The Minnesota Twins won so it’s all fine now, but the performance of the umpires during the Wild Card series against the Toronto Blue Jays may have cost the Twins a run in both games.
That’s according to Umpire Scorecards, the analytics service that ranks umpire performance for every MLB game.
In its analysis of the series at Target Field, Umpire Scorecards say that bad strike zone calls from home plate umpire Andy Fletcher in Game 1 gave a potential 1.46 run advantage to the Blue Jays.
In Game 2, errors made by home plate ump Adam Hamari gave the Jays a 0.96 run advantage.
Game 1 had a strike accuracy of just 88%, the service claims, and the key error was Eduoard Julien being called out on a full count with the Twins having runners on first and second in the bottom of the second.
Had a ball been called, the bases would have been loaded for Jorge Polanco, who ended up hitting a deep fly to right to end the inning. While we can’t speculate as to what the following play would have been had Julien walked, the Twins would have had a chance of a sac fly at least.
Hamari was more accurate in Game 2, but still made error that could have proven hugely beneficial to the Blue Jays.
The most impactful missed call came in the top of the 1st inning, when a Sonny Gray 2-2 pitch to Cavan Biggio was called a ball instead of strike with two outs and runners on first and second.
Biggio could have gone on to load the bases or get a hit that would likely have scored a runner. Fortunately he fouled the next pitch and then struck out on a sweeper.
Of the six most impactful errors in both games, four benefited the Blue Jays and two the Twins.
No game in the three other Wild Card series came close to having as many potentially significant errors as the Twins-Blue Jays, with the next highest being a 0.63 run advantage to the Phillies in its 7-1 win over the Miami Marlins on Wednesday.
Here’s hoping for better performance from the umps in the Astros series, or at least a bad performance that benefits the Twins…
