Umpire Gabe Morales changed the Dodgers-Giants outcome when he called a check swing out — and then he gave the worse explanation for doing so.
No fan ever wants their season to end on a controversial play call — especially when your team was sincerely robbed of their World Series hopes for something that didn’t happen.
For Giants fans, that’s exactly how Game 5 ended: on a check swing that was erroneously called a strike.
“It was a questionable call at best in real time but a replay quickly revealed that the call was absolutely horrendously wrong,” wrote FanSided’s Josh Hill following the game.
The game ended 2-1 with the Dodgers continuing onward to NLCS Game 1, where the Los Angeles Team will face the Atlanta Braves on Oct. 16.
#ResilientSF will have to live up to their hashtag to cope with this one — but an answer from the ump himself would at least explain why their season ended so cruelly.
That’s not what Giants fans got when umpire Gabe Morales attempted to explain what he was thinking.
When crew chief Ted Barrett was asked if he still thought Morales made the right call, he answered, “Yeah, no, we, yeah, yeah, he doesn’t want to say.”
Umpire Gabe Morales offers worst explanation to calling a check swing to send the Dodgers-Giants series
It’s a brutal ending to what has been a historic and unprecedented season for the Giants. Playing in one of baseball’s most competitive divisions with the Dodgers and the Padres, the Giants were expected to be a few years away from a legitimate playoff run. Instead, the San Francisco team won the division, topping the Dodgers’s 106 wins. The Giants’ 107-55 record became a franchise best and is one of the best regular season win records in MLB history.
This postseason also marks the first time a baseball team with 107 wins has not advanced to the World Series. Four teams have finished their seasons with exactly 107 wins, and two of those teams won the World Series: the 1907 Chicago Cubs and the 1932 New York Yankees.
But two teams ultimately checked out early like the Giants did: the 1931 Philadelphia Athletics and, more recently, the 2019 Houston Astros.
Still, all these teams had a chance at the championship crown. All San Francisco can do now is sit and wait until 2022.