Wild strike call in Giants-Padres stuns MLB Twitter

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Tyler Rogers' rising slider has confounded MLB Twitter throughout this season, underscoring what has been a remarkable season for the Giants reliever. The impressive pitch had baseball fans buzzing on social media Friday night for a different reason, as umpire Joe West somehow determined that this was a strike to Jake Cronenworth.

As you can see, the red line overlaid by Rob Friedman is well off the plate, and the pitch still landed outside that line. It was the first pitch of the at-bat between Rogers and Cronenworth, and the San Diego Padre ended up striking out on three pitches to end the inning. West's zone seemed to favor Rogers, at least in this at-bat.

West's overall scorecard from the game wasn't dramatically bad, but the Rogers strike barely fits inside the warped zone the veteran umpire kept throughout the night.

RELATED: Giants control their own destiny, can win NL West Saturday

As Friedman pointed out, it is easy to criticize umpires for missed calls when the average joe likely wouldn't do much better. However, it is calls like this that accelerate the push for robot umpires across the sport.

Regardless, the Giants came away victorious, and this being correctly called a ball wouldn't have done much to affect the contest, as the Padres' offense struggled to get anything going throughout the game.

Saturday offers a chance to clinch the NL West division title for the Giants, with the magic number over the Los Angeles Dodgers now down to one.

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