There’s absolutely no question that Detroit Tigers pitcher Justin Verlander is one of the better pitchers in Major League Baseball, yet over the past two postseasons he’s been given generous strike zones by Jim Reynolds who reportedly blew at least 10 calls in game one of their 2012 series against the Oakland Athletics and tonight in game for the Tigers pitcher got assistance from Tom Hallion.
Making it easy to see why the former Cy Young Award Winner and American League MVP has not allowed a run to the A’s in 31 innings and in that time frame he’s struck out 43 while walking seven and lowered his era to a minuscule .29. Interestingly enough all other starts in the playoffs including one against Oakland he actually has an era of 5.32 while walking 21 and striking out 55.
Hallion for the most part didn’t give Sonny Gray the same zone and most of the time those pitches that Verlander got weren’t called strikes. It’s one thing for an umpire to have a generous zone for both pitchers and it’s an entirely different story when one is getting favored.
If the strike zone had been more consistent the only thing that would have benefited the A’s offense is that Jim Leyland may have gone to the bullpen sooner. It took until the sixth inning for Oakland to get their first base runner a walk to Josh Reddick, the seventh their first hit of the night a single by Yoenis Cespedes. To lead off the bottom of the eight Brandon Moss appeared to get on base via the walk by Verlander thought it wasn’t the case the pitch well off the plate got called a strike and he wound up striking out.
To close the series out Leyland went to Joaquin Benoit to face the top of the order for the A’s. Coco Crisp who had been hot to start the night took ball one, he then took the next pitch which was high and outside, yet there came the strike call from Hallion changing the complexion of the at-bat instead of being ahead 2-0 the count evened up and he got forced to swing at pitches he normally wouldn’t have gone after resulting in a ground out. Josh Donaldson struck out before Jed Lowrie started a two out rally with a double.
After Benoit got ahead of Cespedes he hit him with a pitch to put runners at first and second with Seth Smith at the plate he got a pitch to hit just missed it and flew out to end the 2013 season for the A’s.
The Tigers offensively got two runs off of Gray in the fourth with a two-run home run by Miguel Cabrera and an additional run on a fielder’s choice, which nearly became an inning ending double play except that Donaldsonthrew low to second and Alberto Callaspo wasn’t able to catch the ball cleanly.
It’s just a shame that a season gets ended thanks to a favorable zone and the other team gets to move on.
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