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October 2, 2007

Prospectus Today

The Men in Black Attack

by Joe Sheehan

I’ve been anticipating that bad umpiring would become a big story in the 2007 postseason, given the degradation in performance and decorum we’ve seen over the past couple of years. What I didn’t expect was that the umpires wouldn’t wait until the postseason to make themselves the story.

The crew assigned to last night’s playoff game between the Rockies and Padres made one clear mistake and one apparent one, changing the course of the game with their missed calls. The umpiring overshadowed a game that was a microcosm of National League baseball, circa 2007: exciting, competitive, and hopelessly sloppy. In the end the “right” team won—the one that might have won had all the calls been made correctly—but that didn’t wash away the acrid taste left behind by the umpiring mistakes.

In the seventh inning, with the Rockies up 6-5, Garrett Atkins roped a ball into the left/center field gap. The ball made contact with something and rebounded to the right and onto the field, where Brady Clark played it back to the infield. The umpires concluded that the ball hit the fence, or specifically, a yellow cushion atop the fence, and rebounded into play, making it a live ball. Given how the ball bounced—ricocheted, really—there’s no way that it could have hit the top of the fence. The most likely scenario is that it cleared the fence, hit something hard—there’s a wheelchair seating area back there—and bounced back on to the field. It looked to me like a home run, and my best evidence for this is the bounce. The umpires did not get this call right, and Atkins would eventually be stranded. Had his ball been ruled a home run, the Rockies may have won in regulation time.

Of course, that play was nearly forgotten two hours later, when another close play ended the game and again called the umpiring into question. Having rallied to score two runs off of Trevor Hoffman, the Rockies had first and third with nobody out. Jamey Carroll lined to Brian Giles in short right field, and Matt Holliday tagged from third. Giles’ high, arcing throw—the word you’re thinking of is “lollipop”—arrived at the plate just as Holliday did. Michael Barrett, blocking the plate with his left leg, wasn’t able to catch the ball, and tag Holliday, but it certainly appeared that he kept Holliday from tagging the plate. As a dazed Holliday sprawled a foot behind home, and umpire Tim McClelland paused, Barrett scrambled for the ball and reached to tag the runner. Just as he did, McClelland signaled “safe,” ending the game.

In real time, and in replays, it certainly didn’t appear that Holliday was able to touch the bag. McClelland’s slow “safe” call and Holliday’s reaction—he seemed to be anticipating an “out” call and was surprised by McClelland—support that idea. There are alternate explanations for both of these; McClelland may have been verifying that Barrett dropped the ball, and Holliday was clearly shaken up on the play. However, my best judgment is that Holliday missed the plate, McClelland blew the call, and the two teams are tied 8-8 with two outs in the bottom of the 13^th.