Infield flies and lousy at-bats

Doug Bernier heads to first base after
being hit by a pitch in the ninth inning.

Before I get into the bizarre ninth inning of Wednesday's Twins game, let me say that the game was NOT decided by the one at-bat. The Twins lost that game because they mustered exactly as many hits Wednesday as Maddie Mauer had babies. Teams have been known to win while being two-hit, but it's not done often or easily.

That said: I told my wife upon seeing the umpiring crew at the start of Monday's game that it was a bad crew. Mike Muchlinski and Alfonso Marquez? One of them is a bad sign; the both of them is practically a guarantee of a screw-up. This is probably the kind of low-grade crew a series pitting a pair of sub-.500 clubs should expect to see as the season dwindles, but it doesn't make the crew's inability to get the infield fly rule right any more palatable.

OK, the ninth inning. The Angels of Anaheim have a 1-0 lead and Ernesto Frieri, the closer the Twins had lit up for five runs less than 20 hours earlier, on the hill.

Frieri opens the frame by walking Clete Thomas. Doug Bernier fouls off two bunt attempts; Frieri then hits him with the 0-2 pitch. Two on, no outs, Justin Morneau up.

Now ... There were maybe three guys in the Minnesota lineup Wednesday who wouldn't be given the bunt sign in this situation, and Morneau is one of them. (The others are Ryan Doumit and perhaps Trevor Plouffe; chasing a tangent, Plouffe was allowed to hit away in a two-on, no-out ninth inning within the past week and hit into a double play, and Ron Gardenhire was second-guessing himself about that decision afterwards.)

Frieri opens with ball one. So ... a walk, a HBP, an immediate ball one. One might well conclude that any hitter should at this point be taking the next pitch. Let Frieri continue to beat himself. But it's Morneau, the former MVP, in a lineup of castoffs and unprovens. He's the best shot at getting the big hit.

So his thought process at this point should be: This is practically a 3-0 count. Look for a fastball that's in just the right place. Zone in on that and take anything else. If Morneau swings at the 1-0 pitch, he should hit a rocket.

Morneau swings at the 1-0 pitch and, instead of a rocket, hits a 60-foot pop-up. The umpires lack the wits to invoke the infield fly rule — crew chief Ted Barrett misquotes the rule after the game, saying Frieri had to be camped under it to make the call, which is NOT what the rulebook says — and the Angels turn it into a double play with Bernier hung out to dry. If he takes off for second, Frieri catches the pop-up and doubles him off first; Bernier instead clings to first, Frieri lets the ball drop, throws Morneau out and gets Bernier in the rundown.

The umps blew the call. Morneau blew the at-bat.

Infield flies, wild cards and coaching changes

Umpire Sam Holbrook embarrassed himself Friday with a
wrong-headed infield fly ruling. Atlanta fans embarrassed
themselves by trashing the field.

My take on the bizarre infield fly ruling in the eighth inning of Friday's National League wild-card game:

I think the St. Louis shortstop, Pete Kozma, was trying to deke the runners into believing he would catch the fly ball. Whether he deceived the runners or not, he got something better: the umpire bit.

Kozma headed out to left field after the ball, stopped facing the infield and waved his arms as if trying to warn off the left fielder. His actions, I believe, led left-field umpire Sam Holbrook to make the call. But Kozma wasn't within five feet of where the ball hit when it landed, and he was already dashing in to the infield.

Holbrook insisted after the game that he got the call right and that his colleagues agreed with him. I'm not buying that. He got fooled.

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One of my colleagues suggested to me that the one-game wild card format is unfair to the teams. My response: If they won't want to be in that situation, they should win their division title.

A longer wild card series would be unfair to the division winners, who would have to sit around and wait for the wild card teams to get done. This format rewards teams for finishing first. Bravo for that.

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I surmised in Friday's post that the reassigned Twins coaches, Scott Ullger and Joe Vavra, were going to be working in the minor league system. Not so. They remain on the major league coaching staff, but with different duties.

I have several thoughts on what Terry Ryan had to say Friday, not all of them complementary, but I plan to devote the Monday print column to the topic, so I won't delve into the topic here.

More thoughts on the umpiring

We've seen this before: Hunter Wendelstadt
ejects Ron Gardenhire.

