Dominican Republic loses the WBC on an awful strike 3 call, a breakdown

Bottom of the ninth inning, one run game in the semi-final match between Dominican Republic and Team USA. This one's brought to you by Fanatic Sportsbook and we're just doing the bottom of the ninth and we're gonna highlight some nasty pitching and then some questionable umpiring. Now all three of those first pitches from Mason Miller were fastballs and they were all up, they were higher. The first one's pretty center cut. That's just what I used to call and I like to call an FU fastball. Here's my heater, I dare you to hit it. The next one, he's gonna go even higher, still in the zone though, again a swing and miss. So now he's gonna go even higher and see if he'll chase way up top and he does but he fouls it off. What he's done is he's climbed a ladder and raised the batter's eye level and sped up his bat because he's gotta keep up with 100 mile per hour fastballs and what do you do when you have a guy eyeing the top of the zone and his bat's sped up? You throw a nasty slider, just a nasty slider and he swings over it and then he tries to get in the way of the throw and Bryce Harper says, come on man, that's not cool. And he's like, I'm just trying to win, you know. I was just trying to get in the way. It's baseball after all. A lot of batters do this. I think usually they do it right there and do a big banana peel and I think Junior Cameron Arrow kinda realized like, oh wait, I'm supposed to get in the way of the throw and then did it a little late and Harper was like, come on, but that's baseball. You try to get in the way. Here are those two pitches again. That's the first fastball and that's the slider and you're like, why are you swinging at that, dude? It bounced before the plate. That's because when you overlay them and you have to protect the fastball, you're thinking, oh my God, he just threw a low fastball in the zone. I gotta hit it and then it falls off the face of the earth and you swing above it. It's just nasty pitching. Anyway, next batter comes up. We got Julio Rodriguez, J-Rod and Mason Miller wants to flip the script and go slider first, but he misses inside. Tries to do it again, misses again, then the fastball up top. It's three and O, hits that one. It's three and one, but with count leverage, you don't chase the fastball. When you're in control of the at bat, you just say, nah, I'm not chasing that because I don't have two strikes on me and I don't need to. So now you got the tying run on first base, speed on the base paths, hard to double up, especially when you also have speed in the batter's box. Oh yeah, you tell him pitcher. Now I don't know what this kid says and it pains me because I want to know what he says and I like doing the fan lip readings, but every now and then I just say, you guys, one of you, one of you guys will comment what he's saying and I will feel dumb and it will take you five minutes. I have the first word is yo and the last word is pitcher and I can't for the life of me figure out what he's yelling. So you guys are gonna let me know and make me feel bad about myself afterwards. Anyway, they have a mound visit. You can see Will Smith is looking at the scouting report and they're going over it and they're saying, should we throw the nasty fastball you throw? How about the nasty slider? Maybe we mix in a change up because he's lefty. What do you think? And she's just waiting patiently and she's happy because she thinks they're gonna tie the game. He's bored. He's like, come on. Now Andy Pettit comes out, gives him pats on the chest. You know, hey, you got it, buddy. You got it. Yeah, you're right. Okay. And that makes him feel great because Andy's got a cool accent and it sounds very nice. And then Andy runs off the field to prove that he's still got, he's still young, youthful and spry. And now O'Neal cruises up and he's ready and he's staring intently and they try to go slider again. It's off Will Smith's glove, spins away and now the tying run is on second base. So that's the last three breaking balls he's thrown have backed up on him and just kind of went astray, never broke sharply back in. That one off of Will Smith's glove. You can see, bam. Just kind of misread it. It's a bad pitch. And bounces away. Now the tying run's on second and the double play isn't in order at all, even if it was. And there's a fastball up top and a big swing and a miss. Then they go to the change up. It does nothing. Fastball right down the middle. Watch it again. I mean this one right here. That is an FU fastball. Here's my heater. I dare you to hit it. I just watched Sandlot recently with my son. It felt great to have it back in rotation. Great movie. Okay, here we go. It's two and two. Bobby Witt cracking his knuckles. A little anxiety, a little fidgety. Come on, hit me the ball. I want to do something. Thank you very much. We'll go to first with it and we'll get him out. And it's closer than anyone thought or wanted it to be. But now the tying run is on third base. There's two outs. We got the tying