OnlyBucs

1. Kevin Newman (R) SS

2. Corey Dickerson (L) LF

3. Starling Marte (R) CF

4. Josh Bell (S) 1B

5. Melky Cabrera (S) RF

6. Colin Moran (L) 3B

7. Elias Diaz (R) C

8. Adam Frazier (L) 2B

9. Steven Brault (L) P



No Reynolds. Come on Clint let him play and help him regain his stroke!

Hurdle knows that the only thing better than playing well is not playing at all. ::)

Joe Block fills a few seconds of airtime by imparting this gem of wisdom to us: "The season is far from over at the season's midpoint." Yesterday he explained what is meant by "extra base hits." Golly!

Impressed with the D.

need a ninth inning comeback.

Offense has been non existent these last 2 games. I don’t like Clint giving Reynolds the day off in such an important game. These are games you have to win and you have the All Star Break coming next week everybody should be playing period no excuses. The defense in this game today has been horrific too many stupid mistakes.

That was some of the worst ball/strike umpiring I've ever seen. He was clueless. Balls were strikes, strikes were balls and he never called a pitch the same way twice. Total incompetence.

Has there been any more movement toward electronic ball-strike calls? With everyone able to see the inconsistencies it would seem there should be some pressure mounting to implement it.

one of my facebook friends who is an ump (at amateur level) posted this:



[highlight]In the old days they missed tons of pitches, the zone varied greatly from ump to ump...and there was far less bitching about it.

Now the zone is fairly uniform ump to ump, they are held far more accountable than they were 20 years ago...any misses are typically by an inch or less..and yet everyone is up in arms.

I’ve got news for you all- this is about as good as a human ump can get. It’s time to accept that they aren’t perfect and stop expecting them to be robots[/highlight].



I said something like MLB is going to have to go to electronic strike zone or stop showing the zone on television.  Seeing those misses is what causes arguments. 



He thinks electronic calls are fine for width but that ump should still call vertical zone.  I could see starting there and seeing how that works.



IMO, seeing so many missed calls and inconsistency (even if it is only a couple percent) goes to credibility of the game. 



when leagues had their own umps and there were only 8 teams it wouldn't have been that difficult for players to get an idea on the strike zones of different umps. Now with 80 or so umps and not seeing them regularly it is not possible to do that.

022425322434470 wrote: one of my facebook friends who is an ump (at amateur level) posted this:



In the old days they missed tons of pitches, the zone varied greatly from ump to ump...and there was far less bitching about it.

Now the zone is fairly uniform ump to ump, they are held far more accountable than they were 20 years ago


I've always had a problem with that reasoning. The rulebook has always defined the strike zone. Yet inexplicably, we were always force fed the notion that every ump has HIS OWN strike zone. Regardless of the rules. That made no sense. But it served the umps very well to explain every bad call: "He didn't miss the pitch. He called it correctly for HIS strike zone." Now that we see the graphic showing the REAL strike zone, the umps can no longer pretend they are calling a different zone and we see their mistakes. It also doesn't help the umps that pitchers are routinely throwing in the high 90s and that split second they used to have to identify a pitch has been reduced even more. I agree with your friend who said this is as good as a human ump can get. Unfortunately, it's not good enough.