I'm fairly sure that Hunter Wendelstadt missed the call on the pitch that teed off Ron Gardenhire. I'm just as sure that Wendelstadt missed a pitch earlier in the same at-bat, and that call went in the Twins favor.

In which case the two calls canceled each other out.

It's my sense that Wendelstadt is in the bottom half of MLB umpires, but that opinion is influenced by the repeated run-ins he's had with the Twins. If he really does merit a postseason assignment, it clearly shouldn't have been in a series involving the Twins.

Gardenhire was the second manager ejected Thursday. In St. Petersburg, Fla., Tampa Bay's Joe Maddon got the heave-ho after a bad call on a two-strike checked swing kept Michael Young's at-bat alive. He hit a three-run homer on the next pitch, and Maddon's ejection followed body language indicating that he was listing a string of dubious calls in that series.

That said, the Twins did not lose Thursday because Wendelstadt blew that pitch, or because he may hold a grudge against Gardenhire. They lost the game because Andy Pettitte pitched like the Pettitte of old, not like the old Pettitte; two runs is not often enough to beat the Yankees. The Rays lost their game 6-0; they've scored one run in two games, and that's not going to get the job done either.

Meanwhile, the players union wants a meeting involving it, the umpires and MLB to address problems between players and umps. One of the basic issues to be confronted: When a player is disciplined, it's public knowledge. If an ump is disciplined, nobody knows -- and there's a real possibility that there is no effective discipline for out of control umpires.

Ron Gardenhire and Hunter Wendelstadt

It really isn't a surprise that at some point in this series Ron Gardenhire and Hunter Wendelstadt would be at odds. They have a history of disputations, and I doubt there's a Twins series umped by Wendlestadt in which there haven't been sparks.

What is a surprise is that the TBS boys apparently have no clue about the history between the two.

I wish that when I commented Wednesday that I didn't like that Wendelstadt would be umping the plate in Game Two I'd been more forceful about predicting the coming problem. It was really inevitable from the moment MLB assigned Wendelstadt to this series.

So Wendelstadt blew a call, which gave Lance Berkman a free pitch, which he drilled, and then he ejected Gardenhire for telling him (again) Gardy's opinion of Wendelstadt. I share Gardy's opinion, but my view doesn't count.

Rule 7.09(h) and other fun stuff

But Mr. Umpire, sir, I was safe, really I was.

Rule 7.09

It is interference by a batter or a runner when:

(h) In the judgment of the umpire, the base coach at third base, or first base, by touching or holding the runner, physically assists him in returning to or leaving third base or first base.

My copy of the rules lists that as 7.09(i), but my copy is about 15 years old and they may have tightened up the section. All the stories say 7.09(h), so that's what I'll go with.

Rule 7 is about base running, and 7.09 deals with baserunner interference, (h) obviously with interference by the coaches. 

On the face of it, 7.09(h) gives the umpire discretion. It appears, from the comments in the postgame stories, that in practice, there's a zero tolerance policy.

The Rangers don't argue that the contact between third base coach Dave Anderson and baserunner Michael Young was incidental. They say it didn't happen. 

The crew chief,  Tim Tschida, said bluntly, "They can't make contact."

Ron Gardenhire: "It probably didn't help him stop, or it didn't help him get back, but contact is contact, and that's what Alfonso (Marquez) called." 

My take on it: There was contact, and so what? The rule book should be interpreted literally, and I don't think the hand contact "physically assisted" Young. Bad call.

And as a Twins fan, I'll take it. That same ump jobbed the Twins earlier this season.  

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The Twins got no help from the Red Sox this weekend. Chicago swept that series — the White Sox are 6-0 on their current road trip — and had to score four in the ninth off Jonathan Papelbon to do it.

Two reasons to expect little from Boston this month. One, they've got injury problems: Dustin Pedroia, Kevin Youkilis, Jacoby Ellsbury and Mike Cameron are all out for the season. That's half the infield and two-thirds of the outfield regulars. Second, they've fallen out of contention — 10 games out in the division, 7.5 in the wild card — and veteran-laden teams having disappointing seasons have a tendency to pack it in.

The White Sox have another series late in September against Boston. The schedule again conspires against the Twins.

