For those who feel coaches or managers are only rah-rah guys, only make line ups and don’t really coach or manage one bit should have witnessed what took place in a game I umpired the other night.
Home team is batting, it’s bottom of the 7th inning, bases loaded, two outs, they’re down one run. A strong home run hitter is up—they have home runs left. First pitch is a ball. Visiting team manager calls time and comes out to the mound and talks to the pitcher. Pitcher then announces he wants to walk the batter. Huh? Is he serious? He just walked in the tieing run! What the heck is he thinking? Is he high, drunk?
Next batter gets in the box. Before the first pitch the pitcher appeals the runner on first batted out of order. After checking the scorebooks it was confirmed, the runner on first batted out of order. I have an out, run does not score—ball game!!
That manager was heads up enough that he saw that and put guy on base before it was too late.
What a great call!

Couldn't he have appealed this after the first pitch?

cw ... Most appeals have to be made before the next pitch ... This is one of those, and the manager's timing was perfect ... Also saw another similar move by a heads-up manager (not as good as stick's guy) in Reno who did this: Bottom of 7th, two outs, home team trailing by two, and runner on 1st ... Big power hitter at bat, so he's intentionally walked ... Predictably, home team puts in their "rabbit" as CR on 1st ... Visitor manager (and I asked him about it later) thought that might happen ... When it did, he intentionally walked TWO more guys to load the bases, forcing in one run, but also stranding the CR on 3rd when it was his turn to bat ... BALL GAME! ... That likely doesn't happen unless a good scorekeeper is on the book, and in this case it was the visitor manager himself ...

If the manager "appealed" after the first pitch, the correct batter would assume the current count and replace the illegal batter. There is no out for batting out of order until after the at-bat is completed by the batter but before a pitch is thrown to the subsequent batter.

Thanks Dirk, I didn't know that!

Couldnt he have just let him hit and done the same thing? Would have been awesome if he hit a bomb and then called him out!

In my situation he most certainly could have Danaj18. I suspect he was intentionally walked to avoid the batting team discovering he was batting out of order while he was at bat. If they did then they could put in the correct batter who would’ve assumed the count.