Jorge Posada’s Bad Baserunning Led To Bad Call At Third
Third base umpire Tim McClelland botched two calls last night in the Yankees’ 10-1 win over the Angels. He called Nick Swisher out for leaving third base early on a tag up. He didn’t leave early.
Then, of course, the most egregious of the two calls: in the top of the fifth, Jorge Posada ran home on a comebacker to the mound, then retreated back to third and ran past the bag a bit. Robinson Cano was already at third base, but wasn’t on the bag. (See photo to right, courtesy of the site that never sleeps, SBNation.) So Angels catcher Mike Napoli made the smart play and tagged both of them out, because neither one was on the bag. Except, for whatever reason, (he didn’t have a good angle on Cano; he expected them both to be on the bag which happens 99 out of 100 times on a play like this) McClelland called Cano safe. Bad call. Some are even calling it THE WORST CALL OF ALL TIME. (You can see video of it here.)
If anything, this shows baseball could significantly benefit from a replay system, even if it’s just for the playoffs. Honestly, how long would it take for another ump in a replay booth to overturn that call? Three seconds? The viewing audience at home knew it was an awful call right away on the first replay, and even on the live feed. I can’t imagine there would be any more time lost on the game because of stoppage of play; between Mike Scioscia coming out to discuss the call and Napoli staring McClelland down, there was time wasted, too. But that’s a debate for another day, and I really don’t see baseball instituting instant replay on anything other than home runs calls any time soon. But let the record show: I’m a proponent of getting the call right, human element supporters be damned.
What I do want to argue, for fun, though, is that this call should have never happened in the first place. When there is a comebacker to the pitcher and you are on third base as Posada was, you don’t run home. Period. Unless it’s a delayed steal. And with the Yankees already up 5-0, Posada was not delay stealing home, he was making a baserunning blunder.
And this comes after he should have scored on Cano’s double. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and say that Torii Hunter did make a good sell that he was going to catch Cano’s hit off the wall, but it’s extremely rare you tag up from second on a fly ball to (left) center with one out. You can’t tag up from third with two outs, and you’re going on the crack of the bat with two outs from second, so you’re likely going to score on a base hit anyway. But Posada went back to second in what looked like an effort to tag, instead of going halfway to third, and seeing if the ball was caught or not. He does the latter like he should, and he scores on Cano’s double.
But alas, he made two boneheaded moves on the base paths, and then McClelland made a boneheaded call, and now I’ve just written 550 words about an umpire and baserunning.
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