Tuesday’s game between the Toronto Blue Jays and the Chicago White Sox was a back-and-forth affair that saw the White Sox pull out the victory in the bottom of the 12th inning. The game featured some questionable calls, to say the least, from home plate umpire Doug Eddings. Eddings missed a season-high 29 ball-strike calls behind the plate on Tuesday night, with an overall correct call rate of 86.2 percent.
Umpires are supposed to play as little of a factor in the outcome of the game as possible. While Eddings likely tried to do that, he was not successful. Six of those calls were on blown strikeouts and clearly affected the outcome of the game.
The Blue Jays certainly felt snubbed and that played a factor in what occurred prior to Wednesday afternoon’s game between the two teams.
Blue Jays hitting coach Guillermo Martínez came out for the Blue Jays to give the lineup card to the umpires. Eddings was among the umpires for Wednesday’s game, and Martínez gave him a piece of his mind ahead of the game.
He was subsequently ejected for arguing with the umpires before the game even started in what was a truly bizarre scene.
Many around the MLB world agreed that Martínez did the right thing in defending his players following the questionable umpiring on Tuesday night.
Umpiring this season has been under a microscope with thanks to a bevy of bad calls and a rising discussion around robot umps in the MLB.
It is certainly hard to get every call right, but Eddings was particularly poor on Tuesday, and it appears that he has taken no accountability for his poor performance. It is that lack of accountability that fans find irritating about umpires in the MLB.
If a player plays poorly, they will get benched or released. If a coach’s team isn’t performing, they will get fired and replaced. But umpires can pretty much perform below average without any repercussions, and that is truly the problem most have had with umpires this season.
Unfortunately for MLB fans, it doesn’t look like things will change for a while, as MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said last week that “robot umps” will likely not be coming in 2023.
About Reice Shipley
Reice Shipley is a staff writer for Comeback Media that graduated from Ithaca College with a degree in Sports Media. He previously worked at Barrett Sports Media and is a fan of all things Syracuse sports.