Last Night's Action: All Tied Up

Photograph of Hideki Matsui hitting a sixth inning home run by Eric Gay/AP

Yankees 3 Phillies 1: The Yankees gave AJ Burnett a lot of money this offseason to pitch in big games and he delivered on Thursday night. Burnett, who would have had a shutout with better defense, allowed only one run over seven innings and struck out nine. Pedro Martinez almost matched him, but he was touched up for two home runs, one by Mark Teixeira that tied the game at 1 and one by Hideki Matsui that put New York up 2-1.

That’s where things stood in the seventh when Pedro allowed the first two runners to reach base. Pedro was pulled and Jorge Posada drove in a run with a RBI-single. The Yankees could have added more, but Derek Jeter inexplicably decided to bunt and struck out because he kept trying with two strikes. That was the first out and the final two came on a bad call by the first base umpire.

Joe Girardi didn’t fool around and he brought Mariano Rivera in for a six-out save. Rivera had a shaky eight, but he was bailed out by another bad call by the first base ump and he pitched a perfect ninth for his 10th save in the World Series.
New Jersey 2 Boston 1: Yann Danis made his first start of the season and earned a win by making 31 saves. Dainius Zubrus had the game-winner with just under two minutes to play in the third.

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By Peter Trinkle in News on October 30, 2009 12:00 AM

Comments [rss]

Neverhaditsogood

You people take in much baseball? An ump makes a bad call. The manager points it out. The ump then makes another bad call to fix the first bad call. That's the way it is, that's the way it always has been. It's called baseball...America's pastime...fixing bad calls. Ideally there should be no bad calls. Ideally there would be something worthwhile west of the Hudson. This is not an ideal world. Never has been.

whitecastlerock

this is why they don't play the song "Three Blind Mice" in stadiums. These calls aside, the ever shifting strike zone is one thing that annoys me. How does an umpire, with that huge mask, crouched over the catcher, call strikes? It seems pretty random. Of course they aren't sitting in their living room watching from the angle the viewers are, but some of the pitches they call are very inconsistent....

gg101

The real issue with some of these bad calls is theres no way to know how the rest of the play will develop. The first base ump signaled that Howard made the catch, so he threw over to second to have the runner tagged. His play was predicated on the signal from the umpire. If you go back and change the call to a trapped ball, is everyone safe? Do they decide he would have made the out at first? Replay doesn't work for plays like this, you just need to have confidence the umps will get it right and live with the outcome. This isn't really anything new, its just that now with super hidef slowmo available immediately after the play, its easy to scrutinize every little call.

SP

You are correct. Baseball is an almost 200 year old game. It was not designed for TV. To love baseball is to accept the injustice of bad calls, and to embrace the flaws of human judgement. It's part of the game. The same way both joy and grief are part of life. Football was designed for TV. If you want instant replay, watch football. Instant replay should be very carefully and conservatively applied to baseball. The way it is used now is about as far as they should go.

JenChungsBaby

How about each manager gets a red flag they can throw out on the field twice a game for a booth review?

Now where have I heard that before?

Splicer

Bad calls have always been part of the game. If they really want to end them, then have a Head Umpire sit up in the booth and watch multiple angles on every play then give the call to the umpire on the ground via earpiece.

DanielJ

During the regular season I have no problem with bad calls, even if it effects the score of a game. It's part of being an ump, and a part of the game. But during the postseason, and especially during the World Series, it isn't about the umpires' pride- there should be a head ump in a booth taking advantage of all the technology possible to make sue that the game isn't effected by a wrong call.