Ask any umpire and they will tell you a good night at the ballpark is when your name is only called one on the broadcast when you're announced.
The name of Sunday’s home plate umpire in the Astros’ 6-5 loss to the Red Sox was well known by game’s end. That umpire Greg Gibson.
Gibson capped off his terrible night calling balls and strikes by ejecting Yuli Gurriel in the eighth inning after Gurriel struck out after not swinging the bat at any pitch. The worst part was strike three required Gurriel to jump out of the way before Gibson rung him up.
Gibson ejected Gurriel after he kicked dirt and his helmet after the at-bat. The strikeout basically ended the game for Houston with their last scoring chance snuffed out.
Bad call pic.twitter.com/fwRJ8wFvZO
— D-Texan (@dtexanz) June 19, 2017
The worst part about it all was all three strikes could have been easily called balls from the statcast graphic.
Since some of you asked, here’s that full Yuli Gurriel strikeout chart from the eighth inning: pic.twitter.com/LjqPdmr4PN
— Christian Boutwell (@_CBoutwell) June 19, 2017
Hanley Ramirez and Carlos Beltran were both rung up on called strike threes earlier in the game. Both players clearly were unhappy with the calls and stand has benchmarks for Gibson’s struggles behind the plate on Sunday.
I understand umpires can have off nights. The main problem I had with Gibson is ejecting Gurriel when he basically let Hanley Ramirez berate him for 10 seconds before the former Rookie-of-Year and three-time all-star walked to the dugout. If you’re going eject people, at least be constant with ejecting people for “showing you up” not just players that kick helmets.