The Twins evened the American League Divisional Series with the Astros 1-1 despite a few errant calls from the home plate umpire on Sunday night.
According to analytical service Umpire Scorecards, home plate umpire D.J. Reyburn had an overall accuracy Sunday night of 92 percent with and an overall consistency of 92 percent. Reyburn’s 91 percent called ball accuracy and 94 percent called strike accuracy leaned in the Astros’ favor, creating .77 runs for Houston in the 6-2 Twins win.
Umpire: D.J. Reyburn
Final: Twins 6, Astros 2#MNTwins // #Ready2Reign#MINvsHOU // #HOUvsMIN#PostseasonMore stats for this game 👇https://t.co/L6XVRANM98 pic.twitter.com/8pcH5HaCM0
— Umpire Scorecards (@UmpScorecards) October 9, 2023
The scorecard lists the three most impactful missed calls, two going against Minnesota and one against Houston. The missed strike to Royce Lewis in the top of the fifth was the second most impactful call and went in the Twins’ favor. Lewis ended up drawing a walk, loading the bases for Correa who drove in two with a single to center field.
Reyburn had two consecutive missed balls against the Twins in the top of the seventh that come in as moments Nos. 1 and 3 on the scorecard. The biggest miss was on the called third strike to Willi Castro with one out and the bases loaded. Astros pitcher Rafael Montero missed high on a 2-2 count, Castro didn’t swing but was rung up. With the very next pitch, Reyburn called a strike on a pitch to the very same spot. Despite the poor first call of the at-bat, Eddy Julien ended up driving in the Twins’ sixth run.
This, of course, isn’t the lone unfavorable performance from an umpire towards the Twins in this series or this postseason. No, in fact, it’s happened in every single game the Twins have played.
Twitter user @Suederade put together a list (below) of all the Umpire Scorecards from every postseason game so far and the Twins have been on the disadvantaged side of each of the top three games and four of the top six.
The overall disadvantage the Twins have faced accumulates to a 3.62 runs created for opposing teams. That’s over four times more runs created for opposing teams than the next closest team in the postseason.
Despite all of the unfavorable umpire performances this October the Twins are even with the Astros and have recorded more postseason wins in the past week than they had over the past 20 seasons combined.
Minnesota and Houston are at Target Field for Game 3 at 3:07 p.m. CT Tuesday.
