Two Bad Challenge Decisions Cost the Cubs in Series Opener Against Padres

[Matthew Trueblood]

Image courtesy of © Denis Poroy-Imagn Images

In defense of Matthew Boyd and Moisés Ballesteros, neither was put in a position to succeed on Monday night. Craig Counsell tried to force-fit his young designated hitter into the extremely valuable defensive position he played in the minors, but Ballesteros is a poor receiver—a poor defender behind the plate, in general. He's still young enough to dream on him eventually developing as a catcher, if that's what the team wanted to most, but what the team wants most is to win in 2026, so they have him in the majors, where he can be a key cog in their lineup. Ballesteros is a star-caliber hitter, so the team decided it would be an untenable waste to send him to Triple-A Iowa to start the season.

That was a right and reasonable choice, but it came with a cost. Ballesteros isn't a big-league catcher right now, and has no business catching for a team that wants to win games. He doesn't inspire confidence in his pitchers with the way he receives pitches, calls the game, blocks pitches in the dirt or handles the running game. The team is trying to find reps for him behind the plate so that they don't have to entirely let go of the glimmer, but each time they do so, it hurts the team.

Pairing Ballesteros with Boyd to form the battery Monday night was especially peculiar. Boyd lives at the edges of the zone and succeeds with contrasts in movement and speed. He's not strictly reliant on piling up called strikes, but he needs opposing batters to be antsy in the box. He needs them to feel defensive about the zone, and he needs them to be off-balance. Putting a rookie who struggles with every aspect of the defensive art of catching made it unlikely that Boyd would have a good night; putting Ballesteros behind the plate made it unlikely that he would have a good one.

The trouble began in the bottom of the first. Boyd missed inside with his fourth pitch of the day, to the Padres' Ramón Laureano, and immediately, he tapped the bill of his cap to challenge it. He knew he was wrong almost right away, but you can't take back a challenge once you issue one. 

Boyd's regret was obvious. He was flustered by an inability to locate the way he wanted to in the first at-bat of the game, and any pitcher is still burning off some pent-up adrenaline for the first handful of pitches in a game. Further frustrated by his folly, Boyd lost Laureano on the next pitch. One batter later, he laid a 1-0 fastball so nicely in the middle of the zone to Jackson Merrill that he was lucky only to surrender an RBI single. He never really settled in. With a chance to escape a major jam having surrendered just that one run, he made a mistake to Ty France (an excellent clutch hitter), and it became a 3-0 game.

Ballesteros did what he does best in the top of the third, though, changing the game with one fell stroke. The bases were loaded, and Padres starter Randy Vásquez tried to crowd Ballesteros with his a cutterish slider. He failed, because Ballesteros is a short guy with short levers who stands way off the plate. Come to think of it, trying to attack him there was foolish, anyway. Ballesteros launched a grand slam to right field to thrust the Cubs into the lead.

But he was quickly put back into his place, and the Cubs with him. Boyd allowed a double by Manny Machado and a single by Xander Bogaerts with one out in the third. Machado had to hold at third on the Bogaerts hit, so there was hope to avoid giving up a run, but on a 1-1 pitch to Miguel Andujar, Boyd missed with a backdoor curveball. It wasn't that close a miss, just as the pitch in the first hadn't been that close. Because he felt like his pitcher had executed his pitch (and perhaps misjudged his own position when he caught the ball), though, Ballesteros challenged again. The Cubs were thwarted, and that left them out of challenges for the rest of the game.

Ballesteros's bad decision—the pitch wasn't high-leverage enough to challenge unless Ballesteros were about 69% confident of an overturn. Given the location of the pitch, it was a coin flip. In trying to bail out his struggling starter, he put the team behind the 8-ball, instead.

The Padres would score just once in the third, but in the fifth, they chased Boyd immediately, with a Machado double. Ben Brown came on and collected two quick, harmless outs—and he should have had the third, with the lead intact. Unfortunately, home plate umpire Dan Merzel missed on what should clearly have been strike three to France.

It's not Merzel's fault. Brown missed his spot badly, and Ballesteros (too small to reach subtly on a ball like this) made it look like a bad pitch. More importantly, though, the Cubs had questioned him on two previous occasions on which he was right, so they'd lost the right to challenge. That's not on him; it's on Boyd and Ballesteros. Brown, coming in for his share of blame, then walked France on a non-competitive pitch. On a 1-2 count to Nick Castellanos, he lost focus on France, who stole second—a process made much easier by Ballesteros choosing to appeal for a check-swing strike instead of throwing through against one of the slowest players in baseball. (Castellanos didn't go around.)

