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Home Plate Umpire Apologized to Cristopher Sanchez for Missing Third Strike Against Eventual Game-Tying Runner
By Kyle Pagan
Published:
I gotta ask… why would you even admit this?
Maybe since ABS is coming in 2026 umps know they’ve already lost the battle with the robots, but still, take that shit to your grave, or at least into next season. Find Sanchez when he’s on the bump next year and apologize then. No one wants to hear this. Both Sanchez and Tyler Glasnow were working the corners. Roki Sasaki was hammering away at them too and home plate umpire Mark Wegner wasn’t budging. The pitch Sanchez threw on 2-2 looks like it was inside on the broadcast’s strikezone, but not by much. Feels like a strike a lot of umps wouldn’t hesitate to ring guys up on:
I still can’t believe we let humans call baseball games in 2025. Old, decrepit, glaucoma-riddled-ass umps who we entrust to track 97 mph heaters with 11 inches of run. It’s impossible. I can’t wait for ABS and I’m sure that’s going to be a shitshow too because nothing is perfect. The pitch clock has been great for baseball, but in Game 3 Brandon Marsh gets down 0-1 in a critical spot after a violation because he didn’t get in the box in time when the bat boy was still messing around in there. What’s going to happen for ABS? Are the Astros going to hack into it? Change Jose Altuve’s height-defined strike zone the day of? I mean the Hawkeye tech they use is the same one in tennis and its margin of error is around 3.6mm I read somewhere. It’s a game of millimeters! I can’t wait until next year when I can get mad at a robot and not my fellow man. I can’t wait until a Phillies player takes an obvious strike, taps his helmet to readjust, and the ump assumes he’s challenging an obvious call and the Phillies lose their challenges they desperately need later in the game. After last night they can lose in anyway and it wouldn’t surprise me.
Here’s Wegner’s Ump Scorecard. Tough time to have an off day calling balls:
And listen, this post is just a dose of copium. I’m trying to figure out how to get through today just like you are. You’ve heard it from all corners of the Internet, one run was never going to win this game. And maybe it wouldn’t have. The bats went cold again for the fourth year in a row. Same shit just a different year. If the Dodgers didn’t figure out a way to manufacture a run in the 8th or 9th we all would’ve been shocked. This is all just stuff to hold our hats on. So here’s a little Hawk Harrelson chewing out Mark Wegner to put a smile on your face because that’s all I have right now. “WHAT’RE YOU DOING WEGNER?!”
Kyle writes blog posts and does Man on the Street-style videos all around Philadelphia. He graduated from Temple University (a basketball school) in 2015. contact: k.pagan@sportradar.com