OAKLAND — Astros manager Bo Porter believes the Jed Lowrie bunting controversy is long behind him and hopes that everyone else feels similarly.
Porter took some heat in April, the last time the Astros visited the O.co Coliseum, for yelling at the A’s shortstop in a situation where it didn’t appear needed.
“When you’re in a competition, I think that as competitors, I think that we always, one, you respond to what’s in front of you,” Porter said Tuesday. “At the same time, I’ve played baseball a long time, I’ve been in baseball a long time. I respect the game of baseball and I will leave it at that. It’s not something that I’m going to drum back up, I think that it’s completely — I know it’s completely behind me. It’s completely behind our team and it’s not even something that I would want to drum back up.”
Porter never directly addressed what happened in the incident, but it seemed that someone on the Astros believed Lowrie violated baseball’s unwritten rules by bunting in the first inning of an 11-3 Astros loss, with the A’s ahead 7-0 at the time.
Astros pitcher Paul Clemens appeared to throw out Lowrie in his next at-bat, in the third inning, before Lowrie flied out to end the frame. As Jose Altuve walked off the field, Lowrie calmly attempted to talk to him, and Porter came out of the dugout, yelling at Lowrie to go play shortstop.
Later in April, Clemens succesfully hit Lowrie during a series at Minute Maid Park, and Clemens was ejected.