When a team loses a game and blames it on one particular call in the field or the umpire behind home plate it looks cheap. Especially if that team also walked nine batters and went 1-for-9 with runners in scoring position.
This article is not about Andy Fletcher, the much-maligned home plate umpire in that game. It is not about how he very demonstratively called a head-scratching balk on Rockies’ lefty Chris Rusin and then refused to let manager Bud Black argue the call.
This article is not about Fletcher’s amorphous strike zone that walked Dodgers’ third baseman Justin Turner on a pitch right down the middle to lead off the third inning and then struck out Charlie Blackmon in the bottom of the ninth on a sequence of pitches in the right-handed batters box, during which Blackmon never took the bat off his shoulder.