The San Francisco Giants shut out the Los Angeles Dodgers on Friday night in Game 1 of the NLDS, winning by a final score of 4-0.
To be more specific: Logan Webb, almost entirely on his own, shut out the Dodgers. He made it until deep into the seventh inning, allowing just five hits while striking out 10.
But it appears some vocal Dodgers fans were not as impressed with Webb’s performance, which they’re partially attributing to what they’ve deemed an unfair strike zone from home plate umpire Carlos Torres.
One such Dodgers fan, whose tweet quickly picked up lots of traction, took a screenshot of a pitch Webb threw that appears to be outside the strike zone but was called a strike. The caption on the tweet reads, “Not even close. MLB wants 5 games bad LMAO.”
First off, I’m gonna squash the conspiracy theories. There is nothing lamer than fans alleging MLB or whatever other sports league personally directed an umpire/ref to fix the game. That did not happen.
But did Torres have a subpar performance? Eh, sort of — though he wasn’t nearly as bad as a whole bunch of Dodgers fans have been implying, and it’s even harder to argue he irreparably harmed the outcome of the game.
Umpire Scorecards, as per usual, did the math here. Torres’ overall accuracy of 93% isn’t very good, it’s true. But his overall consistency was 99%, well above the league average. What that means in practice is his strike zone was crappy, but both sides had an entire game to figure that out, because he at least was sticking to that crappy strike zone.
Webb clearly deduced that he could get away with those low-and-outside pitches. The Dodgers had plentiful chances to do the same!
And ultimately, Umpire Scorecard tabulates, Torres’ calls worked out to an extra .73 runs for the Giants. That doesn’t make up for a 4-0 deficit, and any Dodgers fans who argue otherwise are reaaaaallly stretching it.
Game 2 on Saturday is rumored to feature the dreaded Angel Hernandez behind home plate. Dodgers fans are already terrified at the prospect, but for what it’s worth: Giants fans are too.