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Poll stuff: 43 votes on who should be AL MVP. Twenty nine — 67 percent — love them some Josh Hamilton. Seven (16 percent) went for Miguel Cabrera, three (7 percent) for Robinson Cano or none of the above; one for Evan Longoria. 

New poll, related to the Monday print column, is  up.

A loss to make me crabby

Or maybe it's just adding to the rest of my stress.

Any way ... the Twins lost Thursday because Nick Punto fumbled a two-out grounder to allow a run to score and because their two most reliable late-inning relievers — or at least the two Ron Gardenhire most wants to rely on — each coughed up a run in the ninth and 10th innings. It happens.

I'd like to go on an Alfonso Marquez (photo) rant here, but I don't want to overstate the importance of his hallucinatory safe call at third base in the 10th inning. Kelly Stoppach never got any further. The only damage caused was to Gardenhire's bank account, since he'll be fined for the ejection that followed; to Michael Cuddyer's fielding percentage, since he was charged with an error; and the extra pitches required to get out of the inning. Had Marquez gotten the call right, the Twins would still have lost that game.

And I don't want to overstate an evaluation of Marquez as an umpire. I really don't know if he's as bad as I think he is. He might be a competent, or better, umpire who simply made a mistake. It happens.

That call certainly bore the hallmarks of incompetence, however.

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Silly broadcaster comment: Joe Mauer led off the bottom of the eight inning with a double. Justin Morneau followed with a fly ball to right, with Mauer advancing to third. And Dan Gladden said of Morneau: He did his job.

Not really. Morneau is the cleanup hitter. His job — not that he can be expected to be successful 100 percent of the time, or even 50 percent of it — when the go-ahead run is in scoring position, is to bring him home.

A give-yourself-up at-bat is the moral equivalent of a sacrifice bunt. As I wrote Thursday, I love the bunt. But you don't bunt Morneau in that situation, because you're looking for more than trading an out for a base from him. Matt Tolbert, Punto, Drew Butera — with those guys, it's a different story.

Morneau's fly ball helped. It set up Jason Kubel's sac fly, which set up Jon Rauch's blown save. But it simply passed the job of getting Mauer home to the next guy.

Still more bad umpiring

More blown calls in Tuesday's ALCS game. And this time two of them came from an ump universally regarded as one of the very best: Tim McClelland.

McClelland erred in ruling that Nick Swisher left third too soon on a fly out. And he erred in ruling that Robinson Cano was safe when he and Jorge Posada pulled off the old Daffyness Boys Dodgers trick of multiple men on third — or, to be strictly accurate, nobody on third, but multiple guys standing around it.

McClelland, to his credit, was big enough to face the media after the game — unlike, for example, Phil Cuzzi — and admit his foulups — unlike, for example, Randy Marsh. But then, McClelland is the crew chief. He had nobody to hide behind. And the video evidence was too damning to ignore.

I can understand how he missed the Swisher call — and will even give him a certain amount of credit for making the call, there being a lot of umps who simply won't call a runner out on an appeal play unless it's so blatant that there won't be an argument. (Which doesn't mean he got it right.) But the Posada-Cano call ... I can't wrap my brain around that one. Neither was anywhere near the bag when tagged.

The good news for MLB is that the game was such a rout that the blown calls didn't matter. The bad news is that the blown calls continue. And continue. And continue ...

Still more on the umpires

Tracy Ringolsby made a good point late last week about the lousy umpiring this postseason:

A lot of the experienced hands are out of action.

Seven crew chiefs are unavailable for postseason assignments with injuries ranging from testicular cancer (John Hershbeck) to a stroke (Rick Reed) to concussions to back problems.

Crew chiefs got those positions with years of service — and by being good umpires.

That umps like Ed Montague and Hershbeck aren't available is part of why umps like Phil Cuzzi and Laz Diaz (above) got October assignments. But just part of it. As Ringolsby details, there are a variety of work rules in the union agreement that restrict how often the best umps work the playoffs and World Series.

Rob Neyer's take on this: Baseball needs to push its older umps into retirement. Really?

If the problem we're seeing this fall is that the younger umps are fouling up, and (big if here) if the best of the younger umps are in the majors (as opposed to being stuck in the minors waiting for an opening), moving the old guys out isn't going to help.

