Does a skip off the wall make it a double?
Because of an even worse swipe tag that came absurdly close to not even making contact on the shin that he barely got.
Don’t they have instant replay in the MLB? Because on review, they said the call was total shite.
MLB only uses instant replay in the case of a fly ball that may or may not have gone over the wall (as in the Cardinals game). Not for ball/stike calls, fair/foul balls, baserunning plays or any other controversies.
Perhaps they should, then.
Pirates, must you annually invent new and more cruel ways to crush our hearts? 2 weeks ago I would have thought it impossible for a baseball team to go from 1st place to 10 games out in a week and a half. It is possible as it turns out. I guess there’s still time to turn it around, and hey, they just won a series against the Giants. But man what a terrible 2 weeks to be Pirates fan. Really, the Padres average 11 runs/game against a previously high performing pitching staff. The Cubs? Where’s Bartman when you need him?
kunilou:
I think MLB also uses it for fair/foul calls when the ball in question would be a home run if fair. Basically, it’s for questionable home runs of any stripe, but not for any ump calls that are not possibly home runs.
Next year it will be expanded to fair/foul calls down the lines and trapped balls on the field. Step by step.
For posterity’s sake, as of right now the Pirates are 62-71, 9 games under .500 and 18 games out of first place. I suppose it was due, they were playing somewhat over their heads, but that BS call by the ump that cost them that game (spoken of earlier in the thread) really seemed to kill them. When that game happened they were 53-47 and tied for first place. Since then they have gone 9-23. It’s a rare thing indeed that you can see a team’s spirit collapse after an event and be able to point to it as the cause, but it seems that’s precisely what happened.
Too bad. Looks like the streak isn’t ending this year. Maybe next year. Even the staunchest Pirates fan has to have a great deal of doubt about that, though. Pirates fans have been burned for too long to be that optimistic.
I could cry about what has happened to the Bucs this year. Everyone here was talking World Series, but I kept saying, “Break .500, get the monkey off of our back.” It doesn’t look like that will happen without a monster September.
I agree that the 19 inning game killed us, like I thought it would at the time. Maybe next year. Of course, I’ve said that every year. 
It is silly to blame the Pirates collapse on one call or or one game. They had been playing way over their heads all season long and were bound to regress sooner or later.
If I was a pirates fan, I’d be more excited about the commitment management has shown to building up their system. They spend a record 17 million on draft picks this year. While not Strasburg or Harper, they drafted a legit number #1 overall player in Gerrit Cole, where previously they likely would have gone with a cheaper choice. In the 2nd round they grabbed Josh Bell and spent 5 million to lure him away from college. Bell would have been taken in the first 15 picks if anyone thought he was signable. This isn’t a one year fluke, from 2008-2010 the pirates spent 30.6 million on the draft the most over that period. They have also been far more active in signing foreign talent than they had been the past. This might seem like large money commitments, but it really isn’t much compared to what the pirates have wasted over the years on paying the Pat Meares, Kevin Young’s and Matt Morris’s of the world. It should also note that if baseball had hard slotting for draft picks the pirates would not have been able to acquire anywhere near as much talent.
The pirates are still a few years away from being a legitimate contender, but for the first time in over two decades they have the ability to develop homegrown stars. They won’t all work out, but some of them will. Certainly it is a better strategy than the pirates have deployed over recent years of trying to find enough mediocre veteran talent to make a run at 500.