Seattle Mariners top prospect Julio Rodriguez is finally in the big leagues and is ready to put on a show.
He’s part of a burgeoning class of rookies in the American League that are set to make a play for the AL Rookie of the Year Award, which includes Spencer Torkelson, Riley Greene, Bobby Witt Jr, and several others.
However, he is off to kind of a tough start in 2022, hitting just .125 with no home runs, 1 RBI, and a less than stellar .356 OPS in 32 at-bats.
But it’s not entirely his fault, as he hasn’t exactly gotten much help from umpires, who have called him out on strike three on a pitch way outside the strike zone an MLB-high six times this season.
Most out-of-zone called strike threes, 2022:
Julio Rodríguez —-> 6 🫢
Yoshi Ysutsugo —-> 4
18 players tied with 2 https://t.co/dufQY2IMb8— Codify (@CodifyBaseball) April 18, 2022
Bad Calls
A few of the pitches featured in the video above are borderline, but a lot of them are way outside the strike zone.
This is just yet another case of umpires wanting to make the show all about them rather than let us fans enjoy the rising stars in the league.
It also serves as another reason why Major League Baseball should ultimately invest in robot umpires or at the very least, implement an electronic strike zone.
That way, the strike zone could be perfectly programmed to make the right calls and not mess up as frequently as big-league umpires do.
Rodriguez has gotten extremely unlucky thus far with his strike three calls, and the umpires are to blame for that.
It’s only a matter of time before Rodriguez shows us all what he’s made of.
Not that he needs help from the umpires, but the umpires could stand to make some better calls.
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