Those of you with lives as unregulated as mine may have caught my string of emails grilling MLB.com and its Gameday staff for getting the end of the Mariners-Blue Jays game wildly wrong. Here is that email thread, preserved here for the ages:
Ron Mock <rmock@georgefox.edu>
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Fri, Jul 8, 11:40 PM (11 hours ago)
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to Ryan, Phil, Jamie, Mark, John, Mark, Rob, Dave, dukedre23, Tom
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MLB is reporting the Blue Jays as winning 4 – 2 over the Mariners, on an 11th inning Cavan Biggio. But the M’s actually won the game 5 – 2 in the bottom of the 11th on a homer by Eugenio Suarez.
I know because I listened to the game. I have written two emails to MLB.com, but the staff has apparently gone home. They wrapped it up 18 minutes ago, apparently misunderstanding the call when Boggio flied out deep to center field? I don’t know how this happened.
Ryan scores some Rockies home games. This would be a nightmare, wouldn’t it Ryan? (I am not calling you to talk about it because it’s after midnight in Colorado. MLB runs its reporting from NY or someplace like that, right? So the game ended after 2 AM their time.
The MLB box score says the game ended at 11:18. It’s now 11:39. They still have the score 4 – 2 Toronto, but have Borucki winning and Romo losing. In their defense, Romo was a Mariner until very recently, and Borucki was a Blue Jay. They both got DFA’d and signed by the other team.
Ron Mock <rmock@georgefox.edu>
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Fri, Jul 8, 11:42 PM (11 hours ago)
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to Ryan, Phil, Jamie, Mark, John, Mark, Rob, Dave, dukedre23, Tom
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Not an 11th inning Cavan Biggio — they think it was Dante Bichette. The box score shows him hitting a homer.
I guess I can’t update our standings at this point. I need to wait for a janitor cleaning the MLB office to notice the problem and fix it.
Ron Mock <rmock@georgefox.edu>
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Fri, Jul 8, 11:45 PM (11 hours ago)
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to Ryan, Phil, Jamie, Mark, John, Mark, Rob, Dave, dukedre23, Tom
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The box score shows Borucki surrendering 2 runs. It shows Romo in the game for Toronto — for 0 innings. So apparently the M’s didn’t even bat in the 11th. Yikes. Someone’s going to catch a little heck.
Ron Mock <rmock@georgefox.edu>
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Fri, Jul 8, 11:47 PM (11 hours ago)
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to Ryan, Phil, Jamie, Mark, John, Mark, Rob, Dave, dukedre23, Tom
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Ryan — do broadcasters look at the box scores on line, or do they just rely on their own scorebooks?
Ron Mock <rmock@georgefox.edu>
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Fri, Jul 8, 11:49 PM (11 hours ago)
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to Ryan, Phil, Jamie, Mark, John, Mark, Rob, Dave, dukedre23, Tom
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I feel sorry for those Blue Jays fans who see the MLB score and go to bed, only to get up in the morning and find out it was wrong. ANd for the M’s fans who head to bed now thinking the M’s lost. They get a present in the morning.
Ron Mock <rmock@georgefox.edu>
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to Ryan, Phil, Jamie, Mark, John, Mark, Rob, Dave, dukedre23, Tom
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Now the play summary on MLB’s Gameday show Bichette hitting a three-run homer in both the top and the bottom of the 11th inning.
I think staff must have been leaving before the games were over. The MLB gameday feed was lagging by as much as a half inning after the 9th inning.
Fangraphs has it right.
ESPN has it right.
CBS has it right.
MLB still has it wrong — almost an hour after the game ended.
Ron Mock <rmock@georgefox.edu>
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to Ryan, Phil, Jamie, Mark, John, Mark, Rob, Dave, dukedre23, Tom
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Correction — it doesn’t show two Bichette homers. But it does show Bichette driving in JP Crawford and George Springer with a homer off Sergio Romo. And no bottom of the 11th.
Ron Mock <rmock@georgefox.edu>
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to Ryan, Phil, Jamie, Mark, John, Mark, Rob, Dave, dukedre23, Tom
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OK, just now (c. 12:10) they got the score right, the standings right, and posted video of Suarez’ game winning homer. (I wonder if they were puzzled why there was no video of Bichette’s “game winning homer”?). But the players of the game are all still Blue Jays, including Bichette and his homer.
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to me, Ryan, Phil, Jamie, Mark, John, Rob, Dave, dukedre23, Tom
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Very interesting discussion, if a bit one-sided.
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to Mark, Dave, John, Mark, Phil, Rob, me, Ryan, Tom, dukedre23
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To make matters worse, this morning’s box score doesn’t show any Bichette home runs. They really messed up.
—-
Hopefully you read all that, pausing along the way to admire the snapshots of those who posted. Jamie’s looks the best. Mine appears most frequently, presumably due to public demand. Mark W’s is the most tasteful.
But if you didn’t read all that, it’s ok, because that probably means you didn’t read this far and won’t realize that the EFL Commissioner hisself is also prone to ludicrous, if not always so funny, errors.
Exhibits 1 – N: The several errors I made in reading the erroneous (and, in my defense, confusing) errors the Gameday staff member(s) made. I suspect there was only one Gameday scorekeeper still on the job at the end there, who was exhausted and / or impaired and trying to seal up several late games at once all by himself. And I, too, was the only EFL staffer still up (with the possible exception of Mark W), and was exhausted, although no more impaired than ever.
Exhibit N +1: My updates of our stats this morning. I got them all done, and then an hour later realized I had started this week on the 4th of July. It didn’t start until the 5th, so I had to go back and redo all the batter and pitcher stats, and the opposition teams’ rs/ra.
Esxhibit N +2: Also, along the way there, I entered most of the Dragons’ pitcher stats in the batter section of the sheet, generating a raw winning percentage WAY up above .900. I was startled and dismayed — but got the Dragons back under control (sort of) by moving those pitching stats where they belong and re-entering the batting stats.
If you have been obsessively checking things in the EFL, you may have seen some weird things as I was working through all this. For any anxiety thereby caused, or any hopes raised only to be dashed, I sincerely apologize.
Here are the stats as finalized — a bold word given my experiences over the last 12 hours:
