Aledmys Díaz Runs Into One (With His Elbow)

Some kids dream about playing in the World Series and getting the big hit. Fewer kids, one imagines, dream about playing in the World Series and taking the big hit, but that small group might include Aledmys Díaz.

In Game 1 of the World Series, Díaz came to the plate with two on in the bottom of the 10th inning. After a wild pitch moved both runners into scoring position, David Robertson hung a curveball high and inside, and Díaz did his best to thrust his shoulder into the path of the ball, barely missing. The next pitch wasn’t a hanger, but that didn’t stop Díaz from sticking his Kevlar-covered elbow into the ball and trotting off toward first base.

Robertson gestured toward the plate with his palm raised like a Shakespearean actor who forgot to bring his skull to work that day, and home plate umpire James Hoye didn’t hesitate to take center stage. Hoye delivered his ruling with eloquence and bravado, and his soliloquy was so very close to being in iambic pentameter:

“No wait! Time out, time out, stay here.
Stay here, you f***ing leaned right into it.”

Díaz protested, albeit weakly, pretending that he had no idea what Hoye was talking about for roughly one quarter of a second before looking stage left to the Houston dugout as if to ask whether anyone there could spare him the embarrassment of trying to get on base the old fashioned way. No one on the Astros’ side of things raised a fuss, presumably because Díaz was so clearly determined to wear the pitch:

Of course, this wasn’t the first time this season that a hit batsman didn’t get to trot to first base. In August, Anthony Rizzo seemed to swerve his hips into a Ryan Yarbrough breaking ball. Umpire D.J. Reyburn called the pitch a ball and kept him at the plate. Rizzo ended up striking out, and handled the situation with equanimity:

On Friday night, however, Robertson was looking for more. He wanted Hoye to call the pitch a strike. It wouldn’t have been the worst strike call of the evening, but Statcast shows that it was off the plate by a micron or two. If allowed to travel a few more inches, it might have curved the extra Planck length or so that it needed to graze the zone:

Watching this take place, I wondered how often players had been hit by pitches that were actually in the strike zone. After all, Díaz is far from the only player with a wandering elbow. Here’s Joey Votto doing some deep knee bends that just so happen to put his elbow guard in a convenient location:

In fact, Votto often finds himself in the way of the ball. Here he is in June, sticking his hands directly into the zone, then launching an 80-grade F-bomb when the pitcher has the nerve to throw the ball there:

Amazingly, it turns out that this isn’t a particularly uncommon occurrence. In the last 10 years, players have been awarded first base on pitches that were actually in the strike zone 27 times, including twice in the playoffs. As you might expect, the top of the leaderboard consists of gritty, glove-first players who need all the help they can get to reach first base.

That’s right, Victor Robles and Danny Espinosa have both done it three times each, meaning the Nationals make up 22% of all batters struck by strikes. Call it cosmic justice for 2015, when Jose Tabata elbow dropped Max Sherzer’s would-be perfect game with two outs in the bottom of the ninth.

Nobody seems to mind when this happens on pitches that should have been strikes. Sometimes the batter has to inform the umpire that it was a hit by pitch rather than a foul ball. He usually sticks his elbow out for the umpire to see, like a kid waiting for his parent to put a Band-Aid on it, and everyone goes about their business:

If the batter has the extreme misfortune of getting hit on the hand, he’ll jump around in pain and the umpire will point to his own hand, making the universal signal for “This is where the ouchie happened”:

Of course, it’s more fun when people react to the absurdity of the situation. Here’s Cal Raleigh arguing in vain with the umpire while the the strike zone graphic on the screen makes his case quite eloquently all by itself. The Cleveland broadcast team is too engrossed in conversation to even notice that the play took place:

This, meanwhile, one has a little bit of everything, and also took place during a playoff game. Espinosa gets his elbow into the ball by hunching over like an old man using a walking stick. Kenta Maeda bends back at the waist, then laughs politely. Yasmani Grandal, as is his wont, frames the pitch beautifully. When the umpire doesn’t get the message that way, Grandal calmly puts it into words, “It’s right over the plate.” He even gestures helpfully toward the plate, to make sure the umpire knows where it is:

This pitch to Derek Dietrich isn’t even particularly close to the edge of the strike zone. Dietrich has a well-documented history of using his elbow to get on base. The Marlins broadcast team can’t keep from laughing as he jogs to first. Watch the catcher here, just like Grandal, attempting to frame a pitch that doesn’t remotely need it:

That’s not the most egregious case, though. In August of 2019, Justin Verlander was well and truly robbed. With a full count on Austin Meadows, he threw a beautiful back-foot curveball. The perfectly placed pitch nicked the corner of the zone and kept on curving. Meadows checked his swing, but went far enough in the process to squish the bug with his back foot, lifting his heel right into the path of the ball:

Everyone was confused. Verlander wasn’t sure whom the pitch had actually hit, asking, “Who’s that off?” The Astros broadcast thought it was a foul ball, while the Rays broadcast thought it was ball four. It never occurred to anybody to wonder whether it should’ve been strike three.

The most controversial of these plays happened in April of last year. With the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth, Anthony Bass threw an inside slider to Michael Conforto. Umpire Ron Kulpa started to ring Conforto up for strike three, then he stopped, tapped his forearm, and sent Conforto to first base, ending the game. Both pitcher and catcher put their arms out as if they were about to start doing the YMCA:

The Marlins challenged the call, but the rule allows teams to challenge only whether the ball hit the batter, not whether he dove into it or whether it was a strike. After the game, Kulpa told reporters, “I should have called him out,” performing the exceedingly rare Kulpa culpa:

I only managed to find one instance of an umpire calling the batter back to the plate and actually calling a strike. There must be more, but it’s a difficult thing to search for, as it goes down in the scorebook as just another called strike. If you know of any others, please drop them in the comments. This one took place in August of 2020, under the watchful eyes of several thousand cardboard cutouts. Jesse Winker worked a full count off of Andrew Miller before deciding that enough was enough and elbowing a tight slider. In just his fifth career game behind the plate, umpire Jose Navas didn’t hesitate to call Winker out on strikes. He also managed to defuse the situation without tossing Winker or manager David Bell:

There’s an extended clip that’s worth watching just to hear Winker say, “What!” at roughly three octaves above his normal speaking voice. He sounds a bit like a Chihuahua. Interestingly, Statcast classifies the pitch as a ball even though its pitch chart says otherwise:

As Friday night’s call was undoubtedly the correct one, it seems fitting to end with another situation where the umpire got things right. Naturally, we’ll turn to Angel Hernandez. On July 24, Manny Machado took a Drew Smith changeup to the hand. The home plate umpire awarded first to Machado, but Hernandez correctly ruled that Machado had gone around, and thus had struck out. After saying, “No way,” Machado shouted, “Angel!” which is truly one of the funniest words that you can shout at someone in anger.

The various player reactions are what made this piece fun to research and to write. Batters jog smugly to first after explaining to the umpire that the ball gave their elbow the faintest butterfly kiss. Pitchers shout and gesticulate, or laugh at something they don’t actually find remotely funny. Catchers go from framing the pitch to arguing, or just reaching back resignedly for a new ball. A surprising number of players just keep on going as if nothing happened, never even seeming to notice that they’ve been robbed. Sometimes, though, there’s only one appropriate response: