Reader 1943mrmojorisin1971 alerted me to a play I didn’t see last night. Rangers-Angels game. Seventh inning. Angels up 2-1, Mike Trout on third and Kendrys Morales at the plate. Morales lifts a fly ball to right and Nelson Cruz fields it. Trout tags up and races home. The call ... safe! Angels score what proved to be the game-winning run. Watch the play here.
Catcher Yorvit Torrealba freaked out, thinking he made the play and was ejected almost immediately. To be fair, it was close. You gotta give the ump the benefit of the doubt there, right?
Well, maybe you do if home plate Tim McClelland is anywhere near the freakin’ play:
Yes, that’s cropped, but watch the play and you see that McClelland is a good three feet outside of the circle on the grass off to the right in the pic. Torrelaba mentioned that after the game too, saying “I was trying to block the plate, but I don’t think he was in the right position to tell if he was out or safe,” which -- though 100% correct -- may be enough to get him a small fine on top of his ejection.
Missed calls happen. But there are ways to limit the number of missed calls. One of them is by having the umpire in position to make them. In this case, that didn’t happen.