J.P. Crawford, Seattle Mariners.
Come down the rabbit hole with me. I’ll show you Major League Baseball’s conspiracy to keep the Seattle Mariners away from their postseason.
UFOs are real. We can debate it all day, and still at the end of the day, the conclusion would be that you have seen one with your own eyes or you know lots of people that have seen a UFO. Maybe there was a second gunman on the grassy knoll. Perhaps Lee Harvey Oswald was an FBI scapegoat when he gunned down JFK.
Elvis, dead or alive? Jimmy Hoffa? Buried under the Meadowlands. The conspiracy theories could literally go on and on, but you know what has to stop? Major League Baseball’s commitment to keeping the Seattle Mariners out of the playoffs.
You read that right. Major League Baseball, the corporation is absolutely committed to keeping the Seattle Mariners out of the playoffs. Think about it, really think about it. Makes sense, right? Still skeptical? Okay, let’s lay out the proof.
During the offseason, the lockout, and all of that, the Seattle Mariners failed to sign anyone outside of Robbie Ray when there were so many options on the table, especially other starting pitchers. Oh, but wait, there’s so much more.
The M’s were spurned by or blocked from nearly every eligible free agent target on the market. The fans blamed Jerry Dipoto. But Dipoto pivoted and went the trade route to acquire Jesse Winker and Eugenio Suarez. So maybe that was a stretch, but what if I told you something that wasn’t.
Direct employees of Major League Baseball are sabotaging the Seattle Mariner’s efforts to reach the playoffs. Umpires. Sure, they have a union. But come on, this certainly makes sense, right. Because if it isn’t an organized effort, what does their performance say about their overall competency or simple ability to do their jobs?
How many times have you seen this? A Seattle hitter (even ones not named Julio Rodriguez) takes a pitch outside the strike zone only to be called a strike. Normally, I might even chalk this up as a ploy for the umpires to bring in the automatic strike zone. The hole in that theory is that Mariners’ pitchers rarely get the same treatment.
Let’s move along to last weekend and the phantom tag on Jarred Kelenic when he stole second base. In 2016, MLB ruled that the laces of a glove no longer constitute being part of the glove for the purpose of tagging a player out. Yet Brandon Lowe’s laces might’ve touched Kelenic’s cleats, and that is all. Guess what?
They called him out, even after a replay review. Later the president of umpiring said something along the lines of, “We couldn’t tell if he was tagged or not.” I’ve seen this play at least twenty times, and twenty out of twenty times, I could tell he was safe. Even Stevie Wonder can tell Lowe didn’t tag Kelenic.
Let’s talk about Julio, though, the phenom with the amazing attitude, who has struck out looking a league-leading 19 times. Fifteen of those times were on pitches clearly outside the strike zone. If it were only on strike three, it would be one thing, but it isn’t just on strike three.
How about he has taken a “strike” on a pitch outside the zone 38 times this season, and it’s only the second week of May, JRod has taken a pitch that was a ball, according to strike zone readers everywhere, and it was called a strike. You know what, just rub it in; all of Jesse Winker’s last seven strikeouts looking have been on balls outside the zone.
Do you know who else is getting with these bad pitches? Ty France. He’s only struck out three times looking. Yet all three times were on borderline pitches that the umps could have just as easily called them balls.
It’s all about the eye test. Each of those strikes that were actual balls were pitches that would’ve elevated a pitch count, put the Mariners in a favorable hitting count, or would’ve been beneficial to the Seattle Mariners in a plethora of ways. Do you see it now? The Mariners are being railroaded by Major League Baseball and the Umpires Union.
So put on your tinfoil hat, start digging that bunker, but watch. Watch and see what’s happening and how each umpire’s mistake snowballs into an uneven playing field for the Seattle Mariners.
Joe Swenson has never been abducted by aliens per se, but he has seen a UFO. He’s also a playwright, author, screenplay writer, member of the Dramatist Guild, and hates Major League umpires right now.