Willits versus Kazmir in the 7th

Not boxing. Baseball.

A key at-bat during the baseball game between the Devil* Rays and the Angels occurred in the 7th inning. Reggie Willits came to bat against Kazmir with the Rays leading 2-1, a runner at second base and two out. Willits worked Kazmir for a walk. Kazmir was visibly upset (trusting the radio announcers for that one) and Rays manager John Maddon was tossed for questioning the balls and strikes on his next visit to the mound.

Turns out I was wrong that Gameday disabled the visual at-bat histories. I just didn't work the interface properly the other day. Here is the Willits at-bat:



I added a vertical yellow line to aid in judging Kazmir's case. If the Gameday graphic is any sort of accurate guide, Kazmir looks like he has a good one. A pitcher throwing near the strike zone usually gets the benefit of the close call, and Kaz was unquestionably near the strike zone against Willets on every pitch. Kazmir got no benefit on pitches 3, 5 or 6, each of which was ruled a ball and each of which was arguably over the plate (by rule, only a portion of the ball needs to end up over the outline of the plate). Pitch 5 was in almost the identical location of pitch 6, by the way, accounting for the fact that you don't see it represented except by the edge of its outline.

It appears Willits got three favors from the ump.

Bad luck for the Rays, for there's no knowing how the later stages of the game were affected. But such is common to baseball. You just hope that mistakes even out over the long run.

And despite any mistakes by the umpire, here, I can only offer respect for the effort they give. Judging sports that involve rapidly moving objects seems extremely challenging to me.

But all things considered, I'd rather see this kind of thing happen to the Yankees than to the Rays.

Note: It occurred to me rather belatedly that Gameday images would be subject to copyright. That kind of takes the fun out of things, even if a fair use argument is plausible.