Posted on 07/27/2011 11:50:03 AM PDT by BluesDuke
This is exactly what the Pittsburgh Pirates, whose surprising graduation from the National League’s near-two-decade doormats to legitimate National League Central contenders has been one of the season’s sweet surprises, don’t need.
Never mind pitching coach Ray Searage tweeting an outraged Tweeter, “Deal with it.” If the Pirates hold to that attitude and push it to one side, it will say plenty about the makeup of this year’s edition. But first the Pirates are going to let their feelings be known about home plate umpire Jerry Meals absolutely blowing the call on the run that won a game for the Atlanta Braves in the bottom of the nineteenth. And enough of everyone else are asking when baseball government is going to wise up and sanction instant replay.
It started when Atlanta reliever Scott Proctor—forced to bat because both sides had emptied their bullpens—batted one up the left side that was picked off cleanly by Pittsburgh third baseman Pedro Alvarez on the run over the infield grass. Alvarez threw home on a perfect line to rookie catcher Michael McKenry and Julio Lugo, the Braves’ baserunner coming down from third, looked like a dead duck.
McKenry was at least two feet up from the plate when he landed a ball-in-glove tag on Lugo sliding toward the plate. Any replay you care to review will show you McKenry got the glove on Lugo’s forward leg, well before Lugo could have crossed the plate. As a matter of fact, Lugo bounded up out of his slide at about the moment McKenry got the tag on him, and half-pirouetted around before he got half a foot on the plate standing up.
Meals winged his arms up in the safe call as Lugo stepped on the plate after the tag. It looked as though McKenry was replying to a Mears comment and saying he’d gotten the tag down. “I saw the tag, but he looked like he oléd him and I called him safe for that,” Meals said after the game. “I looked at the replays and it appeared he might have got him on the shin area. I’m guessing he might have got him, but when I was out there when it happened I didn’t see a tag. I just saw the glove sweep up. I didn’t see the glove hit his leg.”
The Pirates may have been trying to be gracious in defeat, but it didn’t stop the organisation from filing a formal protest. “[We] are extremely disappointed by the way [our] 19-inning game against the Atlanta Braves ended earlier this morning. The game of baseball, and this game in particular, filled with superlative performances by players on both clubs, deserved much better,” said general manager Frank Coonelly in a formal statement. ” . . . While we cannot begin to understand how umpire Jerry meals did not see the tag . . . three feet in front of home plate, we do not question the integrity of Mr. Meals. Instead, we know that Mr. Meals’ intention was to get the call right. Jerry Meals has been umpiring major league games for 14 years and has always done so with integrity and professionalism. He got this one wrong.”
Indeed. And while it’s going to prove the launching pad for a showing of just what kind of mettle these plucky Pirates actually have going forward—they were leading the NL Central and playing a nail-driver against the NL East-contending Braves, against whom they have a history of heartbreak enough (the Sid Bream game in the 1992 National League Championship Series, anyone?)—it’s also proving evidence to spare on behalf of expanding replay’s use beyond mere home run calls.
Let’s get one thing straight right off. There appeared no malice in Meals’s miscall. This wasn’t a case of several National League umpires so fed up with Leo Durocher’s season-long baiting that any close call was going to go against the 1969 Chicago Cubs. This wasn’t an ump making a grudge call because a player had gotten in his grille once too often. Meals may have had a questionable strike zone much of the night—both sides but the Braves in particular fumed over it earlier in the game (especially when Nate McLouth got ejected fuming over a dubious strike-two call in the bottom of the ninth)—but in no way, shape, or form did it appear he was performing under less than professional mandate. He didn’t come out and apologise, a la Jim Joyce viz Armando Gallaraga’s should-have-been perfect game last year, but neither did he deny that he just might have been wrong.
Was the game perfect otherwise? Not exactly. Pirates manager Clint Hurdle, who’s making a solid case for Manager of the Year for getting this squad into the thick of the race after eighteen losing seasons, made a few mistakes well before Meals’ biggie. He let Daniel McCutchen throw 92 pitches compared to his previous season high of 52, and McCutchen was exhausted to every naked eye that could see after having pitched two straight days with 25 pitches total following a five-day layoff. And it’s going to be forgotten somehow that, even had Lugo been called out at the plate, the Braves would still have had one out yet to go.
