Joe West Is Fighting The Strike Zone Tonight

Major League Umpire Joe West is one of the most revered officials in baseball, but he must be suffering from double vision tonight. I give umpires much more slack than most and even umpires have bad days, but West singlehandedly derailed White Sox southpaw Carlos Rodon's beautiful start. 

Rodon cruised through the first three innings locating his fastball in all quadrants and sprinkling his slider where he needed to.

And when he reached the fourth with two outs and two on, Roughened Odor inexplicably took strike three for a walk. Next, a bases-clearing double ensued and Rodon's lead evaporated.

Last week, when Yoan Moncada struck out on a pitch six inches off the plate down and in I thought Moncada should have swung -- it was too close to take. In this scenario, Rodon missed his spot and Omar Narvaez had to reach back across the zone to catch the pitch. Still, it was clearly a strike. After a mound visit from Don Cooper and the good tongue lashing for West, Rodon closed out the inning and unleashed his frustrations in the dugout. He salvaged his outing and lasted five innings, but things could have been much different.

But West wasn't finished interrupting this game. Later, Jose Abreu took an obvious strike-three call that he eventually rolled into a double play.

Jesse Chavez kept his relief appearance under control and finished the inning, but there was more controversy regarding the strike zone and West. In the seventh inning, after another questionable call, Ryan Rua was tossed for for letting West hear about it his dreadful inconsistency. Well...West got that one right.