We see some of the likely prospects for full time jobs already as vacation fill-ins. Mike Muchlinski, anybody? I don't think so.

Notes, quotes and comments

It was just something for me to bring a little piece of this place to the new place, sprinkle that on the mound. We've had some good times in this building.
— Joe Nathan after returning to the Metrodome mound after Sunday's game to grab a handful of dirt, which he plans to sprinkle on the mound at Target Field.

* The photo above is of the removal of home plate from the Dome after Sunday's game, the last game the Twins will play in the Dome. Didn't know it was so thick, did you?

* Another bad umpiring call played a key role in Sunday's playoff games. In the ninth inning in Coors Field, Philadelphia's Chase Utley checked his swing and bounced a dribbler off himself — and took for for first base. Home plate umpire Jerry Meals ruled it a fair ball, Utley had a "single" — the call at first base was rather dubious as well — and the Phillies wound up scoring the tie-breaking run.

* It's been a rough first round on closers. Nathan blew a two-run lead in the ninth inning on Friday. The night before, Ryan Franklin, the Cardinals' All-Star closer, coughed up a ninth-inning lead (with a little help from Matt Holliday). On Sunday night, Huston Street, pitching in a tied game, was the victim of the Jerry Meals bob-boo. And earlier Sunday, Jonathan Papelbon coughed up a 6-4 lead for the Red Sox with three runs in the ninth.

It took four years after the start of divisional play in 1969 for somebody — reliever or starter — to blow a ninth-inning lead in the playoffs. This year it's a daily occurrence.

* One reason Nick Punto got caught off third base Sunday: Derek Jeter has more range up the middle than he once did. While everybody else surrounding the Yankees denied what the newfangled fielding stats said about him, Jeter recognized the truth and did something about it. I suspect that two years ago — maybe even last season — Punto would have been correct in his assumption that Span's grounder had gotten through the infield.

Still more on umpires

If there wasn't enough time after game 163 to savor its magnificence, there's been too much time since Game 2 of the Twins -Yankees series. Now everybody's obsessing with the bad umpiring.

Between Phil Cuzzi's inability to distinguish fair from foul from 10 feet away, C.B. Bucknor's (above) inability to figure out if a first baseman is touching the base and Randy Marsh's inability to see a ball graze a jersey, there are increasing calls for expanded use of replay review.

Ugh.

A few examples:

From the Chicago Sun-Times:

It's getting harder and harder to defend the guys in blue, who on the whole do a heck of a job. A part of you has to feel for them, but another has to expect them to get it right the first time.

From Joe Posnanski:

(B)aseball replay is inescapable now because these playoffs have been an umpiring disaster. I don’t know if it’s a trend — it probably isn’t a trend. It’s probably just a bad run of high-profile missed calls. But it has felt like an epidemic, and it was topped by the almost-impossible-to-believe missed call on Joe Mauer’s sure-double against the Yankees — that ball was fair by a foot. Trend or not, this is the sort of thing that gets people talking, and the talk now is replay.

From Ron Gardenhire, via the Chicago Tribune, on the Cuzzi call:

The guy (Cuzzi) made a mistake. You move on and we do the best we can. .... I didn’t see the play, so I would have had coaches in the booth calling in my ear on my headset. Give me a headset, give me a red flag, and we can fix this stuff. But I’d have to have somebody calling in my ear to throw the flag.

From Jeff Passan, Yahoo sports:

That’s a wall MLB hides behind: that even if Mauer were on second, who’s to say Jason Kubel and Michael Cuddyer would’ve followed with singles? ... A sign something is totally backward: When the players wronged by an umpire are the ones whose later success can bail him out.

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The results from last week's poorly-designed Metrodome poll, which attracted 26 votes:

One (3 percent) hated the place from the get-go; seven (26 percent) said they'll miss the roof; 15 (57 percent) said it was OK but time to move on; and three (11 percent) loved the joint.

On to the next poll, which ties in to the Monday print column.

More on the umpiring

There's been a rather disgusting mantra this season from umpires who perform poorly:

"The replays were inconclusive."

We got that postgame response Tuesday from Randy Marsh, specifically on the no-call on the Brandon Inge hit-by-pitch.

