The ninth half of Philadelphia Phyllis” 4-2 win Over the San Diego Padres In the third game of the National League Series Friday, a controversial reference call was punctuated against Gorikson Provar. With a runner at the start and no off, Provar started the show in full inside Fastball from Philly closest Seranthony Domínguez but tried to check his swing.
To the naked eye, he seemed to have succeeded, but third base referee Todd Tichenor summoned him. Provar was immediately enraged by the call, voiced his objections, and was expelled. Here is a look:
Now for some screenshots showing the barrel of a Profar racket at its farthest point of swinging (or not swinging, if you prefer):
And the:
To some extent, the MLB rulebook does not definitively define what is or is not a swing, and referees are left to make such calls based on judgment, and perhaps oral tradition. The referee is usually called a trapeze if the tip of the barrel goes beyond the front of the plate or the loose line. In the absence of an angle close to seeing Tichenor below that rotten third base line, we can’t say definitively whether the call was true or false based on the video and still images above. By anecdotal, most real-time observers seemed to believe it wasn’t a swing, but, again, we didn’t have a Tichenor angle on things.
“I thought it was really big. I thought I didn’t go. It had to be a picnic,” Provar told reporters afterwards.
What is indisputable is that the call, which turned Sir into a strike, significantly reduced Padres’ chances of returning. Had Provar walked, the Baders would have had 1st and 2nd place runners and no 4th place. The difference in these conditions averaged 1.51 points in those innings. Padres, of course, was less than twice. That combined with the fact that the Phillies would still hit in the lower half of the game in the event of a tie or a Padres lead means that San Diego, had Provar walked in, would have had a rather modest 23.47 percent chance of winning Game Three.
Things as they actually were after Tichenor’s call – one runner in the start and one – gave the Padres a 6.59% chance of winning game 3. Yes, they would have very likely lost anyway even if Profar had arrived, but they will. The probability of their return was almost four times greater. Perhaps pushing that number at 23.47 per cent higher given that Dominguez was in his second turn of the business and Provar’s arrival would have left him still needing the fourth, fifth and sixth periods of his night.
However, none of that happened, and Velez won 2-1 in a best-of-seven duel for the pennant. Tichenor’s call, which, again, may not have been wrong, did not directly lead to this result, but made it more likely.
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