Screw You, Jerry Meals

OK, we've all seen the play, and if not, you can above. To make matters worse, here's what crew chief Mike Winters said after the game:

“We looked at a replay. The replay we had, honestly, was not a very good angle and inconclusive. That was just a very, very close play. Until I see a definite replay, I really can’t give you any more than that.”

“We saw a replay and from where I’m sitting, it’s inconclusive. It’s very close. That’s a very close play.”

No, moron it was not very close, not at all. Like John Sterling said, "he was safe by a lot".

Here's what Tex and Girardi had to say about the play:

Mark Teixeira

“Pretty sure the game was televised so everyone saw what it was. It was just a terrible call. It happens.”

“Very frustrating. It started in the eighth inning. We could have had a big inning there and a questionable call on me as well. And in the ninth, sometimes you wonder if the umpires are just trying to get out of there. They don’t want you to make a comeback, they want to go home, because those are terrible calls. It is what it is, but we’re out there fighting, I’m out there playing on one leg and I wish it would have gone my way.”

“It wasn’t even that close, that’s what’s disappointing. We’re out here battling, we’re scratching and clawing for every win, and it wasn’t close. I’m not one to complain about calls, but that was bad.”

“I’m probably going to get fined, but I don’t care, really, because I’m out there fighting. We’re out there fighting. When you’re battling like we’re battling and I’m out there on one leg and they can’t get a call right, that pisses you off. It really does.”

Joe Girardi

“It’s not a bang-bang play. He’s safe. He’s clearly safe. Jerry missed it. You hate to lose a game that way, but he missed it.”

“It’s extremely frustrating. The way we battled back, down in the seventh, get a run in the eighth and you have a chance to tie the ballgame, it’s frustrating. It’s a shame.”

“They’re going to watch it and they’re going to know they missed it.”

Sadly, Joe, they did not know that, or at least they refused to admit it. What else can I say? These umpires suck.

Joe West & His Crew Contnue To Piss Everyone Off

From Tom Verducci:

Does baseball have an umpire problem? Is the tension worsening between umpires and players and managers, as Detroit manager Jim Leyland would have us believe? Uh, no.

Welcome to summer, when the weather and tempers heat up. We did see 16 ejections in the first five days of July, so people assumed the state of umpiring was worsening. Ah, the power of the small sample.

But look at the first half of the season. While it's true that ejections through June were up for a second straight year, they were 18 percent below ejections through June from 2008. Things in recent years are much better than they used to be with the men in blue. Take a look at the table at right, which shows year-by-year ejections through June over the past eight seasons:

The "problem" is that a disproportionate amount of attention to umpiring recently has come from the crew of Joe West, which includes the equally controversial Angel Hernandez. Guess what crew caused Leyland to bemoan the rising tension? Yep, it was Cowboy Joe's crew. Guess which crew has ejected the most players, coaches and managers this year? Yep, Cowboy Joe's crew. And guess which crew caused Texas manager Ron Washington to be as blunt as you'll ever hear a big league manager in discussing an umpire? ("Angel is just bad. That's all there is to it.") Yep, Cowboy Joe's crew.

Most of the umpires do an amazing job every night. West and Hernandez have been in a spate of high-profile incidents recently. Fairly or not, they have developed reputations for being combative. (Hernandez's "boxing out" of Leyland, for instance, while Leyland was arguing with West, was unnecessary.) Baseball is always better when you don't notice the umpires.

Yankees fans are very familiar with the disaster known as Joe West, so I don't think this article will come as a surprise to you. But shouldn't Major League Baseball do something about these knuckleheads? To paraphrase a line from a young Michael Jackson, one bad apple shouldn't spoil the whole bunch, and if it is, how about throwing that apple away? MLB would be doing everyone--the players, the fans, and the rest of the umpires--a huge service if they would just fire West and the rest of his horrible horrible umpiring crew.

Umpires Suck But You Can't Let Them Beat You

From Chad Jennings:

Two games into this Division Series, there have already been two controversial calls. There was the catch/non-catch on Wednesday, and the 1-2 pitch to Lance Berkman on Thursday. This is all coming one year after the Joe Mauer non-double in last year’s Division Series between these two teams.

“I think you could look at calls and say, you know, during the course of 150 pitches thrown on each side, that pitchers are going to get some strikes and maybe they don’t get a strike,” Joe Girardi said. “I mean, that’s going to happen. I mean, these umpires aren’t robots and they don’t have X-ray vision. There are pitches that sometimes we think are strikes and we don’t get them, and that’s part of the game, and you have to be able to overcome those things.”

I'm not defending umpires. Let's be clear about that. There's no denying how terrible the umpires have been this October, but this is nothing new. Umpires in this league have been awful for years now, regular season, postseason, spring training, whenever. The bottom line is that they suck, for everyone, but like a good friend reminded me today, the difference in this series is that one team has let those umpiring blunders hurt them, while the other hasn't. That's one of the main reasons the Yankees are up 2-0 and the Twins are sitting in their hotel rooms wondering how they're going to beat them.

The umpires aren't going to get better over night, so expect more mistakes as the playoffs continue. I just hope the Yankees are either on the right side of those wrong decisions or they handle whatever garbage comes their way. Luckily, they have so far.

Joe's Instant Replay Proposal

I'm sorry, but last night's inexplicable blown call that cost Armando Galarraga a perfect game made me sick to my stomach. One of the commenters on this blog said that watching the replay is like watching a car accident over and over, and I completely agree.

Two minutes after the call was blown, MLB Network analysts were already talking about should instant replay be expanded. I believe so. It is the 21st century, Bud Selig. We need to get calls right. How many more perfect games, playoff games, World Series games, heck, REGULAR GAMES are going to have to be tainted by the so-called "human element" of the game.

I love baseball, and I believe umpires should stay a part of baseball. I love the history of baseball, and the fact that it's a pure game (although that might have been changed in the past 20 years or so). That's why in constructing my instant replay proposal over the last 20 hours, I've taken all of that into account. Here it is:

1.) Put a fifth umpire in a replay booth up on the press box level with access to all the replay angles we see daily on TV.

2.) Have the crew chief or home plate ump, just one of the umps, on the field with an earpiece that communicates with the replay umpire.

3.) Allow each manager to have 2 challenges for the first 8 innings of the game, which are allowed to be used for anything EXCEPT balls and strikes.

4.) Once the 9th inning starts, all challenges must be made by an umpire, sort of like the NFL, where only refs can review within 2 minutes of completing each half.

That's it. I know I'm going to be criticized for this, but our beloved game of baseball has a problem, and it is imperative that a solution is reached. Obviously, managers might just throw challenges for anything. Then you could make it one challenge. Make it one challenge for the whole game, 9th inning on included. This is just a quick fix to a problem that just cost one pitcher baseball immortality, and who knows? Maybe it'll cost the Yanks a world series title.

Feel free to comment or yell at me below, this is just my thinking on how it can and SHOULD be fixed.

As I said, it's the 21st century, let's get calls right.