We got that response, more or less, in August from Hunter Wendelstadt, who, with the aid of his umpire mates, clearly screwed up multiple calls and claimed later that the replays upheld his calls. As I wrote later, if young Wendelstadt watched replays after the game, they were from different games.

Then there was Mike Muchlinski's blown call — I may never forget or forgive this one — on July 20. As memory serves, the umpires refused to even discuss this one with reporters, I assume to protect Muchlinski, a vacation fill-in.

So it was something of a shock to see an umpire admit that a key call was made in error:

"There's a guy sitting over in the umpire's dressing room that feels horrible," (crew chief Tim) Tschida said. "I've been there."

OK, it might be better if Phil Cuzzi himself was come out to say that. Cuzzi was the left field umpire with one major job — to make fair-foul calls — and he blew the call in the 11th inning Friday.

Now, again: The Twins had plenty of opportunities to win that game long before everybody watching the game knew Phil Cuzzi was on the field. Between Joe Nathan, Carlos Gomez, and 17 men left on base — Joe Mauer had two hits and two walks and was not involved in any scores — there are plenty of other reasons the Twins lost Game 2.

ALDS Game 2: Yankees 4, Twins 3, 11 innings

Ouch. And double ouch.

The bitter part of me jeers that Mark Teixeira's walk-off homer was just as inside the line as Joe Mauer's leadoff "foul ball" in the top half of the 11th inning.

But the fact remains that the Twins had the bases loaded with nobody out in the 11th and did nothing with it. Both Delmon Young and Carlos Gomez went out on the first pitch, although Young did hit a hard liner. Go-Go was fooled but went ahead with his first-pitch hack anyway.

And, of course, Gomez's pratfall early in the game cost the Twins a run.

Bottom line: The Twins found ways, again, to blow an imminently winnable game at Yankee Stadium.

You can blame the umpire if you want. But Phil Cuzzi's missed call — like Randy Marsh's missed calls in Tuesday's Game 163 — had less of an effect on the outcome than the mistakes and blunders of the players.

And now the Twins are down 2-0 in a best of five series.

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One aspect of this year's division series that is jumping out at me is the horrid umpiring. C.B. Bucknor had a brutal game at first base in the Thursday opener of the Angels-Red Sox series. Chuck Meriweather, if the TBS pitch track graphic has any accuracy at all, had no idea where the outside corner was Friday in the Twins game. Cuzzi's mistake in that same game was blatant. Bob Davidson, my personal choice as worst umpire going, has had a plate assignment.

And while Game 163 wasn't actually a playoff game, it was not well umpired either.

Some of these guys, to put it brutally, have little business umping major league games, period, much less playoff games.

As I understand it, the World Series and LCS assignments are based strictly on merit. The playoffs, not so much. Merit counts, but there's a rotation used as well — and let's face it, there aren't enough really top-flight umpires to fill 24 slots.

The more screwups they have in the postseason, the more calls there will be to install instant replay reviews for everything. As if games involving the Yankees, Red Sox and Cardinals aren't too long already.

Quotes, notes and comments

"I would challenge [Gardenhire] to sit down and watch the replays. Because he was wrong. ... I'm going to invite him to my umpire school. If he wants to learn what a balk is, he can come down in January to umpire school and we'll teach him."
— umpire Hunter Wendelstedt after Friday's game

“If he’ll agree to take the classes again, I’ll go with him.”
—Ron Gardenhire, the next day

Comment: AP in the past two weeks has moved at least three photos of young Wendelstedt ejecting players or managers (the one above is from last Sunday, when he ejected Baltimore catcher Greg Zaun). I suspect that indicates a problem.

In the first link, Wendelstedt claims he and the rest of his crew spent an hour reviewing replays and got every call right with the possible exception of a fan interference they didn't call and didn't have a replay of. If so, they were watching the wrong game.

* Carl Pavano's Twins debut couldn't have gone much better. And yet: I keep seeing him described as a "sinkerballer," but he had more air outs (nine) than ground outs (seven). Comerica's a good park in which to throw fly balls, but I don't know that that's what he was trying to do Saturday.

Regardless, it was startling to see a Twins starter throwing strikes and working fast. We haven't seen a lot of that recently.

