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Here's the anatomy of the call. As soon as the play happened, the radio guys (I heard the radio replay this morning, though I was watching on TV) noted that Alan Porter, PU, did not make a call on whether or not the run scored and the TV guys were saying that he was just standing at the plate like the usual between innings routine. That suggests that he checked out on the play and didn't realize that he had a call to make on the time play. So no call is made and Mattingly comes out to talk to Porter, by this time TV replays are showing that Kemp didn't come close to the plate at the time of the tag, and I'm expecting to see Porter telling Mattingly "no run," but then the crew goes into conference, and I knew (yes I'm a Nats fan) that this could mean trouble. He wouldn't be talking to the crew if he saw the play because it wasn't even close. Now from what Davey Johnson said in his postgame, he was told that none of the BUs said they could help; which is fair because there were 2 other runners on the loose to occupy the BUs. At this point Porter is out on a limb and he has a decision to make, allow the run or not. Here is where I think that professionalism would dictate don't allow the run if you can't be certain that it scored in time. Here is where the crew chief could have helped Porter. Porter has 2+ years of MLB experience, so the crew chief should have been telling him, "If you didn't see Kemp score in time, no run." What we get from Porter after the crew met is him pointing home saying score the run. Then Davey comes out and he tells Davey that he allowed the run because he saw him score in time. Well, then why didn't you signal right away and why did you conference. Answer, because you weren't paying attention and now you are compounding the blown coverage and poor professional judgement with poor integrity saying you saw something that didn't happen. So I think the play broke down on 4 levels, first, Porter didn't realize he had a time play, second, he never should have allowed a run he wasn't sure had scored, third, the crew chief could have helped him and didn't, and fourth he shot his integrity by essentially making up what he said to Johnson. I wonder how MLB will handle this kind of thing. I think its a lot more serious than a simple blown call on a bang bang play.
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