Well, if you like offense and seeing players hit the ball, this was not the game for you. However, if you love a good pitching duel, or you were worried that you were going to be late to plans you had in the evening, this was absolutely the game for you.
Today at Wrigley Field, fans were treated to the ultimate pitcher duel between Chicago’s Shota Imanaga and Pittsburgh’s Bailey Falter.
Imanaga came into today sporting a 5-0 record and 0.96 ERA, both of which were Major League Baseball leaders. The Japanese star, who came over this season from the Nippon Baseball League in Japan this offseason, is technically a rookie by MLB standards and a leader in Rookie of the Year contention.
Bailey Falter, meanwhile, came into this game with a 2-2 record and a 4.15 ERA. He hasn’t been terrible this year, but he had some particular struggles on the road, where his ERA was much higher 6.63.
Any betting man would have put money on Imanaga having the better day, but Falter completely shut down the Cubs offense.
He went a career high 7.2 innings, allowing just 3 hits and 2 walks. Though his strikeout number was low, also at 2, he secured a ton of groundouts and flyouts to make for some incredibly efficient pitching.
To his credit, Imanaga had a stellar day at the office as well. He went 7 innings and allowed only 4 hits, with 7 strikeouts. His only walk came on the leadoff batter of the game.
The game flew by as Imanaga completely stalled the Pirate attack, but could only watch as Falter went out and did the very same thing.
After Imanaga reached 88 pitches to close out the seventh inning, the Cubs brought out Mark Leiter Jr. for the eighth inning, who struck out the side to a roar from the crowd.
Falter started the eighth inning, and secured two outs but got himself into a bit of trouble. Despite Falter still under Imanaga’s pitch count despite the extra work, Derek Shelton lifted him and brought out Colin Holderman.
Holderman walked his first batter to load the bases, but fought back to get the punchout on a 3-2 count.
Onto the ninth, Hector Neris secured quick outs (including back to back strikeouts), which left extra innings as the only hope for the Pirates to win this game.
*Sigh*
Now, we must talk about the…incident.
David Bednar comes on for the ninth. He secures a flyout by Seiya Suzuki for the first out. Then, Cody Bellinger hits a ground rule double to put the winning run in this scoreless game in scoring position.
On the next batter, Christopher Morel hits a single to center field. Michael A. Taylor charges to meet the ball, then fires an absolute cannon to home plate where catcher Joey Bart is hoping to tag out Bellinger.
Taylor’s throw was a little bit offline, but Bart was able to grab it and get back to the plate to tag Bellinger out on the leg…or so we thought.
In real time, it looked like the umpire was ready to call him out, but once he saw that Bart had dropped the ball, he instead ruled Bellinger safe.
But wait a second…why did Bart drop the ball?
Bellinger’s hand knocks it out of Bart’s grasp. Bart catches the ball in his glove, dives to make the tag, then takes the ball out of the glove with his free hand to show the umpire “hey look, I have the ball!” before Bellinger’s hand contacts his and jars it free.
It’s the same thing that every catcher is taught to do to show the umpire what call should be made. I truly don’t know whether Bellinger had intent to knock the ball free, and because I don’t know, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and say he wasn’t.
But intent is irrelevant in this case. Bart clearly makes the catch, and in every angle I have seen, makes the tag on Bellinger before Bellinger’s leg can touch the plate. He’s out.
The Pirates challenged the play, but upon review officials confirmed the call that was made. Bellinger is safe, Morel walks it off, and the Cubs win 1-0.
I’m going to sound like a homer here, but I truly do not understand that call. I just don’t get it. He’s out.
It marred what was an amazing pitching duel and overall a pretty good game despite the comically low score. It’s a shame that’s the way the game had to end, and I know I’m not alone in disagreeing with the call.
The postgame broadcast on SportsNet Pittsburgh discussed the topic at length. They all had the same reaction I did, and they even went a step further whn someone brought up the idea of protesting the results before it was uncovered that since 2021, teams can no longer do that.
Overall, a very highly controversial ending to a game, and one that I genuinely think the officials got wrong. It overshadowed a dominant performance by Falter, who had a career day today and showed a side of him we haven’t really seen before.
But there’s nothing left to do about it now. The Pirates wrap up their series in Chicago tomorrow at 2:20pm.
(Featured photo of Bailey Falter by Joe Sargent/Getty Images)
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