The Cardinals challenged their own catch and it cost them

If you haven’t seen this play from Tuesday night, better sit down.

Here’s the situation. It’s the bottom of the third inning in Cincinnati. The Reds are leading the Cardinals 1-0 and have runners on first and third with one out.

Eugenio Suarez is at the plate. The count is 2-0. Then this happened [VIDEO].

Stephen Piscotty was ruled on the field to have caught Suarez’ foul ball. A run scored to make it 2-0.

But Mike Matheny decided to challenge the call. You can clearly see the call on the field was wrong, that the ball bounced off the wall at least twice before it landed in Piscotty’s glove.

The review crew got the call right, called it a foul ball, and the runner returned to third base. It’s 1-0 again and the count on Suarez is 2 and 1.

This decision blew up in Matheny’s face, because Adam Wainwright then walked Suarez, loading the bases, and Scooter Gennett followed with a grand slam. That was the first of Gennett’s historic four-homer game, and it made the score 5-0.

Matheny defended the decision:

"We need to give [Wainwright] an opportunity to strike somebody out or get a double play," Matheny explained.

"I think that was the reasonable play," added Reds manager Bryan Price. "They're taking a point off the board, right? By having them overturn the call, it puts the runner back at third base. I certainly would have done exactly the same thing."

Well. I’m not sure I agree with anything Bryan Price says, but that decision definitely helped the Reds.

In general, I think I’d take the out on this play, even though a run scored. In that situation it’d be 2-0 with a runner on first and two out and who knows? Maybe Wainwright gets Gennett instead of serving up a slam and the entire game is different. Instead, the Cardinals eventually wound up getting crushed 13-1.

What would you have done?