High Plate Stance

[Jim Porter]

Originally Posted by SanDiegoSteve

Then you missed the Padres/Devil Rays game Tuesday night. Phil Cuzzi was absolutely brutal, and missed many pitches for both teams. Both managers and players from both teams were chirping all night. He missed two pitches that would have been strike 3 (called them balls, pitch track showed them to be strikes) and caused Greg Maddux to react by walking off the mound muttering. He ended up walking 3 batters for the first time this season, and it was due to Phil Cuzzi's horrific, inconsistent strike zone.

The most brutal of these missed strike 3s caused Maddux to say something, so Cuzzi comes marching out to Maddux hollering at him. Maddux was great, he just turned around and walked toward 2nd base umpire Jerry Crawford, leaving Cuzzi to argue with himself.

Cuzzi's inconsistency, in my opinion, comes from hiding himself behind the catcher and working way too low.

Here are two video clips of the calls you're talking about.

In the first one, Maddux has a big reaction to Cuzzi's call off-camera.

The second one is the incident you talk about where Cuzzi comes out to confront Maddux -- but all Cuzzi says is, "Who are you mad at? Me or you?" Although it happens off-camera, Maddux responds that he's mad at himself. You can tell by Cuzzi's reaction.

All I have available to me is the Devil Rays' feed, and they don't use pitch tracking. So I don't have the San Diego Carl's Jr. Pitch Tracking for these clips.

Maddux/Cuzzi vid one

Maddux/Cuzzi vid two