Yeah, because the umpires also allowed Pablo Osuna to steal second base without a throw and then they ordered Escobar to hang an 0-2 slider to Joe Crede. :rolleyes:
There must have been a second baseball! We’re through the looking glass here, people!
Without the benefit of replay or X-Ray vision an umpire has to fall back on experience. I’m just guessing here, but in that umpires history pitches that break the way that pitch broke, mostly end up in the dirt. Since the ump can’t see through the catcher to know it was clean, he assumes that it was in the dirt. I do wonder if any of the other officals in the game saw it, and if they could have/ should have said anything.
As far as the ump apologizing to the Angles - ain’t gonna happen. Officals can’t do that. Their job has similar mental aspects to playing the game. They hate making mistakes, but have to move beyond the ones they do make otherwise they start to second guess everything and that is bad. Plus they get reviewed by the league, and glaring errors, and I don’t think that this was one, cost officals the chance to work future post season games. Officials like being in the post season just as much as the players do.
“Back… and to the shortstop.”
As I said, even if the ump’s fist pump was meant to indicate an out, the catcher never saw it. He was already on his way back to the dugout with his back to the ump. And, in the one story I read on the subject in the Houston Chronicle, the catcher didn’t claim to have heard the ump call “out.” The batter did claim that he didn’t hear the ump call “out,” and that’s why he ran.
All the catcher had to do was hang onto the ball until he heard the out call. He didn’t; he just assumed that the ump would rule that it was a clean catch. And that was a mistake on his part.
Precisely. Bad breaks, like a bad call (if this really was one), and fans interferring with the ball, are part of the game. They happen to all teams even if they only seem to happen to the one that you are rooting for, and this isn’t friggin football where video reviews can make for virtual do-overs. A championship-deserving team takes it stride and keeps their focus. One that isn’t deserving fails to get an out on any of the next several batters and crumps. Just like the Cubbies fell apart after their bad break and proved that they were not championship material. Quit the whining and move on. If the Angels are better than the Sox the next several games will prove it. If they can’t prove it in the next few games then they do not deserve to be champions.
Who’s argued otherwise? Who cares?
The discussion isn’t about the Angels’ worthiness as champions, which will be decided on the field. It’s whether or not the umpire fucked up. Period.
So did MLB or the umpire or anybody else clearly state what the procedure is in this situation. It looked to me like the ump did make the strike signal and that he did make an out (maybe technically a “third strike”) signal. Maybe all of that is ok?!?!
The catcher says he didn’t say “No catch”. Is that agreed to by all and should he have or is that just a courtesy that some umps do?
A lot of it depends on what style you were trained in. For example, one style teaches the “point” for calling strikes. Another style teaches “ringing the bell” for calling strikes. The main thing is to be consistent with the calls, even if you develop your own style.
For example, Ron Luciano, one of the great umpires of the game, used to make a gun with his fingers and “shoot” people out at first base. If it was a routine play, you only got shot once. If it was a bang-bang play (no pun intended), you got shot five or six times, or more. The League hated it, the fans loved it and the players didn’t mind it because he was consistent with his calls. In fact, it almost became a badge of honor to be machine-gunned by Ronnie. 
Most umps do it.
It’s really not relevant. Eddings called Pierzynski out, using the same out signal he’d used many times before. Yes, previously he had used a more exagerrated call for calling strikeouts if it was a called strike three or a checked swing, which is not the same thing; as has already been pointed out, umpires must be much more vehement in calls on close judgments. The Pierzynski strikeout was a swinging strikeout, obvious to all, and he raised his fist in the “out” motion he’d used for swinging strikeouts before. Josh Paul deserves no blame whatsoever unless we’re all now saying that a catcher should tag every single batter who strikes out.
It was a truly awful bit of umpiring. The change a call based on nothing? That’s something I wouldn’t expect from a Little League ump.
It was the wrong call, and bad umpiring.
But don’t get carried away and say Josh Paul is blameless. The ball was so close to the ground, that it wasn’t even a bad call. Even on replays it was hard to tell for sure if it hit.
Any time it is that class, you tag the batter. The reason Josh Paul didn’t is that he was a third string catcher and probably shouldn’t have been on the playoff roster, let alone in the ninth inning of a playoff game.
