Two years and a few months ago, umpire Roberto Ortiz made headlines across the big leagues. At the time, MLB announced that Ortiz had been promoted to full-time Major League Baseball, becoming the first native of the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico to do so.
This week, the spotlight was on his performance in the game between Arizona and the Chicago Cubs, where Diamondback starting pitcher Ryne Nelson struck out 9 Cubs batters, most of them on a controversial third strike called by Roberto Ortiz.
The situation of the batters’ counts reached its climax in the eighth inning, when the Cubs had runners on 1st and 2nd with one out, and Christopher Morel was at bat for the 5th time in the game.
With a 2-2 count, reliever Thompson delivered a 92 MPH fastball in the lower part of the zone that Roberto Ortiz called a strike and called the strikeout, thus diluting the Cubs’ offensive aspirations in the game.
Roberto Ortiz’s call in the eighth inning
It must be said that the pitch was a bad one; video footage shared on social media shows that it was closer to the ground than the strike zone. However, the umpire never hesitated to call it, which affected the course of the game. Called strikes are not included in the cases to be challenged in the video review.
The rest of the game went through the expected causes, a team that just got its seventh win in the last ten starts, a streak that could set the course for the current defending National League champions, whether they will be buyers or sellers as the deadline to trade players approaches (July 30th).
For the Cubs, their epic struggle to climb out of last place in their division continues, despite having 47 wins and seeing the possibilities of the playoffs or approaching the qualifying zone growing more distant.
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