It was a great night for fans of robot umpires, but a bad one for the men in the mask behind home plate. And especially for New York Mets slugger Juan Soto.
Earlier on Monday night in Baltimore, home plate umpire Brian Walsh called a pitch from Orioles starting pitcher Zach Elfin a strike even though it landed right in the heart of the strikezone. The opposite occurred in San Diego.
With the Mets visiting the Padres, Juan Soto stepped up to the plate in the top of the seventh inning. Facing an 0-2 count, Soto took a pitch so high that it would have only been a strike if Victor Wembanyama was in the batter’s box. And yet, home plate umpire Emil Jimenez rang him up. The call was so bad even national MLB Network announcers Matt Vasgersian and Yonder Alonso were apoplectic over the call.
The MLB Network broadcast was in disbelief that this pitch was called strike three on Juan Soto pic.twitter.com/OOhYUfBTth
— CJ Fogler 🫡 (@cjzero) July 29, 2025
“I mean come on now. Look, every once in a while a guy misses one but this has been happening all night,” Vasgersian said. “No, no, no!”
Soto had already disputed a strikeout earlier in the game, so it seemed like Jimenez was either trying to make a point or bait Soto into an ejection. That’s the point that Mets broadcasters Gary Cohen and Todd Zeile made on the local SNY broadcast. And while they didn’t belabor the point after Soto was somehow able to control his emotions and calmly walk off the diamond, the silence over the picture of Jimenez said it all for fans watching at home on the east coast.
— Big TIme Sports Vids (@SuperSportsVids) July 29, 2025
As the MLB season has progressed, we’ve seen more and more of these calls and more and more announcers are unwilling to let it slide. And we don’t even have Angel Hernandez to blame anymore. Surely it’s only a matter of time before automated balls and strikes come to Major League Baseball.