Paul is a former Cub! Of course he chokes hard in pressure situations!
[sub]Sadly, this sad as a bitter Cub fan.[/sub]
Thanks for confirming this. I saw this about 1000 times the day after, and my recollection was that the catcher got up and ran to the dugout BEFORE the “pseudo out” signal by Eddings. I’ll have to watch this again (for the 1,001st time), but this is sort of critical to the whole argument, isn’t it? Ambiguous call or not, the catcher didn’t even wait for it. Doesn’t that make the rest of the ranting academic, especially if you believe, like me, that it was close enough to be called either way?
That being said, Eddings and all umps can have whatever mechanics / trademarks they want, so long as it is crystal clear what the call is. That certainly wasn’t the case here, even if the catcher’s subsequent actions render the fact moot. Great umps deal with the situation–i.e., even if they tend to have a dramatic lag in making the call, if a baserunner tries to steal second, and the pitch is ball four, he makes the call quickly and emphatically. If he doesn’t, and the catcher makes the throw and it goes into centerfield, the catcher has the right to bitch.
Same thing here. Eddings needed to be yelling, “No catch! No catch!” as soon as he made that determination. Expecting the fielders to remember all the nuances of his particular style in a split second is silly. It would be the same as the first base ump (the outfield ump in the playoffs) making a nonchalant and slight fair ball call for a ball down the line. The fact that he makes that call that way every time is no excuse. Flail your arm toward fair territory immediately. Make sure everybody in the stadium knows it’s a fair ball right away. It’s what you’re there for, for Pete’s sake, not to explain later why your call could really be analyzed and interpreted as being what you meant it to be. The ump, to his credit, admits he needs to change his mechanics.
Again, though, the catcher shoudn’t have needed that anyway. In High School they teach catchers to tag the batter on anything close to the ground. He trotted away too soon, period.
Even though Paul couldn’t see the fist pump, the other Angels could (in fact you see Erstad mimicking the call when he was arguing). That is kind of significant because 1) the other players start leaving the field, which is a visula clue to the catcher; 2) without the fist pump another player might yell, something to the catcher; and 3) someone might have picked up the tossed ball and at least tried to make a play at first.
Apparently Pierzynski’s old team mate Doug Mientkiewicz (best known for keeping the ball that was the last out in the world series) text-messaged AJ and told him to (physically) take first base and bank on it later. True story.
So what is the “Cubness index” of the two teams? Mike Royko used to say that not only would the Cubs never win, but having three or more former Cubs on the roster was a “critical mass of Cubness” that would doom any other team in the postseason.
According to Sun-Times columnist Rich Telander, who’s buddies with the guy who discovered the Ex-Cub Factor, the White Sox are free of the virus that is the Cubs. The Angels and Astros each have one ex-Cub, and the Cardinals are doomed, with three ex-Cubs.
Maybe. But he had already softly rolled the ball back onto the field, hadn’t he? At this point Pierzynski is already charging down to first, if I may use that verb to describe a catcher’s pace. And it’s the catcher’s job to provide the “visual cues” to the fielders in this situation, not the other way around; the play (or non-play) occurred at home; the catcher trotted off without even hearing or seeing the call. He didn’t do a good job here.
Bit of a hijack here, but the home plate ump missed another critical call in the Angels-White Sox series today. Second inning, score 3-1, men on first and third, 1-out, and Finley hits a ground ball which results in a double play.
The problem is that his bat hits the catcher’s mitt first BEFORE he hits the ball. The ump misses it (pretty easy to miss–I didn’t see it until Buck pointed it out. Besides, that DP was so typical of Finley this season anyway 
).
From what Buck was saying it should’ve resulted in the batter being awarded first base. So–bases loaded, and a chance for Kennedy to at least tie the game. Instead, DP, and the Angels are well on their way to losing again (it was 6-2 last time I checked).
Not that it matters–with the way the Angels are hitting, Kennedy might’ve grounded out into that DP anyway. And while I’d love to call conspiracy theory (as an Angels fan), I’d have to say that the Angels have let the blown call from Wednesday affect them more than it should’ve–and are now trying too hard. This latest blown call won’t help either.
Final score 8-2 White Sox.