rizzo was called out for slide interference by Contreras. 

“Hopefully the League will call me tomorrow and explain that one to me,” Ross said after the game. “That was a tough one to understand.”

Contreras felt he did everything right on the play. 

“I don’t think I did anything wrong there, I just slide within reach of the base,” Contreras said. “They probably called me out because I didn’t touch the base, but for me I didn’t touch the guy and if you the watch play, he threw the ball before I got to second base, so I don’t know why they said I broke the rule of slide.

“For me it was a clean slide, I wasn’t even spikes up or anything like that. We didn’t touch each other. They just called it out.” 

It was a tough break for the Cubs, who would have been trailing 3-2 with Rizzo at second and Kris Bryant up to bat. instead, the Cubs ended the inning trailing 3-1 and the Pirates tacked on another run in the bottom half of the inning en route to a win. 

“The only replay I saw was on the board and it didn’t even touch him,” Ross said. “It didn’t look like he even got him. It looked like he could reach the base, it looked like he didn’t alter his path to take him out from all the replays I saw. Hopefully there’s an explanation sometime.”