Interference on 3rd out, leading off next inn

Question
Hi.  We had a situation where the worst hitter on TEAM A was up with two outs and a man on first.  He hit a ground ball to second where the runner on first kind of hesitated and I guess hindered the ability of the second baseman to field the ball.  The umpire called what was a delayed dead ball signal, signaling that the runner was in fact out.   That was the third out of the inning.  In the umpire's mind, the batter should not be penalized, and I guess since the interference happened before a play was made on the batter, he had the batter leadoff the next inning.  Team A didn't like this because it was their worst hitter and launched a protest over that and something else.  In this situation, should the batter have led off the next inning?  Thanks.

Answer
Steve,

Besides your question there are some other things going on here.  First of all, interference is always an immediate dead ball.  Obstruction by the defense gets you a delayed dead ball.

If there was interference by the runner, then the correct call is to put the offending runner out.

In this situation, the batter had completed their at bat and should not have led off the next inning.

Tom