It didn’t take long for the ump show to take over in Game 1 of the World Series on Friday night.
Home plate umpire Carlos Torres didn’t make it through the first inning of the Fall Classic before an egregious call behind the dish.
With two on and two outs in the top of the first inning, Jazz Chisholm showed bunt on the first pitch out of Jack Flaherty’s hand, pulling the bat back before the pitch reached the batter’s box.
Despite being a few inches outside and a tad bit low, Torres called the offspeed pitch a strike, putting Chisholm down 0-1 in the count.
Chisholm would ground out to second base on a ball in the same location a pitch later, ending the Yankees’ threat.
And it didn’t stop there.
An inning later, with Will Smith at the plate, Yankees starter Gerrit Cole threw a dart of a 98 mph fastball on the outside corner, well inside the strike zone on the Fox broadcast.
Torres called the pitch a ball, puzzling both Cole and catcher Austin Wells.
But that wasn’t all.
On the very next pitch, Cole threw another fastball in essentially the same exact spot — this time, Torres called it a strike.
Torres made it three straight innings with a terrible ball-strike call, with Juan Soto hitting in the top of the third, giving the two-finger strike call on a pitch that appeared to be a full baseball outside.
That strike call was the final straw for ex-MLBer Eric Hosmer, who took to X with his Torres complaints.
“This is [too] high level of a game for Carlos Torres to be working the plate, let alone working. He’s an awful umpire, he’s terrible to work with and hasn’t earned anything,” Hosmer wrote on the platform.
“Can’t keep missing these pitches. 0-1 versus 1-0 huge difference let alone with a guy like Juan Soto at the plate. It’s [too] long of a road for these teams to get here, [too] much on the line and we can’t have it.”