*NUN update: New Ulm native Jamie Hoffmann remains in Triple A for the Dodgers; the outfielder, who had a brief stint with the big club during Manny Ramirez' suspension, is hitting .282/.373/.463 for Albuquerque, which isn't very good for that hitter-happy environment.

* A New York columnist thinks Johan Santana would be happier if he were still with the Twins. Maybe ... but I don't see anything here that says Santana thinks that.

* Jose Mauer is back in the lead in the batting title race, four points ahead of Ichiro Suzuki. More impressive — and this is a sabermetric stat you may not be familiar with — he is far ahead of everybody else in the AL in RC/27. That's runs created per 27 outs, or how many runs a lineup made up of nine Joe Mauers would score in an average game. Mauer is at 9.94 RC/27; the next best in the AL is Kevin Youkilis of Boston at 8.68. (Mauer does trail Albert Pujols, 10.28.)

The Twins have three of the top eight in the AL (Justin Morneau is fifth, 7.86; Jason Kubel is eighth, 7.46). The surprise guy in the AL top 10 — Jason Bartlett, fourth at 8.17.

* Poll results: We had 18 votes on "who's now the strongest team in the AL Central?" The Tigers seem to have you convinced: 13 (72 percent) picked Detroit, four the Twins (22 percent), one the White Sox (5 percent).

New poll up.

A bad day for an ump

Todd Tichenor is umping home plate today in the Red Sox-Twins game at the Dome, and he's not having a good day.

The seventh inning just ended. In the top of the seventh, he butchered a play at the plate — Jason Kubel threw out Jeff Bailey, but Tichenor missed the call. Then Tichenor threw out Mike Redmond. Then he threw out Ron Gardenhire. Since Joe Mauer was the DH and had to go into the game to catch, the Twins lost their DH.

In the bottom of the seventh, Tichenor — whose strike zone has wandered considerably all game — called a ball on Brandon Harris, and Josh Beckett said a naughty word. Loudly. When everything was over in that rhubarb, Boston catcher Jason Veritek and manager Terry Francona were ejected, with Francona delivering a variety of emphatic hand gestures vividly describing Tichenor's ball-strike calls. Unlike Gardenhire, Francona is not known for getting ejected.

I believe Tichenor is a vacation fill-in ump, not a full timer. I know I was looking at the crew at the start of the series and wondered who the crew chief is. Jerry Layne, I suppose. It certainly is not a veteran crew; Chris Guccione might be a fill-in too. Anyway, you've got to figure: An ump runs four players/managers, he's having a bad day.

Update: Game over. The run on the Bailey play didn't beat the Twins. How the game would have run with better ball-strike calling, that's completely unknowable.

Of interest, given this morning's post, is how the Twins bullpen fared, and how Gardenhire deployed them.

Anthony Swarzak started, pitched pretty well, left in the seventh having given up a homer and bloop double. Jesse Crain entered, faced one batter, got a fly to right on a 3-2 count that moved Bailey to third. Out went Crain (a week of rest and just six pitches, half of them balls), in came Henn.

Gardy probably had this in mind: Henn gets Jacoby Ellsbury, they walk Dustin Pedroia intentionally, then Henn goes after J.D. Drew. That would be classic LOOGY use. Henn, however, plunked Ellsbury with the 2-2 pitch. Now he had pitch to Pedroia — who hit the fly to right that started the ejection runaround. That's the second out, and Drew hit the first pitch to second to end the inning.

In for the eighth (and ninth) comes Luis Ayala. He faced just six hitters, gave up one hit, got a double play.

What I take from this:

1) Crain is on a much shorter leash right now than he was 10 days ago.

2) Henn hasn't pitched enough yet to establish whether he's a good LOOGY candidate, but: He's now faced nine right handed hitters, and none have gotten a hit. Two walks, Pedroia's disputable sac fly, and 0-for-6 in official at-bats. Lefties are 3-for-8 with a HBP and two doubles. That's a .444 OPB and .556 SLG. And going that far inside on the 2-2 pitch to Ellsbury wasn't good. The best that could happen was going to 3-2.

3) Ayala's results look good, but three of the six outs were air outs, which doesn't suggest that he has rediscovered his good sinker. He did throw strikes, however — 12 strikes, two balls in his 14 pitches.