The Houston Astros (42-25) made a perfect sweep against the Texas Rangers (27-41) on Sunday with an 8:7 win. A curious Balk decision by Umpire following a complaint from manager A.J. Hinch led to the decisive run in the ninth inning.
After both teams had fought a remarkable exchange of blows, it was 7:7 at the start of the ninth inning. For the Rangers, Keone pitched Kela, who faced Evan Gettis with runners on second and third base and two Outs Designated Hitter.
At the count of 1-2, Kela threw a ball that landed too low and outside the strike zone, while Gattis just broke off his swing. Nothing seemed to happen, but then Hinch went to Alfonso Marquez and argued that Kela had just committed a Balk. After a short meeting of the Umpire crew this Hinch agreed – Balk! As a result, both runners were allowed to move up a base and George Springer of the three scored the decisive run.
What had happened? Kela did not change his pitch movement, but the motion sequence was the problem: he essentially tried a quick pitch, so he went into the stretch position and basically fired the pitch towards the home plate without stopping beforehand. However, according to his conventional pitch movement, he should have calmed down noticeably before executing the pitch. He did not, which is why, in the sense of the rule, an attempt to deceive the base runners had to be assumed.
Rangers manager Jeff Banister saw this quite differently: “That was nothing, no Umpire decided on Balk,” said Banister, who was expelled from the field after his complaint. “My point was that I wasn’t aware that we could just come out and ask the Umpire to squat together and see how everyone saw the situation. “This is particularly disappointing considering we can’t argue against a Balk.”
The pitcher concerned, Kela, described the situation from his point of view: “I didn’t know exactly what was decided, but I’ve done this before. I’ve used the quick pitch a lot. So when I got into the set position, I thought I had made enough to stop and then did my pitch. But the Umpire thought that I hadn’t held the ball long enough.”
For the Astros, this was their fifth consecutive victory, while the Astros lost for the fourth time in a row.
This article was published without previous view by the Major League Baseball.