This is bad. There’s no way around it, and when the home broadcasters are calling it out, you know it’s bad.
The Mets had the bases loaded in the bottom of the 9th today, with Michael Conforto at the plate. With two strikes, it appeared that he’d struck out looking at a great breaking pitch, but the umpire then said he’d been hit by the pitch, which forced in the walk-off winning run.
And Conforto DID get hit by the pitch. The problem? It was a pitch well within the strike zone that Conforto clearly shoved his elbow out into the zone to hit because he’d been fooled:
Gary, Keith and Ron calling this out for what it is: chump shit pic.twitter.com/iTK1Ni9I7y
— Lindsey Adler (@lindseyadler) April 8, 2021
Like I said. That’s a bad one.
I don’t really blame Conforto all that much for doing what he did in the moment. He got fooled, he was gonna get rung up, and his mind/body just reacted in a fraction of a second. I also understand that it’s hard to make that call in the moment, but if there were ever a more clear time when a batter tried to get hit by a pitch (and thus it’s a strike), that was it.
Making matters worse, the crew reviewed the play, but *only* to determine that Conforto was indeed hit. Whether he intentionally got himself hit? Not reviewable. Oof. There’s gotta be some better approach there, since you’re already reviewing the play. Don’t you want to get it right?
Mets win on the walk-off, and that’s gonna be talked about for a while.