The first week of the Major League Baseball (MLB) season has not been kind to umpires, as ABS has exposed their many errors at the plate and on the bases.
But what happened Tuesday night at the Astros-Red Sox game was truly egregious, and it had nothing to do with ABS.
During the fifth inning, Red Sox pitcher Brayan Bello got Houston’s Cam Smith to swing and miss two times at the beginning of the at-bat. Just before the third pitch, Joey Loperfido stole second base, and Christian Walker scored on the play due to a throwing error by catcher Connor Wong.
Smith then swung and missed at a third pitch, which should have been strike three. However, instead of calling Smith out, home plate umpire Mark Wegner showed a 1-2 count on his tracker.
Several pitches later, Smith fought his way back and “earned” a walk.
“I just watched the video,” Wegner told reporters in his postgame press conference. “I somehow didn’t count the second swinging one because I said the count was 1-2. It was actually strike three … I’ve never done that before. I’m not happy about it. Just made a mistake.”
It appears no one else was paying attention to the count either. When reporters asked Wegner after the game if anyone had alerted him to the mistake, he said: “No one on the field said a word.”
Bello did not protest after Wegner gave him a count of 1-1 after the second pitch.
“I thought the first pitch was a strike, and I thought that he swung at the second pitch,” Bello said after the game. “None of that took me out of my focus in that inning. I tried to get out of that inning, and it didn’t happen.”
The mistake proved unfortunate for Bello and the Red Sox. The pitcher was pulled from the game after surrendering the walk, and Boston would go on to lose, dropping their record to 1-4 on the young season.
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