Both teams left a small truckload of men on base. The Pirates actually had a shot at winning the game in the ninth, when McKenry managed an infield single off Craig Kimbrel and took third on pinch hitter Brandon Wood’s followup single, but McKenry stopped too late breaking from third as the Braves called a pitchout on an apparent suicide squeeze attempt. McCann fired a perfect strike up the line and McKenry was dead, before Kimbrel dispatched batter Xavier Paul to end the frame.
The bullpens had already been the heroes of the evening as it was. Both teams’ bulls had combined to throw 26 scoreless innings on the night, with Braves bull Cristhian Martinez throwing six scoreless just by himself. It may or may not have taken a little of the sting out of Atlanta losing Brian McCann to an oblique strain incurred when he threw high and into center field trying to bag Neil Walker stealing second.
What should get bagged, once and for all, are the arguments in favour of the, ahem, “human factor” and against “prolonging the games even more” that get deployed by the stubborn against deploying instant replay. Commissioner Bud Selig, who thinks himself a moderate willing to be persuaded either way on the matter, is already responsible for elongated games as it is. Or haven’t you noticed all the commercials squeezed in between innings all game long with or without extra innings? That’s been expanded under Selig’s watch.
Human factor, my spike. The umpire’s job is to get it right, case closed. Anyone arguing otherwise should be dismissed as a terminal philistine. And if the umpire needs a little technological help to get it right, get that help to him (them) post haste. “This isn’t about protecting baseball’s human element,” writes Yahoo! Sports’s Jeff Passan. “The idea that a person’s capability to miss a call supersedes the ability to use technology and ensure accuracy is so insulting, so wildly backward that it could come only from the offices of Major League Baseball.”
Actually, that argument also comes from people outside of baseball government who profess to stand on behalf protecting the game’s integrity. People who tend to refuse offering reasons why a near-flagrantly blown call doesn’t compromise the game’s integrity. People who have no idea about McKenry’s night’s work, catching every last one of Tuesday/Wednesday’s eighteen and two thirds innings, 303 pitches worth of catching, only to see it end with Meals telling him he hadn’t done what he and everyone watching the live play and about two dozen television replays knew he had done.
Reality check: There’s still a lot of baseball for the Pirates and the Braves to play yet. This call probably isn’t going to make the difference between the Pirates pulling off a miracle finish and going home empty, never mind that they’re having their best season since 1992. When an erstwhile Pirate on battered legs managed to score from second, sliding home with the Braves’ pennant-winning run ahead of a throw in from left, and everyone in Pittsburgh and beyond knew the club’s management wasn’t going to be able to keep the solid and National League East-owning team together.
Eighteen years, one division shift, and seven dead-last finishes worth of losing baseball later, the Pirates are America’s baseball feelgoods. They deserve to be. Watching winning baseball in and from Pittsburgh once again is an absolute treat. The Pirates can keep it that way indeed by shaking off Tuesday/Wednesday.
But they’re a lot more human than the fools perpetuating discredited arguments for the “human factor,” when even they admit that this one hurt like hell when it absolutely didn’t have to hurt.
He was safe. He missed the tag.
Don’t know. I saw the call in slo-mo and from different angles, and, although it looked like a bad call, I did not see anything definitive that the catcher touched the runner.
Don’t know. I saw the call in slo-mo and from different angles, and, although it looked like a bad call, I did not see anything definitive that the catcher touched the runner.
The catcher may have missed the tag, too hard to tell. I see no reason to jump all over the ump about it. The only reason people are so up in arms about it is because it happened so far from the plate.
You're nuts. (And I don't have a dog in this hunt.) Even the ump (who should be retired) admits that the tag was made.
ML/NJ
Blown call. Not a malicious blown call, but a blown call nevertheless.
I'm surprised that the ump didn't ask the other umps for their opinion even for a second on that one. It was rather fast, but couldn't he had just reversed the call instantly?
