Game 97 – Feel My Power

2 blown calls were the difference in this game. The 1st was on the Iwamura bunt in the 6th. I actually thought he was safe until I saw the replay back at my hotel. That one was close so I don’t blame the umps for it. However, the Crawford swinging bunt up the 1st base line was clearly foul when Halladay picked it up. It was an absolutely brutal call by Mike DiMuro. What made it worse was he was unwilling to ask for help. I’m not one in favour of replay but I do think there are occasions where an umpire needs to ask for help. I saw the replay in my hotel and saw that it was indeed foul. The thing is why would Halladay pick up the ball if it wasn’t foul. I actually think I saw DiMuro look away for just a split second (maybe checking if the runner from 3rd was coming towards home) and it happened to be just as Halladay went to pick it up and therefore he didn’t see it roll foul.

Now I hate to blame the umps for the game but that call was just so bad. However, the umps didn’t give up the hit before or the hit after those 2 plays, or the grand slam. Although you can argue Halladay didn’t really give up any of those hits except the grand slam. The inning started w/Zobrist pounding a ball into the ground that took a huge hop right over Rolen for a hit. Then there was the Iwamura bunt which replays showed was an out, and the Crawford foul ball. Then Pena hit a bloop just over Scutaro’s head and in front of Lind. Halladay managed to finally get an out by striking out Hinske, but then came the Longoria AB. Longoria had fouled not 1, but 2 pitches off his foot and was hobbling around but he kept fouling off pitches until on the 10th pitch of the AB he hit it out. It was a pitch that Halladay just left up and Longoria didn’t miss it.

Now to keep piling it on DiMuro, his strike zone was shifted by almost a ft. He was calling the ball well off the outside corner to a RH batter a strike, but he wasn’t giving anything on the corner to a LH batter. The fact that 6 batters went down looking I think gives an indication as to the confusion over the strike zone.

The game only got worse for DiMuro after the 6th. He threw out Brad Arnsberg in the 7th when he had gone out there to visit Carlson. Arnsberg must have really said something b/c when is the last time you saw a pitching coach get thrown out. DiMuro wasn’t done there as next he tossed League in the 8th after he hit Navarro w/a pitch. The pitch did not look intentional at all and given League’s control issues I don’t see where he got off throwing him out. Apparently he just wanted to pile it on the Jays.

My rule of thumb regarding the job an ump does is did you notice them? The best umpires are the ones you don’t notice. So given how much time I just spent writing about DiMuro, just underscores how bad a job he did.

I should probably mention that Halladay actually walked 3 batters in the 1st 3 innings including the 9 hitter Zobrist on 4 pitches. Now I’m not putting this all on DiMuro but the fact that Halladay couldn’t buy a call on that outside corner to lefties certainly affected his pitching (the Rays had 7 LH’s in the lineup).

Meanwhile the Jays offence was shutdown by Garza for 7.2 innings getting just 2 hits. They woke up in the 9th rallying for 4 runs off 3 Rays pitchers. They even managed to get the tying run up to bat, but it was too little too late.

Just writing about this game has me in a bad mood.

Here are the stats:
Adv+: Scutaro (3), Crawford, Pena
P-Adv+: Halladay 2 (7), Reyes
NAdv: Overbay (10), Hinske
P-NAdv: Halladay (7), Garza
ME(f): Barajas (2)