A Torrealba Tale

Posted by Brian Joseph on Tuesday, October 13, 2009 at 6:35 am

Referring to the umpiring in the LDS as terrible might be an understatement this postseason. There’s not a crew in the four league division series excluded as every series was impacted by calls so bad they weren’t even debatable. It’s hard to make a case that any series swayed in one direction because of the lackluster performances turned in by the men in charge of enforcing the game’s rules especially since three of the four series ended in a sweep and, in most cases, calls were horribly missed both ways.

Since the majority of the baseball world will spend a lot of energy dumping on umpiring, calling for replay and/or blaming their least favorite crew for costing a team they expected to win or unjustly rewarding a team they expected to lose, this post will instead look at something that occurred as a residual impact of the flawed calls of the boys in blue.

Last night’s Game 4 featured an interesting dynamic between Rockies catcher Yorvit Torrealba and home plate umpire Ron Kulpa. In the seventh inning while facing Cliff Lee, Torrealba took a 2-2 pitch that got a lot of the low, outside corner of the plate for strike three. The crowd’s reaction and Torrealba’s obvious displeasure with the call set the announcing crew in a frenzy. Quickly, they tried to decipher Yorvit’s irritation and determined that the angry catcher was confirming with Kulpa that his pitcher would get the same call that the home plate ump granted Lee. Unfortunately, the announcers never addressed the fact that the called third strike caught a lot of the strike zone. Here’s the PITCHf/x data from the at-bat courtesy of Brooks Baseball:

While the announcers were right to credit Torrealba for working the umpire in an effort to keep the game called fairly both ways, they never addressed the fact that the pitch the catcher took was not only a strike but it wasn’t even a close call.

The next inning, the fruits of Torrealba’s argument seemed to pay off as Ryan Howard was rung up on a low and away pitch that, according to TBS’ PitchTrax graphic, clearly missed the strike zone. Brooks Baseball’s PITCHf/x plotting showed it was much closer but still not a strike:

The instant reaction of the announcing crew was to credit Torrealba with the strike out thanks to his coaxing of Kulpa the previous inning. The problem with the crew’s analysis came in referring to both pitches hitting the same location. In general, the pitches were similar in location but not the same. The key difference? The pitch that upset Torrealba was clearly a ball while the pitch to Howard was a borderline pitch that did not land in the strike zone.

It would be easy to give the announcers the benefit of the doubt if they did not have access to the same data but TBS overloads the viewer with their PitchTrax visuals and 99% of the time, the announcers have the same television feed in the booth. In this instance, the announcers completely ignored the visuals as they declared that Torrealba got one back for his club. A more accurate description would be to say that Torrealba picked one up for his club since Kulpa didn’t get it wrong when he rung up Yorvit in the seventh.

In fairness to the mediocre TBS crew, ESPN’s description of how the events unfolded weren’t much better. On “Baseball Tonight”, Karl Ravech and Buster Olney butchered the events much worse than the TBS team. After showing the Torrealba-Kulpa dispute, the highlights cut to the Howard pitch.

“SAME PITCH!”, shouted Ravech over the replay.

“PAYBACK!”, exploded Olney over the slow motion second take.

Same pitch? Any regular “Baseball Tonight” viewer knows the Worldwide Leader has spent plenty of time reviewing pitch locations and questioning balls and strikes.

Payback? Usually payback implies a wrong being righted. Maybe Olney got carried away but the reaction when looking at the factual events is borderline foolish.

Compound that turn of events with Torrealba’s go ahead two-run double in the bottom of the eighth and the legend of Yorvit grew. If it weren’t for Huston Street’s ninth inning meltdown and the Phillies’ miraculous comeback, the actions of Colorado’s catcher would have been a whole lot more than a footnote to a really tough loss for the Rockies.

So, what’s the big deal? The big deal is the mishandling of the event by the announcers and analysts paid to provide quality commentary on the game they are responsible for. Instead, Torrealba’s outburst was treated as a successful attempt to right a terrible wrong instead of a player’s ability to push an umpire to acquiesce and miss yet another ball/strike call — a consistent theme of the night that was often overlooked by the crack TBS crew.

In the end, it’s worth applauding Torrealba’s efforts to turn a bad result at the plate in the seventh into a favorable result for his club. His emotional outburst after being frozen by a near perfect pitch from Lee earned the Rockies a borderline strike call that evidence suggests the called strike three was actually a ball. But call it as it is, gamesmanship… not righteousness.