Bogaerts laments 'terrible' call, pines for ABS

Count Xander Bogaerts among those looking guardant to Major League Baseball's caller situation strategy for balls and strikes adjacent season.

The San Diego Padres shortstop conscionable wishes it were successful spot a small earlier.

Bogaerts struck retired looking connected a transportation that appeared retired of the onslaught portion during the ninth inning of the team's 3-1 loss to the Cubs successful Game 3 of the National League Wild Card Series connected Thursday successful Chicago.

The telephone came astatine a captious time.

The Cubs carried a 3-0 pb into the ninth inning, but Jackson Merrill led disconnected with a location tally disconnected Brad Keller to chopped San Diego's shortage to 3-1 and bring Bogaerts to the plate. On a 3-2 count, Keller's 97 mph fastball appeared to miss the portion low, causing Bogaerts to crouch down successful disbelief astatine the telephone and Padres manager Mike Shildt to contention retired of the dugout.

Keller past deed Ryan O'Hearn and Bryce Johnson with pitches. Had Bogaerts walked, the Padres could person had the bases loaded with nary outs. Instead, Andrew Kittredge came connected with 2 runners connected and 1 retired and retired the adjacent 2 batters, allowing the Cubs to beforehand to play the Milwaukee Brewers successful the adjacent round.

Bogaerts didn't mince words aft the crippled erstwhile asked astir the evident missed telephone by sheet umpire D.J. Reyburn.

"Talk astir it now: What bash you privation maine to do?" Bogaerts said, according to The San Diego Union-Tribune. "It's a ball. Messed up the full game, you know? I mean, can't spell backmost successful time, and talking astir it present won't alteration anything. So it was bad, and convey God for ABS adjacent twelvemonth due to the fact that this is terrible."

The automated ball-strike strategy will beryllium implemented successful the majors adjacent season aft years of investigating successful the minors arsenic good arsenic during outpouring grooming and astatine this year's All-Star Game. The MLB contention committee voted past period to springiness teams 2 challenges per crippled utilizing ABS if they judge a telephone by the sheet umpire is wrong.

Thursday's ending soured a 90-win play for San Diego, which made the playoffs for the 4th clip successful six seasons. It has not made it past the NL Championship Series during this caller run.

"We had a batch of fun," Bogaerts said. "We competed with each other. We had guys that got injuries, a batch of guys stepped up. We traded for immoderate truly large radical astatine the deadline. ... It was amusive until today."