Tigers manager Ron Gardenhire said Monday that Major League Baseball has acknowledged that mistakes were made Friday when a replay review overturned a walk-off victory for Detroit over the Pittsburgh Pirates on Friday.
Major League Baseball, however, said later Monday that it stood behind the decision.
In the 10th inning, Detroit's Nicholas Castellanos was initially called safe at home on a single by JaCoby Jones, and the Tigers spilled onto the field to celebrate. The play was reviewed, however, with the Detroit players still waiting on the field on the ruling.
After Castellanos was called out to end the inning, Gardenhire argued until he was tossed in his first game as the Tigers' manager and for the 74th time in his career. The Pirates went on to win the game 13-10 in 13 innings.
Gardenhire told reporters the Tigers "heard what we wanted to hear" when general manager Al Avila spoke with MLB this weekend. He said MLB acknowledged that too much time was needed to reach a replay decision and that the video evidence wasn't definitive.
"The explanation was they didn't really have conclusive evidence that somebody tagged him," Gardenhire said, according to mlive.com. "Yes, he might have got him. 'We think he got him' is not good enough. In this situation, it has to be definitive. It has to be, 'Yeah, I see him [tag] him.' It's not, 'Well, he looked like he touched his sleeve.' That can't happen. It's got to be conclusive. Obviously it didn't happen. There were mistakes made. That's fine. It won't bring anything back."
MLB said in its statement, however, that the correct call was made.
"The nature of the exchange with the Tigers was that the replay officials made the correct call based on conclusive evidence,'' MLB said. "The video clearly shows the catcher applying the tag on the upper right arm of the runner.''
Gardenhire told reporters that MLB tried to blame the Tigers for the amount of time needed for the replay review.
"One of the statements made to me was, the reason it took so long is because you guys were celebrating," he told reporters, according to the Detroit News. "I said, 'You just called our guy safe. We're not going to celebrate a win?'
"As soon as you put on the headphones, we stopped and stood there. That's a B.S. explanation. That's straight B.S. That's what I told them."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.