Padres Hurler Flames Umpire For Series-Altering Call In Final Days Before ABS

Facing Cubs right-hander Brad Keller right after the home run, Bogaerts took a called strike three on a pitch that was, well, not a strike. Home-plate umpire D.J. Reyburn motioned for the punchout on a ball several inches below the bottom of the computerized zone on television screens across the globe, as Bogaerts strolled out of the box thinking he had himself a hard-earned walk.

Just about everyone on the Padres was livid, even resulting in a brief confrontation after the game beetween players and coaches and the umpires as they were exiting the field. And one player, pitcher Nestor Cortes, even took to social media with a furious gripe.

"It’s an umpires game. The spotlight goes to the umpires," Cortes wrote. "The sad part about that call is that they will say it’s their buffer zone."

Cortes refers at the end to the way MLB grades its umpires, in which they are not penalized for a call that is technically incorrect, but comes close enough (nowadays, within 3/4 of an inch) to being correct.

Bogaerts, meanwhile, echoed what everyone was thinking in his comments after the game.

“You can’t go back in time, and talking about it now won’t change anything,” Bogaerts said, per AJ Cassavell of MLB.com. “But it was bad. Thank god for ABS next year.”

The whole incident only underscored how necessary ABS implementation was, because when the entire world can see that a team just got jobbed, it only hurts the product of the league as a whole.

And while the change that's coming is both positive and necessary, it will always hurt the Padres and their fans to know they were potentially the last parties to get hosed by the old-school system.

More MLB: 3 Surprisingly Big Names You Didn't Know Just Became MLB Free Agents