Rob Refsnyder was out, then he wasn’t out, then he was the reason we won. Most guys only get to be one thing at a time.
Mariners at Cardinals
Three games in St. Louis. Three wins. And the last one was the ugliest beautiful win you’ll see all year. Zero walks. Eight hits. Twelve strikeouts. The Mariners had no business winning this game. Hancock gave up two solo shots and left after six. The bullpen came in and did the thing bullpens are supposed to do but almost never actually do - three scoreless innings, no drama, just zeros.
JJ Wetherholt hit one homer. Cal Raleigh hit one homer. Nathan Church hit one homer. Cole Young got one hit at the right time. Every person in this game had exactly one job and every one of them did it.
And then in the ninth, Refsnyder - a pinch hitter, a guy not even in the starting lineup - challenged a called third strike, got the call flipped, and deposited the next pitch into the seats. I’ve been watching baseball a long time and I have never seen a man rise from the grave and immediately do the best thing he’s ever done. Usually when you come back from the dead you’re groggy. You’re disoriented. You don’t hit a go-ahead homer in the ninth. But Refsnyder is built different, I guess, in that he does not accept death.
Jose Ferrer came in and retired the side in order for his first career save. The whole thing took two hours and thirty-six minutes. Nobody walked. Nobody stayed a second longer than they needed to.
THE NUMBER: 0 Walks Drawn in a Win
That’s how many walks the Mariners drew last night. Zero. None. Not a one. They won 3-2 anyway. Most teams consider a walk a good thing. The Mariners have apparently decided they don’t need charity. They would rather strike out twelve times and hit two home runs than take a free base. It’s a principled stance. Stupid, but principled.
The analytics department had to watch that with the same face as a nutritionist watching someone eat a gas station hot dog and run a 4.3 forty.
THE REF REPORT: Four Overturned Calls During Mariners At-Bats
Imagine having a job where you make a definitive ruling on something, everyone reacts to that ruling, and then three seconds later a computer publicly tells 30,780 people you were wrong. Now imagine that happening four times in one night. That was the home plate umpire in St. Louis. Four ball-strike challenges overturned during Mariners at-bats. The biggest one was Refsnyder in the ninth - called strike three, challenge successful, home run on the next pitch. The ump ended that at-bat. The system un-ended it. The Mariners won by one run.
The umpire ended the game in the ninth inning. Then the game came back. Then the guy he pronounced dead hit a home run. The ump had to stand at home plate and watch a ghost touch every base.
This is the reality now - we have umpires calling games and robots grading their homework in real time, and the robots keep giving them F’s.
Somewhere tonight there’s an umpire lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, knowing he ended a game that hadn’t actually ended yet.
Bobby Bunt