O
ne star has taken over the headlines and drawn all the attention on themselves this post-season. It’s not Alex Rodriguez, not Ryan Howard … I’m talking about the umpires.
The officials have taken centre stage during the playoffs this year and have caused more controversy than ever thanks to some botched calls and just plain flat-out mistakes. This was evident as ever as I was liveblogging last night’s Game 4 of the ALCS.
The umpires and crew chief didn’t screw up one call, not two calls, but three.
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What I don’t understand is, why now? I’ve always been impressed by the consistency of major league umpires. Sure, they miss an occasional call, but it is rare and it is almost always so close that you can only tell on a slow-motion replay. But in the playoffs, there have been multiple missed calls in every game, in every series! And not just close plays at the bases, which perhaps you could forgive, but things I’ve never seen missed before, like balls dropping two feet fair and being called foul, and calls which seem to suggest a misunderstanding of the rules, like calling somebody who’s been clearly tagged out safe. I was reading a Rob Neyer column at ESPN that blamed a litany of injuries that has kept a few quality umpires out of action, as well as the contractual clause that doesn’t allow umpires to work back-to-back playoff series. I don’t know, though, there are still a lot of veteran guys out there. There is something almost suspicious about their performance this season. (I don’t want in encourage conspiracy theory, because there have been bad calls against every team, but at some point you also stop feeling like all these mistakes can be coincidental.)
Hippeaux, I have a feeling that part of it is that with technology the way it is today, you can go back and instantly second guess the umpires. 10 years ago, there wasn’t that option, so any argument never really had any evidence to back it up.
Not sure why all of this is happening during the playoffs, maybe because there are a lot more eyes watching the postseason than the regular season. But the officially has been really shotty and it’s hard to say exactly why. Your guess is as good as mine!
I think there are two reasons. One is just that now with HD and super-slo-mo, calls that replays would have made inconclusive on the broadcast in past decades and they would have just moved on from are now played a billion times by Fox because the mistakes are visible. The second reason I heard someone on XM say this morning, which is that 12 of the regular umps, including 7 crew chiefs would would have likely gotten the postseason assignments, are all out with injuries or illness right now.
Yeah, I buy the injury bug, kind of. Although two of the more egregiously botched calls (the so-called “Swisher plays” in Game 4 of the ALCS) were made by Tim McClelland, a longtime crew chief, who is generally rated as among the best and most experienced umpires in the game. I’m willing to concede that technology plays a big role in our second-guessing, especially on calls at first base, tag plays on stolen base attempts, and plays at the plate (although, again, we watch hi-tech coverage all season long and only see a handful of missed calls, even on the very close plays). On the other hand, I’m pretty sure even a low-def, 20-inch, black-and-white Magnavox on fast-forward would’ve confirmed that Joe Mauer’s “foul ball” was a double. And there is absolutely no explanation why McClelland rules Swisher safe in the first of the “Swisher plays.” It was like he momentarily forgot the rules.
Let’s not forget that as mentioned in this article, McLelland was the home plate ump during the Rockies/Padres tiebreaker where Matt Holliday made that phantom tag of home plate.
I would say that the Joe Mauer “foul ball” and the Nick Swisher tag-up calls were the most blatant examples to far in the playoffs. The others very questionable, but those two in particular were apparent to the naked eye to be the wrong call. Let’s hope for some better umpiring in the World Series!