NEW YORK — In the moments after the Royals’ 6-5 loss to the Yankees on Saturday night, Michael Massey left the field and parked himself in front of a screen in a room inside the visitors clubhouse. Massey, the Royals second baseman, knew what question was coming when the room opened to reporters, so he wanted another look.
“To make sure I had the facts,” he said.
It had been about an hour since New York’s Jazz Chisholm Jr. had tried to steal second in the seventh inning of Game 1 of the ALDS. Massey jumped high to snare a high throw from catcher Salvador Perez and applied a tag to Chisholm’s left foot just as he arrived at the bag. The initial call — by second base umpire Lance Barrett — had been safe. But Royals manager Matt Quatraro signaled a challenge, and when the ruling stood as called, Massey wanted to do what MLB replay officials had presumably done an hour before.
He wanted to painstakingly study the angles.
“We tagged up the photos and you could see clear contact, and then you could see the daylight between his foot and the base,” Massey said.
The call loomed large in the story of Game 1. It also left the Royals vexed by the replay system. Chisholm would have been the second out of the inning. The next batter struck out. But when the next hitter, New York’s Alex Verdugo, lined an 0-1 cutter into left field, Chisholm became the game’s winning run.
“I got a really good look at it out there and afterwards,” Quatraro said, “and I think we did have a really good argument that that should have been overturned.”
The decision was not the sole reason for Saturday’s result. Royals pitchers issued eight walks, and many of their wounds were self-inflicted. See: Perez running into an out at home with nobody out in the second inning. They also had a chance against the Yankees bullpen in the eighth and ninth and put forth little pressure. Bobby Witt Jr. finished 0-for-5.
“That’s not the reason we lost the game,” Massey said of the replay decision. “We had plenty of opportunities to score runs and make plays, and we didn’t.”
It did, however, rob them of taking a tie game into the eighth. It also left many in their clubhouse confused.
“We kind of see it one way,” MJ Melendez said. “They may have seen it a different way. But I thought he was out. Obviously, it’s a little unfortunate. At the end of the day, we would have had to score another run regardless.”
As he stood near his locker, Massey seemed most troubled by the purpose of replay. Under MLB’s replay system, any call that is challenged is sent to the replay command center, located in an MLB office in New York. Staffed by major-league umpires, replay officials can overturn the call on the field, confirm the call, or let the play stand due to lack of clear and convincing evidence. On Saturday, the call stood, meaning the officials did not see clear and convincing evidence. After he studied the replay, Massey found that curious.
“We went and paired up the angles,” he said. “You could see the angle of his heel to the base. Again, there’s a little bit of dirt that gets in the way. But that’s kind of my point. If we’re gonna have this system and we’re playing an imperfect game that’s outdoors — there’s wind, there’s rain, there’s dirt. So I don’t know how you can really be 100 percent sure on anything to overturn it.”
He added: “The language on that is kind of interesting.”
Was he out? #RepBX #Yankees #royals #KansasCity #NYYankees #mlb #MLBPostseason pic.twitter.com/C0gHb3OT0r
— TWINTIERS 🟡 ⚫️ (@TWINTIERS2) October 6, 2024
The moment in question came after one of the more topsy-turvy games in postseason history. Before Verdugo drove home Chisholm, there had already been four lead changes. Both sides had opportunities to land a knockout. Neither did. Chisholm had opened the bottom of the seventh with a single off Royals reliever Michael Lorenzen. But Lorenzen responded by striking out Anthony Volpe on a sweeper in the dirt as Chisholm took off for second.
Perez, the Royals catcher, picked the ball out of the dirt and fired high to second base. The throw caused Massey to leap. For a moment, it appeared the high throw might allow Chisholm to get under the tag. But his pop-up slide appeared to leave him just short of the bag — by centimeters.
It was the kind of close play familiar to October when the unscientific nature of one man tagging a glove to another man’s moving leg — at high speed — leaves viewers studying pixelated close-ups of multiple angles. In this case, one angle seemed to support Massey’s view. But the others were less than perfect. So much so that Lorenzen, standing near the mound, braced for bad news.
“I thought he was out,” Lorenzen said. “Umpire called him safe. I just thought, if it’s close, they’re probably not gonna not overturn it. So my mind’s already made up that I have him on second base, and I gotta get the next guy.”
As the challenge headed off to the replay command center, Chisholm stood on second base, exchanging words with Massey.
“He’s like, ‘I think I put down a good tag,’” Chisholm said. “I said, ‘You did put down a good tag. That doesn’t mean I’m out.’ It was a lot of fun going back and forth. But I knew I had it.”
It was the kind of conversation that would have never happened 44 years ago, the last time these two clubs met in October. There was no replay in the late 1970s and early 1980s and no delays in sending video to a remote command center. There was always controversy then, however, which is also what the Royals were left with Saturday. Quatraro said he did not get a good explanation for the call. He watched the replays. He thought they had a “good argument.”
The replay officials did not see what he saw.
“If that’s something that’s not going to be overturned, I don’t really know what’s clear and convincing,” Massey said. “I’m not really sure the whole point of the system.”
(Photo of Michael Massey reaching to tag Jazz Chisholm Jr. at second base: Adam Hunger / Associated Press)
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