Dodgers News: Umpire Explains Reasoning For Upheld HR Review
When Major League Baseball decided to add replay to the game before the 2014 season, it appeared as if the game had been improved. But that hasn’t necessarily been the case, as even with replay the right call hasn’t always been made.
The Los Angeles Dodgers seem to have been victims of that this season, as calls haven’t seemed to go their way very often. That was the case on Monday against the Arizona Diamondback. The Dodgers were leading 4-2 in the sixth inning, when Diamondbacks rookie Yasmany Tomas hit a two-run homer to left. The play was called a homer on the field, and upheld by replay review despite the ball hitting a fan in the field of play. Whether or not the ball would have gone over the fence if it did not hit the fan is the question that’s up in the air:
According to Ken Gurnick of MLB.com, Dodgers manager Don Mattingly, who isn’t a fan of the current replay system, doesn’t believe the team lost the game because of that replay decision:
They said there was not enough evidence to overturn,” said Mattingly, who has tired of complaining about flaws he sees in the system. “We had the lead after that. We had the game back in our hands, up 6-4 with the back end of the bullpen. We had two outs and nobody on [in Arizona’s two-run seventh] and we can’t get out of it.”
After the game umpire Mike Winters defended the decision to rule Tomas’ ball a home run:
[divide]What we’re trying to rule on, even though we see the ball hit the fan, we’re trying to rule if it hadn’t hit the fan, what would have happened?” said crew chief Mike Winters. “[Third-base umpire Marty Foster]’s ruling on the field was the ball was going to leave the yard. When we went to replay, that’s what they came up with also.”
The problem is a lot of times the umpires are trying to predict what could of happened if the interference didn’t happen, instead of what did happen. If it went by letter of the law that interference changed the angle of the ball and it went over the wall after contact with the fan then the play would of been overturned. The fan and his arm were leaned over and in the field of play when the ball struct his arm, no if’s, and’s, or buts. It shouldn’t be a subjective thing because like everything in this world no one can tell the future if so a lot more people would have what they want.
It doesn’t take a genius to see that ball was NOT on its way out of the park. Ridiculous call. However, that did not cost us the game. Bullpen was horrendous after a good start by Bolsinger.
Geoff I agree . The replay group in NY should not be told of the call on the field as they are obviously protecting the Umpires call. We have seen several calls this year that have been blatantly missed because they did not want to reverse the ruling on the filed, Did MLB make a deal with the Umpire union? It was better last year this year it is close to worthless. With all that tech and cannot get a simple call right. It was obvious from 2 separate angles the ball was a double of the wall.
What about the review of the home run where it was questioned if the runner touched first base? You can clearly see in the replay that the first base umpire had his back to the play and was in front of the bag facing home plate. On the initial appeal to first (before the replay review request) the first base umpire signaled safe when there was NO WAY he could have even seen the play unless he had eyes in the back of his head. And on the replays they only showed one angle which if that’s all they saw in NYC they couldn’t make a good decision as the reverse angles would more clearly have shown the bag and the runners foot. That was a travesty too and shows the shortcoming of the system. When there is a home run ball all cameras are on the ball going out of the park, not on the guy trotting from home to first or second, they generally only pick up the runner from second or third to home.