Red Sox get ultimate screwjob from umps with Yordan Alvarez at-bat (Video)

The Boston Red Sox and their fans should be wondering if the rule is still three strikes and you’re out in the game of baseball. 

Unless something dramatically changed overnight in MLB, the Boston Red Sox should be seriously peeved at the umpire crew in Houston for their day game against the Astros on Wednesday.

Granted, Boston had already fallen behind 4-0 to the home team whenever Houston slugger Yordan Alvarez stepped up to the plate, but that doesn’t make what happened any less egregious of an error.

In the bottom of the third inning when Alvarez came to the dish, Rich Hill fell behind in the count 1-0. He then dropped a curveball in for a strike before the power hitter got a piece of a pitch that went foul, putting the count at 1-2 — that’s two strikes, one more and he should be out.

So when Hill found the high-inside corner with the next pitch and the ump called a strike, that should’ve been the first out of the inning. But it wasn’t. No one said anything, the at-bat continued, and everyone watching was left thoroughly befuddled.

https://twitter.com/onlyparlays_/status/1554909072213901318

Red Sox screwed over by umps against Astros with missed third strike

How in the world does this happen in a professional baseball game? There are missed strike calls where a pitch isn’t in the zone or the opposite. Not counting the number of strikes correctly, however, is something different entirely.

Frankly, the Red Sox deserved to not get the strikeout for not noticing the error in the moment — but even that doesn’t excuse the umpires for screwing up so egregiously.

In the end, it didn’t matter all that much. Alvarez grounded out on the next pitch, the Red Sox went on to lose 6-1 and the at-bat didn’t have much of an effect on the result. Still, for a group such as umpires that is already being threatened to be replaced by robots, this is certainly a case in favor of the machines.