The Philadelphia Phillies are in the midst of a dismal streak, going 3-11 since the All-Star Game. Bryce Harper and Trea Turner are really cold at the plate. Jeff Hoffman had his worst performance as a Phillie Saturday night against the Seattle Mariners. All-Stars Zack Wheeler and Cristopher Sánchez both struggled in their most recent starts.
Nobody is making excuses for the Phillies’ recent performance. Fortunately for them, they performed so brilliantly early in the season that they are still 20 games above.500 and maintain a five-game lead in the National League East. However, if they do not straighten things up over the next ten days, their division lead will evaporate, leaving the Phillies to fight simply to make the playoffs during the final month and a half of the season. It has been a complete disaster lately.
What the Phillies did not need amid their worst stretch of the season was home-plate umpire Ryan Wills’ performance Saturday. According to Umpire Scorecards, Willis laboured so much that his calls favoured the Mariners by +1.31.
While Harper was highly unhappy with Wills’ zone when he was struck out looking in the top of the ninth inning, the most glaring missed call came in the bottom of the tenth.
Carlos Estévez, a Phillies reliever, missed the target J.T. Realmuto set up with two outs and two strikes on Mitch Haniger in the second inning. He didn’t miss the strike zone. Not even close. Umpires are meant to call pitches based on whether they are in the zone, not how beautiful the frame was. Obviously, having a good frame helps. However, this was not a pitch on the black; it was obviously in the zone.
If Wills had called it correctly, it would have been an inning-ending strikeout, extending the game to the 11th. Instead, three pitches later, Estévez, looking exhausted, walked in the winning run.
“It’s harder to strike out someone with five strikes rather than three,” Estévez said after the game, according to Todd Zolecki of MLB.com. “That is one thing. At the same time, I hit someone with a slider. “I got myself into that circumstance.
None of this implies that Wills was biased against the Phillies; he simply performed poorly on Saturday. This wasn’t even a zone you could adapt to. It wasn’t like he was constantly throwing low strikes or doing anything you could fairly expect by late in the game. It was a bit disorganized.
But that’s the risk when your pitching allows a 5-0 lead and you fail to score the zombie runner in the top of the tenth inning. When you don’t control what you can, you risk losing the game since forces beyond your control influence the outcome. That is, in part, what occurred on Saturday night.
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