It’s safe to say that the whole “three strikes and your out” rule in baseball is pretty widely known – it’s even included the famous Take Me Out to the Ballgame song. But apparently, home plate umpire Jim Wolf was not aware, or simply lost count.
In the bottom of the third inning of Wednesday’s game between the Houston Astros and the Boston Red Sox, Boston pitcher Rich Hill threw three strikes to Yordan Alvarez of the Astros, which should have resulted in a strikeout – but nobody noticed.
Yordan Alvarez got four strikes in an at-bat and simply nobody noticed? pic.twitter.com/w1Rt2HeLeH
— Jomboy Media (@JomboyMedia) August 3, 2022
Facing a 1-0 count, Alvarez is called for strike one then hits a popup foul for strike two. Hill’s next pitch is a called strike up in the zone for what should have been strike three – but it wasn’t called. Instead, Hill threw one more pitch to Alvarez, who grounded out to first base.
Ultimately, the result wasn’t that different: Alverez was put out and there were no runners on base to be affected, but it’s still an embarrassing blunder, and the MLB world was not very forgiving.
Sheesh, how does this happen?! https://t.co/Mb9Hxl7Yef
— Brendan Gulick (@brendangulick22) August 3, 2022
Umps are just straight up awful. https://t.co/sUv1dEgHNr
— Jake Wallman (@JakeWallman__) August 3, 2022
Yordan noticed! 😂 https://t.co/QNKHzfzJkO
— Matt Bomeisl (@RealMattyBo) August 3, 2022
its so hard to take baseball seriously as a sport sometimes 😂😂 https://t.co/XzkAuXNZm5
— Eric 🍥 (@dr4zah) August 3, 2022
How did Boston not notice this? Lol https://t.co/OfnvGAHoLd
— Artie (@ArtieMo21) August 3, 2022
https://twitter.com/RealJonalatte/status/1554934231981330432?s=20&t=VY93MOr9VToNcgvmMUjSUg
This is just the latest in a series of embarrassing MLB umpire failures. To make matters worse, Angel Hernandez was also on this crew, and he has now become infamous around the league for his mistakes.
