Game 27 – Umpire Bias

The Jays are up to their old tricks hitting vs. lefties or should I say not hitting. I have no clue why TOR is struggling so much vs. LH starters. I realize Glaus killed LH’s last yr but he was not the only one on the Jays, and even if you throw in Thomas who hit LH’s well, at least from June on, there should not be this much of a drop off.

Well at least this time you cannot blame the Jays hitting w/RISP as they went 0 for 1 but the one was Wells getting robbed of a hit. I really thought that hit by Wells was going through and would setup Doc to finish the 1-0 win. The problem was it didn’t and Wells could not repay the favour when he bobbled the Youkilis hit giving him no shot at throwing out Ortiz.

If you are the Red Sox you have to send Ortiz w/2 outs but if Vernon comes up w/that ball cleanly and makes a halfway decent throw Ortiz is out. That is the 2nd straight game that Vernon has bobbled a ball as he was charged w/an error on Sun. allowing DeJesus an extra base. The difference is the Sun. error cost them nothing, this bobble cost them a shot at extra innings.

This is why W-L records for pitchers do not mean much. That is the 4th straight CG for Halladay and the last 3 have all been losses. In this game Halladay looked great as the only runner to reach 2nd before the 9th was Yorkilis after his steal in the 2nd.

Now I hate to blame the umpires for games, b/c they are not really at fault and 95% of the time they are correct with their calls, but I think they squeezed Halladay in the 9th vs. Ortiz. At least one of those pitches, the 1-0 pitch, certainly looked like a strike. Even though I was on the 1st base side, you can often tell from the catcher’s glove movement as well as both pitcher and catcher reaction. And the 1st pitch to Youkilis where they appealed the check swing, I had a perfect vantage point and he definitely went around, even the Sox fans beside me agreed. Either one of those calls makes a big difference in the pitches Halladay uses to follow. Now I don’t think this is just me, but the umpires are almost afraid to make calls against the Yankees and Red Sox, especially in their ballparks. Bad calls against the Jays don’t seem to happen nearly as much at any other ballparks.

Talk about a groundball fest, of the 53 recorded outs, 31 were by groundball compared to 8 in the air with 14 K’s. The groundballs were distributed as follows: 7 to 3B, 12 to SS, 7 to 2B, 2 to 1B, 1 to P, and 2 on the backend of DP’s.

And now for some stats:
WG: Lowell, Pedroia
DE: Wells (1)