So, who else saw that strike last night? If you watched the Rangers game, you know the one I’m talking about — the drooping curveball from Rangers closer Joe Nathan that was so far outside that Nathan, Tom Grieve, Rays batter Ben Zobrist and everyone but umpire Marty Foster thought it was ball four, not the last strike of the game.
Deadspin is already saying that “2013 may not have a worse game-ending strike call than this,” but you will be hard-pressed to find a worse strike call, period.
Foster admitted after he saw a replay that he blew the call, saying “I saw the pitch, and, of course, I don’t have the chance to do it again, but had I had a chance to do it again, I wouldn’t call that pitch a strike.”
But one has to wonder how it even got that far. You only need to listen to Steve Busby and Grieve in the booth and confused murmurs from the crowd to know that Foster was the only guy who didn’t get it.
It’s hard not to feel for Rays manager Joe Maddon who, in apoplectic rage, managed to not beat Foster over the back with a folding chair.
Instead, he took to Twitter after giving the ump an earful:
That can't happen in a major league game.
— Joe Maddon (@RaysJoeMaddon) April 9, 2013You can’t really disagree with him, unless your homerism is egregious. Tom Grieve, who's admittedly made a living out of biased opinions, sheepishly tried to play it off as a close call.
Tom, love what you do every night, but let’s call a spade a spade here.
Cards stack up against umpire
In addition to Deadspin weighing in, SI.com has a story detailing just how wide a berth Foster tends to give strikes against left-handed batters. Even by that measurement, Nathan’s final pitch was still low and outside. ESPN’s baseball page is also abuzz with the story.
It’s a nasty aftertaste to Nathan’s 300th career save, even if it was a shaky outing. Nathan, to his credit, thought he had thrown ball four and appeared shocked at the call.
It kept him from a potential blown save with Rays third baseman Evan Longoria, three for three on the night, coming up with runners on first and second and trailing by one.
Now, there’s absolutely no way to say that the Rays would’ve even tied the game, much less taken the lead or prevented the Rangers from winning in the bottom of the inning. But Nathan had been inconsistent up until that point, throwing 24 pitches with 10 balls and 10 strikes and giving up two hits and a run to make it 5-4.
Of those 10 strikes, six of them were called strikes, including all three during Zobrist’s at-bat. Looking at the pitch tracker, only one of them was a strike, right on the edge of the plate.
It was either a mixture of ineptitude and luck for the Rangers, or there’s a nefarious fix in for early April games. This is all probably the Yankees’ fault.
So the Rangers get a huge break in this one and move to 5-2 on the young season, while the Rays fall to 3-4 in what they anticipate to be a very competitive race in the AL East.
It’s an unfortunate consequence of poor umpiring, but the baseball season is a long one, and karma has a way of evening things out to their rightful planes by September. The Rays will benefit from a call, and the Rangers will most likely get hosed at some point by another blind umpire. That’s the way baseball go.
Rangers closer Joe Nathan got his 300th career save, but the story was umpire Marty Foster's terrible call on a 3-2 count to end the game.
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