What do you get when you combine horrible umpiring with horrible relief pitching?

You get the Rangers being able to overcome the second coming of Angel Hernandez and a 4-3 Yankees lead.

Neither was easy.

After being the team last years with the leaky bullpen and propensity for blown saves, it’s comforting to be playing that team.

The Yankees have a bullpen problem this season like the Rangers had last season. Yankees closer Clay Holmes blew his eleventh save last night.

He entered the bottom of the ninth with a 4-3 lead. Even with the home plate umpire calling pitches that were six inches wide strikes, Holmes and the Yankees could not hang on to the lead. Home plate umpire Mark Wegner tried to give it to the Yankees. He really tried.In the bottom of the eighth, with the Rangers already cutting the lead to 4-3, they had runners on second and third with two outs and Jonah Heim pinch hitting. He was struck out on four pitches, not one was in the same zip code as the strike zone.

If Mark Wegner’s ball/strike calls were bad there, it was about to get worse. 

With bases loaded and one out in the bottom of the ninth, it was Wyatt Langford’s term to be the victim of Stevie Wonder behind the plate.

The first pitch was at least six inches high. Strike one. The next pitch was about eight inches wide. But that had been called a strike before. Luckily for Langford, the umpire called it a ball. 

Pitch three hit the ground. Mark Wegner flinched but didn’t call it a strike.  

Pitch four was four inches wide. It was called a strike. 

So, Langford had seen four pitches, not one was close to the zone. Yet he was 2-2. Luckily, pitch five was so far out of the strike zone the even Mark Wegner couldn’t screw it up. 

Ball five. But the count was 3-2. 

Langford had had enough. Once Holmes finally threw one in the strike zone, he deposited it into the left field seats for a game-winning walk-off grand slam.

As the ball landed in a fan’s glove in left field, Mark Wegner motioned strike three. 

*****  
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