Ron Wotus has been in professional baseball for almost 50 years. He has coached three World Series champions. He is 65 years old and has seen basically everything. On Friday afternoon at Oracle Park, he got ejected during the exchange of lineup cards, which is a sentence that should not exist.
Umpire Alan Porter tossed the Giants third base coach before the first pitch of Game 1 of a doubleheader against the Diamondbacks on Aug. 29, 2026. The reason was carryover from the night before, when Porter was behind the plate for a 10-6 Arizona win and reportedly missed 21 ball-strike calls, 18 of them in the first five innings. Nine were overturned.
Porter Had a Rough Night
Friday night was already a mess. Manager Tony Vitello got tossed. Ace Logan Webb got tossed. The Giants lost. Then Wotus walked out to home plate Saturday afternoon with the lineup card and, apparently, some follow-up questions.
“I went up there and I had asked Alan a few things about last night’s game,” Wotus said. “At one point, he didn’t want to discuss it anymore, and I did.”
That is the polite version of what almost certainly happened. Wotus wanted answers. Porter did not want to give them. The debate lasted about as long as an umpire’s patience for pregame accountability, which is not long at all.
This Is Not a Good Look
Alan Porter has been an MLB umpire since 2010. He is 48 years old. He is supposed to be one of the professionals who handles these situations without letting his own ego bleed into the following day’s game. Instead he tossed a coaching lifer before anyone threw a pitch, on the heels of a night where the box score of his own performance was arguably the worst in the ballpark.
The Giants got Wotus back for Game 2 of the doubleheader, so it was not a full-day suspension in effect. But the message was loud. Do not question me, ever, for any reason, even at 1:05 p.m. with a card in your hand.
MLB Has a Problem
The bigger issue is not one umpire. The bigger issue is that automated ball-strike systems are already being tested in the minors and the average fan can now grade a home plate umpire in real time on their phone. Everyone knows when calls are being missed. Coaches know. Players know. Broadcasters know. And umpires know that everyone knows.
Instead of adjusting to that transparency with humility, some guys are digging in harder. Ejecting a 65-year-old coach during a lineup card exchange is not a show of authority. It is a tantrum in a uniform.
Wotus has been with the Giants organization since he was hired as their third base coach in 1998. He was on staff for the 2010, 2012, and 2014 titles. He is exactly the kind of person MLB should want mentoring the next generation of players and staff. Instead his Saturday morning got hijacked by a grudge he was not allowed to talk about.
Baseball needs to sort this out. The ABS system is coming for a reason. When umpires cannot take basic professional feedback without throwing people out of the stadium, the sport has already made the case against them.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
