Team USA’s win didn’t come without controversy.
The United States defeated the Dominican Republic 2-1 at loanDepot park on Sunday night to advance to the World Baseball Classic championship game, but the final called strike had the DR fuming, and rightfully so.
American pitcher Mason Miller fired the ball and his 3-2 pitch was clearly out of the strike zone, but home plate umpire Cory Blaser surprisingly called it the third strike to end the game.
Dominican Republic batter Geraldo Perdomo was fuming when he heard the strike call and threw his hands up into the air in shock as his team had the tying run on third base.
MLB’s ABS system that allows a batter to challenge balls and strike calls is not part of the World Baseball Classic.
The Fox Sports broadcast noted the ball was outside the strike zone and even the MLB’s own Statcast showed the pitch well below the strike zone.
“That slider right there that was below the zone. And, one team reacting. The other just stunned,” former major league pitcher John Smoltz said on the broadcast after viewing the replay.
“Thinking, ‘You sure we don’t have ABS yet? You sure we can’t challenge that?’” play-by-play man Joe Davis added. “Perdomo and the Dominican Republic are wondering, and they’ll have to wonder what would have happened with Fernando Tatis Jr. left standing on deck.”
It wasn’t the only time in the game that Blaser had made a seemingly bad call.
In the eighth inning with Juan Soto on at the plate, a third strike was called on a pitch that had been outside the strike zone, and was backed up by the statcaster.
“You just hate to end a game this big with these types of consequences on a pitch that’s not a strike,” Alex Rodriguez said during the Fox postgame show.
In a similar vein to Davis’ comments, Derek Jeter predicted that there could be a change coming to the WBC regarding ABS.
“Well, you can pretty much guarantee they’re going to have the (ABS) challenge system in place for the next WBC, right?” he said.
The United States will face the winner of Italy and Venezuela, which will be played on Monday, in Tuesday’s title game.
Team USA had to battle back from an early 1-0 deficit and managed to gain the lead in a two-run fourth inning.
Gunnar Henderson had hit a solo home run to kick off the inning and tied the game at one.
Roman Anthony gave the United States the lead with his own solo shot two batters later.
