Cardinals designated hitter Albert Pujols collected his 3,320th career hit Tuesday night in St. Louis’ 4-2 loss in 10 innings to the Rays.
That broke a tie with Hall of Famer Paul Molitor for the 10th most in Major League Baseball history. It came after home plate umpire Nick Mahrley lost track of the count and ruled Pujols had struck out when he looked at a strike-two pitch in the fourth inning.
Pujols reminded the umpire of the count and Mahrley acknowledged he’d made a mistake. Pujols didn’t look pleased at the premature strikeout.
After not being sent to the bench for taking strike two, Pujols singled and added to an already storied career.
You’d think it couldn’t get worse than that, right? But a call by plate umpire Alex Tosi in Minneapolis managed to trump the Pujols strikeout on Tuesday.
In the seventh inning of a 10-4 Yankees victory over the Twins, Minnesota’s Max Kepler tried to check his swing on a pitch. The ball glanced off Yankees catcher Jose Trevino’s glove and Tosi called it a foul tip.
Nope. Not even close.
Twins manager Rocco Baldelli, already upset at the strike zone Tuesday night, pointed out the error to Tosi. Baldelli was tossed from the game.
“I don’t have a great angle from the dugout, but we know that it was not a foul ball. We wanted to get the calls right,” Baldelli told the Star Tribune’s Phil Miller. “Probably some frustration there also added to it. I was talking balls and strikes and about some of the other calls that were made in the game.”
Umpires say Max Kepler foul tipped this ball when he did not, and Twins manager Rocco Baldelli gets ejected for arguing the call pic.twitter.com/qXqYTtet61
— Jomboy Media (@JomboyMedia) June 8, 2022