Zach Buchanan

zbuchanan@enquirer.com

PHILADELPHIA - Cincinnati Reds manager Bryan Price and reliever Ross Ohlendorf arrived in the visiting clubhouse at Citizens Bank Park on Friday only to get some bad news. After both were ejected on Wednesday after Ohlendorf hit a batter with a pitch, Major League Baseball had levied suspensions against them.

Price was banned for one game, and spent Friday’s series opener against the Philadelphia Phillies in the luxury box reserved for the visiting team’s general manager. Ohlendorf was hit with a three-game ban, which he chose to appeal.

Neither saw it coming.

“I haven’t been involved with this hit-by-pitch-ejection thing yet,” Price said. “I understood the ejection from the game but not the suspension. But I do know now, after being informed, that it is standard protocol that a pitcher will get three games and can appeal and a manager gets one and can’t.”

Their ejections came in the top of the ninth against the Pittsburgh Pirates at Great American Ball Park after Ohlendorf hit David Freese with a fastball. Since both benches had been warned earlier in the game after two other hit batters, ejections of the pitcher and his manager were a foregone conclusion.

It was the suspensions that caught them off guard, although they have become standard operating procedure for how MLB deals with beanball ejections. That fact has seemingly not filtered its way down to many.

“I didn’t know, so I don’t think (many guys know),” Ohlendorf said. “It doesn’t happen all that often. I was surprised.”

Ohlendorf maintained after his ejection that hitting Freese was unintentional, but said he understood he had to be removed from the game by rule in order to ease tensions. He doesn’t think a suspension is fair, though.

“Whether I’ll win or not, I don’t know, but I thought the right thing to do was to appeal it,” he said. “Hopefully I do win, but we’ll see what happens.”

Even if Ohlendorf does win, Price doesn’t expect the league to wipe his slate clean. It’s more likely, Price said, that the suspension will be reduced by a game or two when Ohlendorf’s case is heard. A date for his appeal has not been set.

Managers are not given the recourse to appeal, which Price said he understands. Bench coach Jim Riggleman will manage in his place.

Of the several hit batters in the game, he thinks only the Juan Nicasio beaning of Brandon Phillips earlier in the game was intentional, and that triggered the warnings. Most hit batters across the league are an accident, he said, and he doesn’t think the threat of automatic suspensions will do much to stem them.

“We won’t change our philosophy,” he said.