PHOENIX — Starting pitcher Merrill Kelly wasn’t having it, and neither was the Arizona Diamondbacks’ bench. Midway through the fifth inning of Monday night’s 7-0 loss to Chicago, the two sides began to jaw at each other over whether Cubs third-base coach Quintin Berry was relaying signs to his hitters from the coach’s box.“Stealing signs is as old as baseball,” Kelly said. “I think it’s a little bulls— when it comes from a coach. I think if it’s a guy on second base and they see the grip in your glove or if the hitters can see something that you’re doing with your glove, I think that’s fair game.“I think guys have been doing that since the beginning of baseball. I think it’s a little bush league when it comes from outside that.”At the center of the matter was whether Berry had something on Kelly’s changeup and was relaying that information to Cubs, specifically from the left side.“Every time I was throwing a changeup, we felt like he was relaying that,” Kelly said.
The Cubs and Diamondbacks dugouts had some words for each other. 👀pic.twitter.com/qleOIaAUZX
— Foul Territory (@FoulTerritoryTV) August 25, 2026In the fifth, amid rising tensions between both benches, and with Kelly having stepped off the mound to refocus with runners on base, manager Torey Lovullo used a mound visit to try calming the situation.“I said, ‘Hey, look, we got to all refocus. Let me worry about things I’m supposed to worry about. Merrill, you go out there and pitch, throw the baseball where you need to, and get out of this inning, and we’re going to score you some runs coming back in,'” Lovullo recalled. “That was the purpose of my mound visit, because I saw things kind of unraveling there, and guys getting a little bit frustrated and distracted. I wanted to bring that focus back.”That visit allowed Kelly to finish the inning and limit the damage to just one run. An inning later, when he was pulled after a two-out single, Kelly retreated to the dugout where he proceeded to stare down Berry and the Cubs’ bench, the matter clearly unfinished.“That’s part of the spirit of the game at times, right?” Diamondbacks bench coach Jeff Banister said. “It’s competitive. It’s August.”Even as Michael Conforto slugged a two-run home run that effectively put the game out of reach for the Diamondbacks, the jawing continued.“We were barking at their third-base coach and he was barking back,” Lovullo said. “And what’s funny in April is not funny in August, everybody’s edgy. And they’re protecting their side, we’re protecting our side. And that’s as far as I wanna go with that.”For the night, Kelly threw 28 changeups, though only one of the earned runs he allowed came off the pitch, a two-out RBI triple to Pedro Ramírez.“I gotta take a look at what I’m doing cause clearly he had something,” Kelly said. “And obviously if he has it, then other people will probably pick up on it as well.”As drawn on the field, the coaches boxes — positioned in foul territory near to first and third base — look like a three-sided bracket, closed off in every direction except backwards, away from the baseline.Beginning in 2026, coaches have been expected to remain within that bracket or toward the dugout as part of a larger effort to clamp down on potential pitch grip identification, a kind of real-time advantage that a base coach can then relay to a batter. Umpires can freely police that, though it did not appear that Berry was noticed doing anything against the rules.It’s a move that base coaches believe has put their own safety in jeopardy, particularly as baseballs continue to fly off the bat at exit velocities beyond 100 mph.“Every third-base coach, we’ve all been talking about how you’re constantly in danger,” Berry told The Athletic in March. “You never get a chance to get out of there. You can’t get out of harm’s way, ever. And I get what they’re trying to do. But you’re not going to stop anything by putting people in a box.”Pitch tipping and sign-stealing continue to be hot topics among MLB teams, with every competitive advantage researched ad nauseam. As The Athletic reported last October, the increase in multi-camera operating systems has created a scenario in which every little movement can be further scrutinized, potentially putting one club at an advantage over another.“It’s definitely not the first time a coach has relayed signs,” Kelly added. “In that situation, I think it should stay between the players.”That, plus dugout iPads and the presence of a pitch-clock that puts every pitcher on a strict timeline, have teams more fearful than ever. A crackdown on iPad usage in mid-July was meant to assuage some of the issue; however, as Monday night illustrated, even one step or sign could have players fearing the worst.“That’s gamesmanship that goes on every day in the league,” Cubs manager Craig Counsell said.— Patrick Mooney contributed to this report.
