Watching the umpires in the Mets/Cardinals game on Wednesday evening spend nearly 10 minutes engaging in an existential discussion about what constituted a “mound visit,” it was easy to get caught up in imagined complexities of the issue.

The rule on mound visits reads like this: “The members of the coaching staff (including the manager) can make one mound visit per pitcher per inning without needing to remove the pitcher from the game. If the same pitcher is visited twice in one inning, the pitcher must be removed from the contest. These mound visits are limited to 30 seconds, starting when the manager or coach has exited the dugout and been granted time by the umpire.”

That got us thinking. We know what “mound” is. But what is “visit?” And who is “a coach,” exactly?”

Yeah. The problem was actually much simpler.

Here’s what happened. In the fourth inning, St. Louis pitcher Kwang Hyun Kim’s interpreter visited the mound to speak with the pitcher and infielders. Soon after, Cardinals pitching coach Mike Maddux wanted to visit, and the umpires told him he could.

It seemed that the mistake was in that moment, in the second mound visit that did not result in Kim’s removal.

But according to the league, the oopsie had actually already occurred. MLB’s Manual states that interpreters are not allowed on the mound without a coach.

The Mets had a legitimate complaint, just not the one we originally suspected.

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