The Chicago Cubs lost 5-2 on Friday to the Arizona Diamondbacks and holy shit was it a frustrating game to watch coming out of the All-Star break. Justin Steele was hit around through five innings and the Cubs offense was shut down for the most part. However, right when the Cubs were threatening to come back they got screwed by the home plate umpire.
Following the game Marquee Sports Network analysts Cliff Floyd and Jon Lester blasted the ump for the awful calls that screwed the Cubs.
There were two specific strike three calls on pitches thrown out of the strike zone that stood out the most from Friday’s game. The first came in the sixth inning, when the Cubs had runners at first and second with one out and Ian Happ was at the plate. Diamondbacks starter Ryne Nelson was at the end of his outing and after allowing a double and walk he was in a long at-bat against Happ. Well, on a 2-2 pitch Nelson threw a fastball off the plate to Happ that was clearly ball three, but home plate umpire Roberto Ortiz called it strike three.
Nelson was taken out of the game following the Happ at-bat and then Christopher Morel singled to bring in the first run of the game for the Cubs. Speaking of Morel, he was called out on strikes in the eighth inning in the same situation as Happ on another pitch that was out of the strike zone right after Happ made it 5-2 with a sac-fly.
Lester, who will be on the Marquee Sports Network this weekend and will be in the TV booth for Sunday’s series finale against Arizona, added his thoughts on the frustrating calls from the umpire. The 3x World Series champion blasted umpires and the criticism was more directed at the higher ups because as we’ve seen throughout the years there is no accountability.
Via Marquee Sports Network.
“At the end of the day for players, where you have kind of this disgruntled feeling is, we have repercussions for our actions, right? Like, if I don’t pitch well, you don’t hit well, you get sent down. There’s no real repercussions for umpires. You can be bad, or be okay, and you have a job for as long as you want to do it. Right? So, it’s frustrating on that end. The tough part about that, is both of those counts were 2-2. Now they go 3-2 and now the guy’s got to make a pitch with two guys on. That changes not only that at-bat, but maybe that inning.”
Arizona pitchers struck out 11 Cubs batters in the series opener on Friday and out of those 4 were strike three calls that should have been called balls.
This is completely avoidable. It’s time for the league to actually bring in the challenge system that’s already instituted in the minor leagues because we sure as hell know MLB will not do anything to discipline the umpires.
Flat out awful and yet the league won’t do anything to address the problem because as you’ve seen there are always shitty calls in every single game.
