As Aaron Gleeman recounts over on his blog, Phil Cuzzi, by now so familiar to Blue Jays fans, was at it again last night in Montreal. In the top of the ninth inning, home plate Cuzzi stopped calling strikes for Montreal's rookie closer Chad Cordero, and eventually cost them the game when his crew inexplicably turned an extra-inning foul ball by Luis Rivas into a home run, as the Expos surrendered a 4-2 lead to lose 5-4 in 11 innings.
The Blue Jays have had their run-ins with several umpiring crews recently as well (particularly last year, and Cuzzi's crew among them), as have a number of other teams. Eric Enders did a marvelous job in this entry over at Baseball Primer at looking at the now-infamous Milton Bradley incident, where umpire "Cowboy" Joe West did his best to ratchet up the situation rather than trying to defuse it.
Professionalism amongst MLB's umpiring crews is certainly at an all-time low - and frankly, for a couple of decades it hasn't been good. I'm at a loss to know what to do - firing them all isn't an option, and there are loads of good umpires out there, and probably good umpires stuck on bad crews. If I were Bud Selig, I would certainly appoint a committee to look into the current umpiring crisis. I'm not, but what I can do is appoint all of you to a committee and we can look into it ourselves.
What can we do with the umpires? How can umpiring be made better? Who's a good umpire, who's not and why? Are there any long-term solutions?
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