Thursday night, the Los Angeles Dodgers punched their ticket to the NLCS with an improbable 11-inning win over the Philadelphia Phillies (LA 2, PHI 1). Righty Orion Kerkering, in a moment of panic, airmailed a throw to the plate when he had likely had time to get the force out at first base and end the inning. It is the second playoff series-ending walk-off error in baseball history.
“I won’t say the pressure got to me, I just thought it was a faster throw (home) than trying to crossbody it to (first). Just a horseshit throw,” Kerkering said.
Four innings before Kerkering’s error, the Dodgers rallied to tie Game 4 when closer Jhoan Duran walked Mookie Betts with the bases loaded and two outs in the seventh. That immediately followed a Shohei Ohtani intentional walk. The game-tying rally started when lefty Cristopher Sánchez walked No. 7 hitter Alex Call with one out, then things spiraled from there.
Call should have struck out though. Home plate umpire Mark Wegner missed Sánchez’s 2-2 pitch, calling it a ball to extend the at-bat when it should have been a strike. Here is the pitch in question. It clipped the corner according to both the eye test and Statcast.
Get that call and it’s strike three, and there are two outs and the bases empty. Sánchez then has a chance to get through seven innings before Duran could come in for a two-out save. Instead, Wegner missed what should have been strike three, and Call walked on the next pitch. It was a bad enough miss that Wegner apologized to Sánchez after the game.
“He knows he missed it because he told me and he apologized to me,” Sánchez said (via NBC Sports Philadelphia). “But a lot of pressure, important game, important situation, you can’t miss those things. You can’t miss those calls. I get it with the added pressure and all, but the pitch was a strike. So that’s going to stick in the back of his mind, there.”
I wouldn’t call it common, but it is not unheard of for umpires to apologize to players about a missed call. Umpires are human. Mistakes happen, and most are willing to own up to them. The ABS challenge system will be in place starting next season, so mistakes like that will be less costly, but for now, they happen, and it happened at a crucial time in Game 4.
Ultimately, the Phillies lost Game 4 because they scored one run in 11 innings. Wegner’s missed call was bad and Kerkering’s error was worse, but one run is rarely going to cut it in a win-or-go-home game. The Phillies will now head into the offseason again trying to figure out how to get over the hump.
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