On a two-run Castellanos single, the Padres retook the lead, for good. Along the way, they had one more real chance to flip the script again. In the top of the seventh, Pete Crow-Armstrong drew a leadoff walk. He stole second and advanced on a convoluted fielder's choice, so he carried the tying run at third base with one out. Michael Busch went down on strikes, though, which left it up to Alex Bregman. Here's a visual look at that showdown, between Bregman and Padres reliever Jason Adam.

Each of the first two pitches of the showdown were sliders just off the outer edge of the plate. Merzel called the first one a strike. It was pretty clear Bregman knew it wasn't one, but he had no recourse. When Adam repeated his pitch type and location, Bregman had no choice but to swing, but he came up empty. He battled from there, a little, but the Cubs' best chance to level things went by the wayside because they couldn't challenge a call.

Ballesteros is a bad framer, but he did well with the ABS system last year at Iowa. Boyd is a savvy veteran who knows better than to challenge a pitch himself, especially in that early situation. Because each slipped just a little bit, though, a game got away from the team Monday night. It was a brutal way to lose a game, not least because Ballesteros being installed behind the plate in the first place seemed to set all the wheels of it in motion. The Cubs got too cute in a game against a good team. They'll have to be smarter, as well as better, to rebound and take the series.

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[Arlen]

Get rid of this silly process and give us straight machine B/S calls. We don't need umps calling and we don't need "pitch framing."

[Matthew Trueblood]

1 hour ago, Arlen said:

Get rid of this silly process and give us straight machine B/S calls. We don't need umps calling and we don't need "pitch framing."

Yes we do.

[Ruxskull]

I’m with Arlen. The ABS works. It is fast and simple.

And accurate. 

This new tactical aspect of the game in saving your challenges or losing them and then having no recourse later is not good. There is a strong case that losing the challenges widens the strike zone. that’s a problem. 

Easy fix. Use ABS all the time. 

MLB can get it right for every plate appearance instead of the two challenge approach. 

Edit addition: I get using Ballesteros from time to time, but why with Boyd? Isn’t that on the manager? 

Edited 3 hours ago by Ruxskull

[mul21]

4 hours ago, Matthew Trueblood said:

Yes we do.

What's the justification?  To make the umps feel better?  It's absolutely silly to rely on human beings (in this particular instance) when the computer can do a 100% accurate job and it will take no more time than it does now.  The Cubs probably lost that game last night because of a bad umpire, not because they challenged at the wrong time.

[Jason Ross]

10 minutes ago, mul21 said:

What's the justification?  To make the umps feel better?  It's absolutely silly to rely on human beings (in this particular instance) when the computer can do a 100% accurate job and it will take no more time than it does now.  The Cubs probably lost that game last night because of a bad umpire, not because they challenged at the wrong time.

I'll agree with you on part of this and disagree with you on others. First, I do think a full ABS is the way to go eventually. I'm okay with a slow-roll out. The challenge system allows us all to get used to the new zone, the hitters and pitchers to get used to the zone, fans to get used to the fractional calls...I think it's fine. In fact, I'd be okay with it taking a year or two yet. But I do think we need to get to a full roll out. There is no reason not to be accurate. Rules are rules, and I don't really think the idea of cheating the umpire is charming or anything, myself. 

I will say this: the Cubs lost because the Cubs lost last night. You give up nine runs, that's on you, ultimately. Even if the calls went against you. I'm a big believer that if you leave the game up to chance like that, it's your fault on the back end.

But yeah, let's make the game by the rules. I've played a lot of baseball. A lot of baseball in my life. If we have a way to ensure objective rules every time, there's no reason not to, IMO.

[mul21]

23 minutes ago, Jason Ross said:

I will say this: the Cubs lost because the Cubs lost last night. You give up nine runs, that's on you, ultimately. Even if the calls went against you. I'm a big believer that if you leave the game up to chance like that, it's your fault on the back end.

That's the thing though, it wasn't chance.  Ben Brown threw an obvious strike 3 to the batter, the umpire missed the call and then he gave up a couple of runs.  There wasn't chance involved, it was the umpire doing his job poorly.

[Jason Ross]

23 minutes ago, mul21 said:

That's the thing though, it wasn't chance.  Ben Brown threw an obvious strike 3 to the batter, the umpire missed the call and then he gave up a couple of runs.  There wasn't chance involved, it was the umpire doing his job poorly.

There's always another pitch. The Cubs had a runner on third in the 7th with one out who didn't score. They had a runner on in the 9th. France's hit came well after that. There's always another chance. 

The Cubs weren't helped at all by the umpire. I'm not going to let the umpire entirely off the hook. But there are 9 innings of baseball. When you lose a game 9-7, you had more than a single chance and if you leave it up to an umpire...you deserve your outcome. 

I'm with you; we should move to a situation where an umpire doesn't play a role if we have the tech to make it not happen. But last night the Cubs lost a baseball game and I'll blame the team for losing before an umpire.