Umpire Dan May's brutal strike call robbed Angels of final chance vs. Yankees

According to a FanGraphs metric, the Angels are the most clutch team in baseball. The Angels' late-game heroics are one of the main reasons the team has stayed afloat passed the one-third mark of the season, as in neutral scenarios the batters have been able to scrap and claw their way back into games with semi-regularity.

Logan O'Hoppe has been one of the more clutch performers for the most clutch team in the sport, and was looking for redemption on Wednesday following a brutal at bat the night prior. In the seventh inning or later of games this season, O'Hoppe has been the guy to step up over and over. Down 3-1 in the seventh against the Cardinals on April 2nd, he hit a go-ahead grand slam off Sonny Gray. Tied 3-3 in the eighth against the Blue Jays on May 6th, he hit a go-ahead RBI single off Jeff Hoffman. Down 7-6 in the seventh against the Dodgers on May 17th, he hit a go-ahead three-run home run off Kirby Yates.

Well, the Angels' backstop got absolutely jobbed by home plate umpire Dan May to end any hope of another game-tying or game-winning rally in a 1-0 game in the bottom of the ninth inning. Had things been fair for the Halos, they might have been able to stir the fans once more.

Umpire Dan May's brutal strike call robbed Angels of final chance vs. Yankees

Mark Leiter Jr. was in for the save, and promptly retired Jo Adell (what else is new?) and Taylor Ward. He issued a two-out walk to Jorge Soler, which allowed Ron Washington to pinch-run Matthew Lugo. In a 2-2 count, Leiter Jr. floated in a 75 MPH curveball. One would think that an umpire could easily track a slow hook like that offering, but not Dan May! The pitch landed roughly two baseballs outside the strike zone, and May rung up O'Hoppe. As Mark Gubicza put it: "that's never a strike out of his hand and never a strike."

After every game, there are umpire scorecards that are assessed and distributed for public consumption. May's strike zone on the night was deemed as favoring the Yankees +1.29 runs...in a 1-0 game that allowed the Bronx Bombers to complete a three-game sweep of the Halos. The Angels dropped to 25-30 and lost their fifth straight contest.

Part of the umpire scorecards is tracking which missed calls adversely impacted the game most. In fact, the missed call on O'Hoppe was only the second most impactful at the Angels' expense. In the first inning, Yusei Kikuchi was pitching to Cody Bellinger with Paul Goldschmidt on second base and Aaron Judge on first with one out. In a 2-1 count, the Angels' ace threw a slider that was called a ball. Spoiler alert: it wasn't! That missed call turned what should have been a 2-2 count into a 3-1 count. Kikuchi wound up walking Bellinger, pushing Goldy to third and Anthony Volpe hit a sacrifice fly to score him in the game's next plate appearance. That wound up being the only run scored in the game.

Logan O'Hoppe deserved better, and taking the bat out of his hands in that manner was an affront to the sport. Awful umpiring/refereeing in critical junctures is the single-worst aspect of sports, and it feels like baseball is willfully ignorant to technological advances to help neutralize the game. People say that "it all evens out over the course of a 162-game season" but it's hard to grasp that as a fan of a team that got swindled in dramatic fashion like that.

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