Edgy MD

Larry Vanover who went a long way toward making a notorious name for himself by making our 2012 Game Six just an awful few hours of baseball for all involved, has really cemented his reputation with today's work at Patriot Day before a crowd of early drinkers. (It still is strange to me to see an ump call a National League game and then call an AL one a few days later.) I prefer to link to such articles, but today I'll copy and paste as well as I can, as some folks don't do do well with SB Nation pages. Cody Ross, Larry Vanover, And Bad Timing By Jeff Sullivan - Editor Monday, the Boston Red Sox lost to the Tampa Bay Rays by one run. One wonders how things might have gone had the game's final at-bat been called differently. Follow @sbnbaseball on Twitter, and Like Baseball Nation on Facebook. Apr 16, 2012 - As you're reading this, a baseball game on Monday has already started and ended. The Boston Red Sox lost to the Tampa Bay Rays 1-0, with James Shields defeating Daniel Bard. It's Patriots' Day, see, and it's a Patriots' Day tradition for Fenway Park to host an unusually early matinee. For the most part, this was just another baseball game. A low-scoring baseball game, but a fairly unremarkable baseball game. Shields nearly went the distance, which was something. Bard walked seven batters, which isn't good, but Bard also struck out seven batters, which is good. The Rays had seven hits. The Red Sox had four hits. I'm not here to write a recap of Monday's game between the Rays and the Red Sox. You can find one of those somewhere else. I'm here to address the game's final at-bat, because that's what people are going to be talking about for the next several whiles. It was the game's final at-bat that turned this from being a 1-0 baseball game into a 1-0 baseball game that gets discussed a lot. Monday morning, the story was Bobby Valentine criticizing Kevin Youkilis. Monday afternoon, but that's on the back-burner. It was 1-0 Rays going into the bottom of the ninth. With one out, Shields walked Dustin Pedroia, and Joe Maddon replaced Shields with Fernando Rodney. Rodney got a ground out, and he then elected to walk David Ortiz intentionally to face Cody Ross with the winning run on first. That ground out moved Pedroia to second base, by the way. I should have mentioned that earlier. And so began the controversial at-bat. The home-plate umpire was Larry Vanover. The common technique here is to paste in a strike-zone image from MLB's Gameday or some other source. I'm going to bypass that in favor of game screenshots, because I think they're more telling. Here are the five pitches that Rodney threw to Ross: Fenway's camera is just about dead-center. Vanover called three of those five pitches strikes. I'm not going to bother telling you which, because it doesn't matter. All five were probably balls. Maybe - maybe - one of them was a strike. Cody Ross responded to the game-ending punch-out the way most of us would've responded: No matter how you feel about Cody Ross and the Red Sox, there's no denying that they kind of got the royal screwjob right here. There's no guarantee that Ross would've walked had the pitches been called right, since Rodney might have changed his approach. There's no guarantee that the Red Sox would've tied the game or won, since Ross would've had to come through, or the next batter would've had to come through. Larry Vanover did not cost the Red Sox the game. But he cost them an opportunity to tie or win the game by calling balls strikes. The Red Sox and their fans have every reason to be upset. As it happens, the game's only run scored on a bases-loaded walk. That provides a nice bit of symmetry, or asymmetry. I'm not sure which it is. I didn't major in identifying things that are symmetrical. This'll get people calling for robots, and that's not wrong. We're beyond the point at which it's silly that we don't have an electronic strike zone. I think the degree of support for more automated umpiring is such that the hip opinion now might be to not want more automated umpiring. I'm pretty sure that's how popular things work. The Red Sox might've improved to 5-5, were it not for Vanover. They might've fallen to 4-6 anyway. We'll never know. The Red Sox were already something of a circus to begin the week, on account of the Valentine/Youkilis stuff. Now there's this to whip everyone into even more of a frenzy, and did I mention that most of Boston spends Patriots' Day drunk? Most of Boston spends Patriots' Day drunk. This'll be a calm Monday night in the heart of Massachusetts. As for the Rays, one of the big reasons they signed Jose Molina was because he adds value as a pitch-framer. I guess Jose Molina just pitch-framed his ass off.

