ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. -- The Pirates felt there had been plenty of reasons to voice their frustrations with this umpiring crew throughout the series.
On Tuesday, it appeared that Ryan Thompson did not come set before delivering a pitch, a transgression that probably should have resulted in a run-scoring balk or at least a violation of the pitch clock. On Wednesday, Derek Shelton was ejected after arguing that the umpires were not properly enforcing the pitch clock after it briefly shut off while the pitcher was on the rubber.
Those frustrations only mounted with Adrian Johnson's crew Thursday, as the Pirates struck out 10 times in their 3-2 loss to the Rays at Tropicana Field, half of them looking at pitches which appeared to be out of the strike zone.
If the data does later confirm that those five strikeouts were on pitches out of the zone -- as evidenced by the Gameday strike zone made available on line -- it will be the most times the Pirates were called out on pitches that should have been balls since April 29, 2009. Going by Baseball Savant's data, there have only been four games in the pitch tracking era (since 2008) where a team watched more strikeouts on pitches out of the zone.
"It felt one-sided today," a visibly annoyed Andrew McCutchen said. "You don’t ever want to feel like that when you’re out there, but today just didn’t feel like it was a game that was supposed to be won by us."
McCutchen was the first victim of home plate umpire Manny Gonzalez's high strike zone when he watched a 2-2 fastball go by, but was still rung up:
"What can you do, right?" McCutchen asked. "All you can do is speak your piece, try not to get thrown out of the game and hope they made an adjustment. If they don’t, what can you do in this game, right? Is there any accountability on that end? Over the years, I don’t think so. What can you do?
"All you can do is do your best. Try and go. Try and battle, try and grind away. That’s all you can do. You can’t control it. You can’t control the strike zone. Unfortunately. Hopefully at some point we will be able to, to a certain extent. But right now, gotta grind away, I guess."
That was just the start of what would be a very long day for Pirate hitters, particularly Connor Joe, who was put down not once:
But twice on pitches that didn't appear to be over the plate. Joe is usually even-keeled, but even he had a couple words for Gonzalez:
"Yeah, frustrated," Joe said. "In the box, we're talking about executing plans. I feel like when we do a good job and execute our plan to what we're trying to do to a pitcher, and he gets rewarded for that, it's frustrating. Not just calls against me. The whole day, against everyone on our team. That's not the reason we lost. It's just frustrating."
Add in a punchout of Tucupita Marcano on a sinker that was left up:
And Bryan Reynolds being rung up to open the seventh:
And the Pirates couldn't get much going offensively before their ninth inning rally.
“It is what it is," Reynolds said. "We don’t have any control over any of that. We’ve got to try to go out there, control our zone and just compete.”
Going out to compete is a lot easier said than done, though. The high strike to Zach Eflin's glove side was called fairly consistently Thursday. Selling out to protect that area can create holes in other parts of the zone.
"What the common person doesn’t understand is that we’re very good at what we do," McCutchen said. "We’re very good at knowing what a strike is. We’re very good — and it goes both ways, right? Pitchers are very good at exposing a certain part of the strike zone. It’s not that easy just to make an adjustment on something you feel in your mind is a ball. One pitch can dictate an at-bat. I felt like there were a few times today, more than a few times, where one pitch was dictating the outcome of the at-bat.
"You have to make the adjustments as much as you can as a hitter... You can’t protect the strike zone and outside of the strike zone. As much as you want to, it’s difficult. It’s difficult. No one here is asking for perfection. We’re just asking for adjustments. I don’t feel like an adjustment was made today."
There is an elephant in the room with this, too. The Pirates and Shelton had been arguing about calls all series. Is it possible that the crew was taking it out on the visitors in the finale?
"I would hope not," Shelton said to that question. "That’s not how it should go. You should call the game how it should be. I know our hitters had a lot of questions about pitches. We had five or six called strikeouts looking with some guys who don’t react. Cutch doesn’t react very often. Connor Joe doesn’t react very often. Reynolds doesn’t react very often. I haven’t seen it, but you would hope that’s not the case."
When posed with the same question, McCutchen said he didn't know, and then suggested the traveling media should ask the umpires. Umpiring crews are not made available for postgame comments. Joe didn't think the calls were deliberate.
"I would hope, professionally, they wouldn't do that, or even cross their mind to do that. I think we're all humans out here, right? Sometimes guys have off days. I don't feel that way at all."
Even if there was no malice, it's easy to see why the Pirates were frustrated. This was a potential statement series for a young club that had its best month of April in decades. Instead, they were swept, mainly because of miscues in the field, inability to convert on run-scoring opportunities and the umpiring.
"Didn't get the clutch hit a couple times this series, and I think that's the difference [between] winning a couple games and getting swept," Joe said. "I don't think much changes, right, but maybe a little bit of a wake-up call maybe. We know we're a good team and we still are a good team. But there's work to be done."
The mantra in the clubhouse is to control the controllables. But when it comes to the strike zone, it's easy to see why frustrations can boil over.
"That adjustment needs to be made," McCutchen said. "At least, that’s what I feel it’s supposed to go. But it didn’t go that way today. Take your strikeouts, I guess. What can you do? You’re gonna grind away, and you’re gonna get screwed over on a call. It may happen, but none of our guys got thrown out today. Nobody got thrown out. We didn’t show anybody up. We just voiced what we felt was right."
