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Major League Baseball continues to have an umpire problem, in that a lot of the umps continue to be really bad at their jobs and continue to make embarrassing calls seemingly every day that make players and managers irate and leave fans calling for robot umps.
Sometimes it’s not just the umps on the field who are bad at their jobs. The other night in Cleveland the home plate ump correctly called a Tigers runner out at the plate to end the first inning. But then Detroit challenged the call, the replay went back to MLB headquarters and someone there overruled the call, stating the catcher was blocking the plate and gave the Tigers a run, which led to two more runs that inning and an eventual win for the away team.
It was a truly horrible call by some person miles away from the game watching it back on a monitor. All of these blocking the plate calls lately seem to be terrible and it feels like one of these plays is going to pop up in a playoff game and everyone is going to lose their minds.
Guardians catcher Austin Hedges was rightfully upset after the game the other night and had a passionate rant about MLB and how the league needs to be held accountable for all of these awful calls. He even demanded that the league apologize to his pitcher for letting the game get away in the first inning thanks to that overturned call.
Austin Hedges offers a very strong assessment of the umpiring in tonight's game.#ForTheLand pic.twitter.com/ntClCEZhCc
— Bally Sports Cleveland (@BallySportsCLE) August 17, 2022
And you know what? MLB absolutely should start apologizing to players and teams for these bad calls. I’m all for it! But it shouldn’t be done behind closed doors because fans are a big part of these games and they deserve to hear the apology, too.
So here is how I think/wish these apologies would go down. Every day at noon ET commissioner Rob Manfred will hold a live press conference in his office. He will stand from his desk with a piece of paper in his hand and starts reading off the bad calls.
“To the Los Angeles Angels, I apologize for that pitch that was called a ball last night even though it went right down the middle.”
“Also to the Angels, we’re sorry about how the ump issued a walk to a dude on the Mariners even though it was only ball three.”
“To the Boston Red Sox, I apologize for letting a guy on the Astros get four strikes in one at-bat. That is on us.”
And so on and so forth.
Will this ever happen? Of course not. But allow me to dream, folks. Allow me to dream!
Accountability can be a hell of a drug.
Quick hits: Special MLB homer… Patrick Reed is the worst… Dodgers TV dude has a slide fail… And more.
– Mets top prospect Brett Baty hit a home run on his very first-ever MLB swing the reaction by his family in the stands was pretty awesome.
– Patrick Reed really is the worst.
– A Dodgers reporter rode the Brewers’ home run slide and ended up with a cast on his arm.
– Getting ready for your fantasy football drafts? Here are some running back sleepers for ya.
