Papelbon, the Philadelphia Phillies’ closer, was livid with home-plate umpire D.J. Reyburn’s work in the Phillies’ 4-3 loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers on Monday. Papelbon was the losing pitcher, and thought he had struck out the Dodgers’ Dee Gordon on a pitch before Gordon lined a double to key the winning rally.
After the inning, Papelbon confronted Reyburn, a fill-in umpire from Class AAA, and veteran Derryl Cousins stepped in to protect his young charge.
Bullying by Papelbon? Well, he teed off on Reyburn further in the postgame.
“I thought he sucked. ... He probably needs to go back to Triple-A. You’re up in the big leagues to do a good job and when you don’t do a good job you should be demoted or fired. It’s just like anybody’s job. If I don’t do my job, I go down to Triple A. There’s no room for that up here. It’s not a knock on the umpires. It’s the integrity of the game. You want to be able to go out there and play the game the way it should be played. All night long, from (Dodgers starter Clayton) Kershaw to (Phillies starter) Vance (Worley), all the way to the ninth inning, it affected the outcome of the game.”
Repoz
Posted: June 05, 2012 at 01:11 PM |
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1. What Zupcic? Posted: June 05, 2012 at 01:31 PM (#4148875)You need to do something, Mr. Commissioner. The general suckitude of your umpires is reaching a crisis level and needs to be fixed, ASAP.
That was a post-game interview, not a tweet.
If every guy who didn't get a third strike whined this much, nobody would pay attention to baseball at all.
That third strike would have ended the inning. Instead he threw another pitch and it gave up the winning run.
Bad calls happen. This is what Jon Lester has been doing lately, a bad call goes against him, he stares in, then throws the next pitch down the middle for a grand slam. #### happens, make a pitch.
For what it's worth I like Papelbon. I think he's actually pretty honest about who he is. Yeah, there's some showmanship but I think he's more "real" than Brian Wilson for example.
The average Ken doll or GI Joe is more "real" than Brian Wilson.
His next pitch was a splitter in the lower middle of the strike zone, and of course the whole point of throwing a splitter is that it should look like it's going to be a strike and then, you know, not be a strike. So that's Pap's fault.
As was the anger-induced meatball he threw to Hererra (2 mph faster than anything he'd thrown to that point), right down Main Street at 94 mph. You challenged him. He won. End of story.
Papelbon is lucky he didn't bury his team even more. The second pitch he threw to Ethier was also right down the middle, and he popped it up. He never threw anything over the plate to Juan Rivera, but managed to whiff him anyway. And his last pitch, to Castellanos, was also right down the middle. He was lucky his team wasn't down 7-3 when they came to bat in the bottom of the inning.
94 was 2 MPH faster than anything he had thrown to multiple hitters? That's really low velocity for Papelbon.
Pitch was borderline, could have gone either way.
Dee Gordon was the leadoff batter in the inning. There were no outs, not two outs.
After the contested pitch, he tripled to right center. The article erroneously reported that he doubled.
I think Jose's got it right. Whether it's clearly blown, or merely borderline, a call that goes against someone is something that happens. It's never going to be perfect. Pitchers (and batters on the very random and inconsistent checked-swing rule) just have to realize it's part of the game. The trick is to not let stuff like that affect your concentration.
Paps clearly got rattled, and left the first pitch up to Herrera.
Ironically, Brooks' data shows that Gordon's triple was on a ball that was out of the strike zone.
Clearly, however, suffering doesn't "build character" in ol' Paps. If I were the crew chief, I'd have tossed him for forcing me to defend a junior umpire.
EDIT: Coke to the Hotelier for his additional detail.
You mean like after you screw up royally and groove one that Dee Gordon -- career ISO of 58! -- whacks for a double? Enjoy AAA.
Even so, he left it right there for him. It was a fast fastball, but not a good fastball.
What, did they lose the other 2 outs on some kind of penalty?
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