Seattle Mariners rookie Julio Rodriguez is getting his very first taste of the show.
While he is an exciting young prospect ready to make an impact on the game of baseball, his first taste of the majors hasn’t gone according to plan.
He is often called out on strikes when the third “strike” is well outside the strike zone.
He continues to have extremely bad luck with strike calls from various home plate umpires.
If he ever has to deal with Angel Hernandez or C.B. Bucknor, he won’t be able to catch a break.
One fan tweeted a list of players who had dealt with the most strike three calls over the past four seasons.
Rodriguez has already had 10 strike threes called on him.
To put the calls against Julio into context, here’s the league leaders for striking out looking on pitches outside the zone from the last several years
2019: Joey Votto – 18 (533 PA)
2020: Nick Ahmed – 9 (217)
2021: Brandon Belt – 17 (381)
2022: Julio Rodriguez – 10 (74)— Zach••• (@zachleft) April 28, 2022
How Can Umpires Be This Bad?
This will open up the old can of worms about whether or not baseball should shift to the electronic strike zone.
The more something like this happens, the more people will be on board with it.
It seems like as time goes on, umpires get less accurate and less consistent with their strike calls.
Often times, a pitch is way outside the strike zone and it’s called a strike, whereas other times, there’s a pitch that looks really good that is called a ball.
Umpires aren’t very consistent anymore with their calls when it comes to balls and strikes.
Eventually, we’re probably going to get to the point where the electronic strike zone is needed to prevent things like this from happening.
Rodriguez having such bad luck is a result of the lack of consistency from umpires.
It’s not really his fault.
He’s got a good eye at the plate.
