Being an umpire in Major League Baseball is far from an easy job, but it seems like we’re seeing more and more mistakes being made by the men in blue lately.
That happened again Monday night in Houston when home plate umpire Dan Bellino called quite possibly the worst called strike of the season.
Astros first baseman José Abreu took what looked to be ball four in the ninth inning and was ready to make his way to first in a tie game when Bellino yelled out that it was a strike. Abreu would go on to strike out swinging a few pitches later.
This was a pretty bad call:
ball 4 to José Abreu was called strike 2 and he ended up striking out but the astros won anyway pic.twitter.com/h0iN6AUZMG
— Codify (@CodifyBaseball) July 25, 2023
I mean, that wasn’t even close.
MLB fans sounded off:
Worst strike call all year 💀 https://t.co/qdNC58nuII
— Taylor Cobb (@_tcobb) July 25, 2023
Bring on the robot umpires.
— Zach Moore (@mooreonzach) July 25, 2023
Strike 3 on previous batter was called ball 4. And strike 1 was called ball 1 for Abreu.
— Barret LeBlanc (@BarretSLeBlanc) July 25, 2023
It seems that MLB umpires have been worse this year behind the plate than I can ever remember. I was at a game recently and the strike zone seemed to change constantly....
— Rick Kitchen (@soundguysoup) July 25, 2023
Brutal call, brutal frame job. Completely incompetent behind the plate.
— Jim Flannery (@lethbridgejimbo) July 25, 2023