Video of umpire’s ghastly missed call on pitch by Royals’ Josh Staumont is going viral
Royals relief pitcher Josh Staumont has done some amazing things this season, and he’s even caught the attention of Cubs fans.
Staumont has a 0.79 ERA, is averaging 18.3 strikeouts per nine innings and hasn’t allowed an earned run since July 27 covering 10 appearances.
In the Royals’ 7-2 win over the Twins on Friday night, Staumont did something unusual: he struck out the Twins’ Ryan Jeffers on four strikes. Yep, four. Thing is, one of the pitches was called a ball.
Griping about an umpire’s strike zone is as much a baseball tradition as the seventh inning stretch, but video of home plate umpire Jeremie Rehak’s egregious call quickly went viral.
In less than 12 hours, video of the pitch (100 mph down the middle) that was shared by ESPN’s Jeff Passan had more than 1.2 million views:
Passan wasn’t the only national baseball observer to take note of the terrible call. Rob Friedman, better known to his 234,000 Twitter followers as Pitching Ninja, shared a video with comment as well (this video has more than 350,000 views):
In his YouTube video, Friedman said: “This is one of the worst calls you’ll ever see and people are crying for Robo umps and you can see why.”
The Sporting News shared this:
Royals broadcaster Ryan Lefebvre had a great call on radio that summed it up:
