Tonight the Padres won game number two for the season. An auspicious start to the Machado era.
Myers continued to play well. Machado got the first two hits as a Padre. Kinsler hit his first home run as a Padre. Tatis got his first extra base hit as a Padre, a double in the 2nd. Margot drove in a run.
Joey Lucchesi pitched a great game aided by more than a few blown calls.
In fact, home plate umpire Lance Barksdale blew the call on 31 of 37 borderline calls. 28 of those were obvious balls that were called strikes.
If you completely failed at the most critical part of your job 84% of the time, how long would you have a job. Barksdale cannot be fired. Think about that for a moment. He got the call wrong 84% of the time on borderline pitches and he cannot be fired.
In the 9th, Barksdale called 4 balls strikes including the pitches resulted in strike outs to the final two batters. If called correctly, those pitches would have driven in two runs since the bases were loaded.
I will take the win, but it’s a hollow win when the Padres won on successive bad calls.
Games like this one are making MLB adding robo umpires more probable in the near future, especially with legal gambling now part of the game. MLB games simply cannot hinge on an umpire that blows the call 84% of the time.
That is my take. What do you think.
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