run. Just a quick look over. See if he can get him or not. Nope. We'll go to first and closer than you think because they got speed. Speed everywhere. Tying run on third. Two outs. Semi-final game. It's all building to this. Perdomo's up. First pitch, fastball above the zone. Second pitch, fastball in the zone. Called strike. Let's take a look at the difference between these two. They seem similar enough, especially when you don't have the box in front of you that we have on TV. But when you do watch them, one lower, one above, one above. One clips the top. One and one is the count. Another one. Fastball right down the middle. I dare you to hit it. Now he's thinking he's going to go breaking ball there. And he's sitting on the breaking ball saying I'm going to clobber it. I'm going to call my pitch. I'm going to get it. If I don't, it's just strike two. And it was just strike two. That was a good fastball to hit if he was sitting fastball. Soto's on his feet. He's yelling down to their last strike. What is Miller going to go with? Here's the pitch. Outside fastball. Loves it. Kept his hip in. Two and two. The next one. That is a perfect pitch. Exactly where he wants that to be. Perdomo doesn't even consider it. Look at this pitch. That's an away slider. He's trying to just clip that zone. If it hangs and it gets in there for a strike, that's awesome. If he chases it, that's ideal. He's going to swing right over it. That is a beautiful pitch. Good job by Perdomo to work the at bat. We got clapping. We got praying. We got hoping. It's a full count. Goes back to the fastball up top. It's fouled back. So he moved his eye line lower with the breaking ball then went up top with the fastball. And now what's he going to do? Is he going to go to the breaking ball? Is he going to go low? No, it's another FU fastball right down the middle. Straight velocity. Fouled back. Now you've got him even more sped up. You can drop the breaking ball in. And he does. It's ball. Strike three. And U.S. wins on a crazy call. A crazy strike three call. It's not how you want big games to end. Especially when you're about to go into a year where you can challenge pitches and say, nah, Blue, we think you got it wrong. So sadness abounds for the DR as they lose. Look at this pitch. And it breaks and it's well under the plate. The umpire. Nice little delay and then punches him and Perdomo can't believe it. He started walking across the plate to throw his bat to the dugout because it's ball four. Oh, and can't believe it. Look at the DR's dugout. Their reactions. And where the ball is. Look where this ball is. I mean, his front foot is well ahead of home plate. So his back leg is probably closer to where home plate is. And that is pretty low. Everyone over there got a good look at it because the ball's in front of them. And it is unfortunately strike three. Even this fan knew it. You can see him, he's like, hey man, you know, oh yeah, dude, you see that? Even I could see that ball was low. You know, he's like, yeah, yeah, I'm sad. And Codify tweeted that there have been 322 called strikes in the last two World Baseball Classics. And this was the lowest of them all by two inches. 3.7 inches below home plate. And here's a look at all the calls the umpire had to make in the shadow zone all game. 49 pitches. And these were all of his calls. And according to the chart, he missed seven. One of them came in the third inning. Just one. The rest all kept growing as the game went on. The sixth, the seventh, the eighth, and then three in the ninth. So I don't know if that's tired eyes. I don't know what's going on. But here's all the ones he missed. This was the first one in the third. He missed that inside. Called it a strike. This one to Vladdy in the sixth. And that's low. It's a fast ball. I think that's marginal. I think those happen. I actually, I think like no human can call these. So I'm not really putting notice on the umpire. I just think that they should be reviewed if they're in the shadow zone once we get the technology quick enough. That's another fast ball by Bednar that those get called. When we have ABS, I think those ones, the batter might not even tap, or they might. These breaking balls though, they were unfortunately very missed. That is well under the zone, and it's the hard breaking ball that's fooling them. And that is away from Doval. That one goes against Team USA. And this one is really bad as well from Doval. That's way off the plate. It was never really on it. But this one is the worst. End of the game. Man, even Miller doesn't celebrate it because I don't think he thinks it's gonna be a strike. Just up and down, and the fact that it goes up kind of tricks the umpire. And by the time it's down, and that one's even harder. Man, so we got robbed of a great ending, and that's a bummer. It was a good game though. This breakdown is brought to you by Fanatics Sportsbook, where you can earn fan cash on your bets, then spend it on profit boosts, merch from fanatics.com, or even bet with it. Winning hits different at Fanatics Sportsbook.