Red Sox Get Ultimate Screwjob From Umps With Jordan Alvarez At-bat (Video)

The Boston Red Sox and their fans should be wondering if the rule is still three shots and you’re out in the game of baseball.

Unless something changed dramatically overnight MLBthe Boston Red Sox should seriously upset the Houston referee crew for their day game against the Astros on Wednesday.

Granted, Boston had already fallen 4-0 to the home team when Houston hitter Yordan Alvarez stepped on the plate, but that doesn’t make what happened any less egregious.

By the end of the third inning, with Alvarez coming to the plate, Rich Hill was trailing 1-0. He then dropped a curveball for a strike before the power hitter got part of a pitch that went wrong and put the count at 1-2 – that’s two strikes, one more and he should be out.

So when Hill found the high inside corner on the next pitch and the ump called a strike, it should have been the first of the inning. But it wasn’t. Nobody said anything, the at-bat went on, and all spectators were thoroughly confused.

Red Sox screw up by umps against Astros with missed third shot

How on earth does that happen in a professional baseball game? There are missed strike calls where a pitch is out of zone or vice versa. However, not counting the number of strokes correctly is something else entirely.

Frankly, the Red Sox deserve not to be struck out for not noticing the error at the moment — but even that doesn’t excuse the umpires for screwing up so egregiously.

In the end it didn’t matter that much. Alvarez landed on the next pitch, the Red Sox lost 6-1, and the at-bat didn’t affect the result much. For a group like the referees, which is already in danger of being replaced by robots, this certainly speaks for the machines.