Yankees/Mets Umpiring Crew

[LMan]

From Phil Mushnick (New York Post):

Morgan's Off Base: July 7, 2006 -- WE'RE left to ponder whether Joe Morgan reflects ESPN's sensibilities or if it's the other way around.
While the nation's sports network now mostly exists to sell (sell, sell!) its personalities, what will appear next (and next week, and next month, and next year), and its brand-name products, must we tune to its national baseball telecasts in justifiable fear that they, at any second, will be wrecked?

Sunday's Mets-Yankees game was a case in point. Before the top of the second had ended, Morgan, yet another analyst whose expertise seems based in fractured guesswork (and in the hope that we won't know any better), was taking us down Baloney Boulevard.

The bottom of the first ended with a double play. The Yanks had first and second, one out, when Alex Rodriguez flied to deep center. Both runners (Derek Jeter at second and Jason Giambi at first) tagged up. But Giambi, trying to get back to first, fell and was called out.

The call, made from afar by the second-base ump, seemed a bad one. Giambi appeared to have beaten the tag. A close call, but the wrong one. That's all. Carry on.

But come the top of the second, Morgan began a spiel claiming the bad call was the result of "a bad rotation," i.e., the umpires rotated to the wrong base, starting with the first-base ump, who followed the play into the outfield.

Morgan even used a Telestrator.

And it was complete nonsense. Or were we to believe that at least two umps saw the fly ball, then, in unison and despite all previous training, headed in the wrong direction?

The umps were where they logically belonged in anticipation of a standard result: a play at second and/or third. A play at first, under such circumstances, would be unusual.

That a bad call was made from a bad angle because, according to Morgan's firm analysis, the umps were "out of position" and involved in "a bad rotation" was absurd. The call was the result of the umps being unable to reasonably anticipate that Giambi would fall between first and second.

That's all.

But on ESPN, a national audience got an earful of voodoo analysis - again.