You Simply Cannot Have Your Season End On An Atrocious Call Like In The Giants Game Last Night
It's certainly a rough morning if you're a Giants fan. Your incredible season of shocking the world ended last night on an atrocious check swing call that should have never been.
Gabe Morales is your enemy today and you have every right to be upset. If you're going to call a check swing strikeout to end a Giants-Dodgers playoff series like that, the batter better have swung the whole way. Something so obvious that everyone at home can see it. Anything close to a debate you have to rule it a ball and allow the at bat to continue. You have to be sure it's a swing. You have to. Last night's check swing from Flores wasn't remotely close. You cannot in any frame of mind rule that a swing with two outs in a one run game of an elimination game. Absolutely fucking not.
I always feel like the check swing point down to first or third is such a terrible way of deciding the call. How the fuck in real time are they gonna be able to tell if the bat crossed the plane of the plate from 100 feet away? Couldn't you in theory install technology at the plate that has a sensor which goes off if the plane is broken? Feels way to easy for baseball to adopt so naturally it will never happen.
To me everything besides balls and strikes should be able to be challenged. How fly balls in the infield aren't reviewable continues to blow my brain. Same with the check swing, amongst other stuff. I know replay isn't a fool proof process and sometimes it's used for plays that really shouldn't be overturned like the neighborhood play at 2nd, but in other instances it's really necessary. You cannot have a game of that magnitude end like that last night.
Manager Gabe Kapler didn't put blame on the final call and instead said there were other reasons they didn't win the game. He's not entirely wrong, but it's baseball where one pitch could change everything. It's a one run game and one mistake from Scherzer to Flores might get you get a double in the gap that scores Bryant. You just never know.
Just like that the Giants season is over. One where they won 107 games, fought off the Dodgers for the division title the entire way, and then went toe to toe with them for an entire series only to lose in the final inning. A great series gets ruined with that bullshit. Sorry Giants fans, one hell of a year. Got a good feeling you'll be back, but that's gonna sting for a while. Fuck you Gabe Morales. No accountability, no potential repercussions, no punishment. Nope, he'll probably get another playoff series with the way this sport is run. Awful.