It was an extremely tough day for the Chicago Cubs yesterday. After losing 7-6 to the San Francisco Giants, the Cubs have lost yet another one-run game and a game they led in the 9th inning. However, amongst all the agony and pain that Cubs fans had to deal with blowing yet another game, we also had to watch one of the worst umpired games of the entire MLB season.
The home plate umpire, Manny Gonzalez, missed a season-high 27 calls during Monday night’s game between the Cubs and Giants. This comes along with Gonzalez calling 13 strikes and 14 balls incorrectly.
The strike zone was so bad that the Giants manager had enough of it by the 8th inning. Melvin got ejected after a strike-three call that was low in the zone on Matt Chapman. It would’ve been ball four, but it ended up leading to the end of the inning for the Giants.
According to Umpire Scorecards, Gonzalez has been the least accurate umpire in the MLB this season. Gonzalez’s strike zone has an accuracy of 91.3%. Nonetheless, Gonzalez is changing the outcome of ball games with how bad his strike zone has been.
For two teams that have been struggling to find their way above .500, this is what neither team wanted to deal with when desperately fighting for a win. The Giants ended up persevering for the win, but it was ultimately a tough strike zone to watch for both teams. Cubs and Giants fans went to X in unison, agreeing with how bad Gonzalez’s strike zone was.
It’s ironic enough that Major League Baseball just announced that, starting next week, all Triple-A games will use an automated ball-strike challenge system instead of the previous full ABS.
Nonetheless, a game like this does not help the crowd fighting against the idea of Robot Umpires eventually making their way to Major League Baseball. I think all that Cubs and Giants fans can hope for is a better strike zone for the rest of the series because it cannot get much worse than last night.
