SI

Giants and Cubs Had to Play One of the Worst Umpired Games of the Season

Want to see some bad calls?

Stephen Douglas

Manny Gonzalez calls a strike on a ball way outside.
Manny Gonzalez calls a strike on a ball way outside. / NBC Sports Bay Area
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The San Francisco Giants beat the Chicago Cubs 7-6 on Monday night at Wrigley Field. While starting pitchers Jordan Hicks and Javier Assad were solid, giving up just one run total in the first five innings, both bullpens struggled and gave up six runs each.

While the relief pitchers had a tough go of it, it was nothing compared to what home plate umpire Manny Gonzalez was going through. The 44-year old struggled mightily calling balls and strikes and missed a whopping 27 total calls. For example, this pitch from Doval to Wisdom. It was a 2-0 count and should have gone to 3-0, but Gonzalez apparently had a bad angle and called it a strike. Wisdom would pop out three pitches later, right after what could have been ball four.

Both the Cubs and Giants announcers were besides themselves. You can hear the Giants announcers' complete disbelief above and listen to the Cubs announcer nearly come out of the booth in the second clip that features a number of other bad calls.

Despite the fact that this call came in a one-run game in the bottom of the ninth, it somehow wasn't the most impactful of the game. Gonzalez missed a season-high 27 calls on Monday night and some of them were comically bad. The way he called everything a ball that was up and to his right while calling everything a strike that was lower and to his left is impressive in its weird, inaccurate and incorrect consistency.

There's not much to say besides woof.

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Stephen Douglas

STEPHEN DOUGLAS

Stephen Douglas is a Senior Writer on the Breaking & Trending News Team at Sports Illustrated. He has been in journalism and media since 2008, and now casts a wide net with coverage across all sports. Stephen spent more than a decade with The Big Lead and has previously written for Uproxx and The Sporting News. He has three children, two degrees and one now unverified Twitter account.

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