The Nationals essentially beat the Braves twice last night, after the (first) final strike of the game was later called a foul tip by the home plate umpire … like so much later that the grounds crew were already back out on the field.
And the real problem is that the “foul tip” didn’t come anywhere close to the bat.
Check it out:
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On their second try, the Nationals ultimately got the strikeout again, but as you can tell by the situation (tying run in scoring position, winning run at first, two outs, bottom of the ninth inning, divisional foes), that wasn’t a meaningless call.
It was just a really bad one.
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Here’s that “foul tip” again, in slow motion:
Yikes.
Fortunately, everything worked out in the end. But yeesh, that was almost an egregiously huge umpire mistake.