I’ll take that one please

I couldn't think of a blog topic today, so I've decided to write about a single pitch from last night's Cardinals/Astros game in St. Louis.

It was the bottom of the seventh inning, and the Cardinals were down 2-0 but were threatening. The inning started with a Rick Ankiel pop out, but then Mark DeRosa walked and Yadier Molina hit a single, moving DeRosa to third. Julio Lugo struck out for the second out (and that was probably the real problem).

So, with two outs and two on, Joe Thurston pinch hit for Adam Wainwright. Thurston was facing Bud Norris, who was making his first ever Major League start and proving to be a real problem for the Cards. Norris had a little trouble this at bat, though. He started with three straight balls to Thurston.

Of course, Thurston was taking all the way with three balls. Here's a snapshot of the pitches in the at bat. Take a look at pitch #4:

Thurston took the pitch and was already a few steps out of the batter's box when the umpire, Bill Hohn, lazily called the pitch a strike. Norris didn't throw a single pitch in the strike zone during the AB, but Thurston ended up swinging at the next two pitches, ending the inning and the Cards' last legitimate scoring opportunity.

The sole called strike was a bad call, but the fact that it came so late was like getting a speeding ticket after you've already parked in your own driveway. I usually don't like complaining about officiating because I understand that they're human too and I generally like that aspect of human error penetrating every portion of the game. But, when an umpire or a ref makes any sort of delay before blowing a call, it looks, to me, like they're unsure of the call themselves and are therefore more likely to actually be wrong. I suppose it's just about acting confident about the calls even if they're not.

I'm proud of myself for creating that screenshot of the Thurston AB and getting it into the blog. If that hadn't been possible, I probably would have just skipped blogging today.

QotD:

What percentage of sports officiating should we relegate to computers, replays, etc.?

My take: I'd say no more than 22%. Again, I'm perfectly fine with human error factoring into officiating if for no other reason than we can bitch about it later. Besides, mechanical judging systems have proven to be ineffective as well.