SD 0, COL 5: Series slightly spoiled by lack of robot umpires

First thing's first, the Padres clinched the series here. San Diego sports history was made, and the Padres come home with a series victory. Moving on from that, today wasn't that great in terms of performance from both groups wearing grey and blue.

Ian Kennedy still did great. He went almost 7 innings striking out 8, gave up about four hits, and only allowed a single run off a what should have been a harmless solo dinger. The sucky part was, with Derek Norris filling in at first base again, Norse dropped a very routine pop fly that would have ended the inning. IPK would go on to give up a double, an intentional walk, and finally another double to clear the bases.

Unfortunately, it just wasn't Ian's day. On a play the plate with DJ LaMahieu, the initial ruling was that Austin Hedges missed a swipe tag on LaMahieu's foot. At first, it seemed close enough to challenge, so it was.

And on closer inspection it was pretty evident:

THESE DUDES CALLED THIS SAFE pic.twitter.com/2X4N7DVbel

— John (@Friar_Faithful) August 16, 2015

But the call was never overturned, and LaMahieu was deemed safe by both the umpire crew on the ground, and the crew in New York that had several angles showing Hedges' glove tipping against a cleat well-before it hit the plate. The reasoning was the typical "not sufficient evidence to overturn the call" load of crap. Of course, I'm not entirely sure how sufficient you need the evidence to be at that point.

I guess it's time for Major League Baseball to move forward by replacing these replay crews with a ziploc bag full of old quarters and flipping each coin to make these decisions instead of pretending that they're going to make the right call. Or at least start paying these chumps with only a ziploc bag full of quarters until they start doing their one and only job.

Let's mention the fantastic balk call on Chris Rusin the inning prior. Rusin had been failing to come set on almost all of his pitches from the stretch. Finally, with the bases loaded, he committed his balk again. John Tumpane called it, and Derek Norris was allowed to score.

Except then the crew conferred that their correct call was a bit too correct, reversed it, and removed the Padres' 1-1 tying run. Pat Murphy got quite a few words in before he was ejected though. Watching that video, it's really tough to tell. What with the Rockies' unanimous commentary: "Right, well, that is a balk", "Oh that's a balk.", "He never paused.", "Yeah he never stopped."

Can I Yelp review these umpire turds somewhere? Google review? Write to my congressman?

It doesn't matter. If Norris catches the ball in the 7th, the inning's over, no additional runs. Still, if LaMahieu was out, and the balk stood, the Friars would be down 4-1 today. Rusin still did a good job going 9 innings and keeping the Pads to only 5 hits. It's tough to argue that. Still, it's the principle of the matter. Right?

The good news is, the good guys come home and we get to see Colin Rea on the mound again.