I'm surprised that the ump didn't ask the other umps for their opinion even for a second on that one. It was rather fast, but couldn't he had just reversed the call instantly?He could have done just what you suggest---call in the other umps, especially when Hurdle bounded out to question the call. There's plenty of precedent for it, too, if you still remember how the umps conferred often on close or weird plays during the 2004 American League Championship Series and, where needed, actually did reverse calls.
I also saw another great suggestion regarding umpiring and extra inning games---why not rotate the umps if the game goes to extras and get a reasonably fresh set of eyes behind the plate. One writer suggested rotating the home plate ump with the infield ump who'd had the least calls to make on the bases during the first nine. That'd be worth considering, too. (Extended to the postseason, if a postseason game goes to extra innings, you could rotate the plate ump with one of the outfield line umps . . . ) Though good luck selling that idea to a malcompetent such as Joe West . . .
That's not true.
Nah. He missed. I saw it on video.
Have trouble reading?
Meals said after the game. “I looked at the replays and it appeared he might have got him on the shin area. I’m guessing he might have got him, but when I was out there when it happened I didn’t see a tag. I just saw the glove sweep up. I didn’t see the glove hit his leg.”ML/NJ
I just watched the same replays I’d seen while writing my piece. McKenry’s glove got Lugo above the knee on the inner right thigh, well before Lugo pirouetted to get half a foot on the plate. (Which may make Meals’ postgame thought that he “might have” gotten him on the “shin”-—Meals’ word-—even more damning.)
I don't remember where I saw the good video. I'll try to find it.
If nothing else, too, this play is impeccable evidence on behalf of bringing replay into baseball. The operative rule should be to get it right, with no questions asked. (Especially on a plays like this involving the would-be winning run to be.)
But sans replay, it certainly wouldn't have been out of line for Meals to call in the other umps and confer. That's been done before. (2004 American League Championship Series, anyone?)
Rotating umps for extra frames might make sense. But why confer? Who had a better view than he did? He was right there. And anyway, he got the call right :-P
Rotating umps for extra frames might make sense.I think it could be done along the line I cited earlier---rotate the plate ump with the field up who made the least number of basepath calls throughout the first nine innings. He'd be bound to be the most fresh set of eyes among the three basepath umps. If the game got as far as the Braves-Pirates games, he, in turn, could be rotated with one of the other two umps who likewise made the least number of calls in the second nine, leaving the original plate ump out of the equation.
But why confer? Who had a better view than he did? He was right there.It would depend on the play angling. In the case of the McKenry/Lugo play, if you need to confer you'd probably get your best help from the second base ump, who's looking straight down the pipe at the play, especially if the pitcher isn't anywhere in the sight line when the play happens. (Properly, the pitcher would be backing the play at the plate, I think.) Assuming there's no concurrent or followup play at first base (intriguing codicil: The Pirates actually had a shot at a double play on the play---Scott Proctor stumbled up the first base line and could have been nailed on a relay throw, assuming all going right at the plate), the first base ump could offer another perspective as well.
Clearly, if Meals thought he saw the glove go for the right shin when the glove was above the right kneecap and on the thigh, he most certainly didn't have the best view. And in a controversy like that play, with the winning run to be involved, you damn well better call in your crew mates to confer on it. The idea is not to get it "accurate," not to get it "consistent," not to get it "professionally" (Joe Torre's words in sticking up for the human factor, in a statement about the play), the idea is to get. it. right.
Which Meals didn't. :p
After coming into the locker room, I reviewed the incident through our videos that we have in here and after seeing a few of them, on one particular replay, I was able to see that Lugo's pant leg moved ever so slightly when the swipe tag was attempted by McKenry. That's telling me that I was incorrect in my decision and that he should have been ruled out and not safe.---Jerry Meals, speaking Wednesday afternoon.Even Meals admits now that he got the call wrong.
Someone got to him!
It’s a good reason to not wear baggy pants, anyway. Beside the fact they look sloppy. Gimme the old days with stirrups and knee socks.
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