Balls and Strikes, Pt. 2

Once again the strike zone danced, and once again Ben Sheets was the loser. Seventy-seven of Scott Kazmir's 115 pitches were called for strikes, while 59 of Sheets' 89 pitches were. More importantly, 16 of Fernando Rodney's 19 pitches were called for strikes--and Greg Maddux he was not.

I don't know what it is, but some home plate umpires have some chip on their shoulder about the A's, and it's a real drag when you see a pitch go across the shins, sail outside, and be called a strike. One could understand if it had been worked up to--pitchers often work the corners and try to throw to places they can get strike calls that are hard or impossible to hit. But it wasn't as if Angels' pitchers finessed the zone--they were just given random gift calls, as if the home plate umpire were trying to send a message to A's hitters, and that's just unacceptable.

Especially because if anyone finessed the zone and threw a ton of strikes, it was Ben Sheets. He was tremendous, but he just wasn't getting the borderline calls. And Kazmir didn't look like he intended to be in the zone from the get-go, and got every single borderline pitch called a strike. That pitch that Bobby Abreu drilled to right was the perfect example of a pitch Ben Sheets felt he needed to throw because 1) he didn't get the calls and 2) Kouzmanoff botched his throw. And that was the difference in the game right there.

Look, Ben Sheets will be the first guy to say that bar none, the pitch he threw to Bobby Abreu 2-0 was a mistake, and that anything that happened before that shouldn't have mattered. But the difference between a 1-1 and 2-0 count is huge. The difference between 2-1 and 1-2 is huge. Those differences made a huge impact on the game, and were made capriciously by the home plate umpire as if they were trivial. A team expects a level playing field, and a level playing field it was not.