It's pretty frustrating that nobody authoritatively publishes data on failed sacrifice attempts. You've got to assume it's been reliably compiled for years.

Indeed, I just stumbled upon it when I went hunting for teams with lower RBI totals than the Dodgers' two. The Mets have a perfectly respectable OPS but aren't getting it done with RiSP. The Bucaroos, on the other hand... mercy.

Santana homered during a shutout in Cincinnati the year before last. Last one at Shea was by Maine in 2007.

Well, if somebody's doubled over, then OK. Not for me.

With the organ, maybe. With Twitter, maybe not.

Trying too hard maybe. And maybe the organist shouldn't play that card until the time comes, you know?

Matt Kemp + Andre Ethier: 31 RBI Reds, Mets, Phillies, Pirates: < 31 RBI each. The Pirates are hitting .188!

Did I read that Ventura coached high school basketball last year? The White Sox have had 39 managers (five with more than one tenure), 17 of them former Sox players.

He's on trial for fat prickiness. No, it's the same case. The prosecution bungled it embarrassingly last time, and a mistrial was declared.

The Feds have a team of five lawyers going after him. Going to be very difficult for Andy Pettitte to back out of his statement under oath.

Allan Dykstra, who really should be in Buffalo after the season he had last year, appears to have fractured his wrist. That's the Bingo Blues.

Well, at the time, being the period immediately preceding him being yanked, he was laboring at holding the bench down with his ass, since he was lifted before the start of the inning. The previous inning? Gave up a leadoff hit and got the next three guys. Bottom 6 Batter: C. Ruiz PitchSpeedTypeResult193SinkerBall291SinkerFoul394SinkerBall495SinkerBall595SinkerIn play, no out Carlos Ruiz singles on a line drive to center fielder Kirk Nieuwenhuis. Batter: P. Orr PitchSpeedTypeResult175CurveballSwinging strike293SinkerIn play, out(s) Pete Orr flies out softly to left fielder Scott Hairston. Batter: C. Hamels PitchSpeedTypeResult193SinkerMissed bunt284SplitterFoul bunt388SplitterIn play, out(s) Cole Hamels out on a sacrifice bunt, catcher Mike Nickeas to second baseman Daniel Murphy. Carlos Ruiz to 2nd. Batter: J. Pierre PitchSpeedTypeResult194SinkerCalled strike293SinkerIn play, out(s) Juan Pierre grounds out, pitcher Mike Pelfrey to first baseman Ike Davis. I don't know. A 12-pitch inning (the platonic ideal of pitches in an inning, according to Ron Darling), the last eight going for strikes, still touching 95. Pierre not getting it past the mound. We should all labor that much.

Davis 6.00 Pelfrey 2.89 Thole 0.70 Wright 0.32 Duda 0.09

Seriously, shmanybody else disappointed by Terry's quick hook on days like today? Do you think he'll let his starters go deeper as the season goes deeper, or does he have Jerry's Disease, believing the Seventh-(Eight-, Ninth)Inning Guy must defend leads in that inning whether he is explicitly needed or not?

Not good. My issue --- and it's always the same --- is that we signed Pelfrey to be a hoss and then lift him after 99 pitches. Wasn't even due up and double-switched or pinch-hit for or nothing.

Walk to Rollins and it's Hunter Pence with the bags loaded.

Rube trying to put this game beyond our reach.

Hey, it's Everybody-Wear-42 Day.

His stealing game, not so much.

Pelfrey hanging in there through five. One run allowed and 87 pitches in. Meanwhile, Wright gets his average up to .600. .600!

David Wright, hits in nine straight going back to last September.

Maybe, but mechanical perfection and consistency isn't just born of the mind. Meanwhile, stop bunting, world.

Still, man, so great to see Davis' season finally under way.

Ruben Tejada: .333 / .412 / .500 // .912. Albert Pujols: .250 / .314 / .344 // .658. Tejada has two more XBH's.