Holliday Never Touched the Plate

Baseball stood by its man as MLB’s crew of officials for the NLCS will include Tim McClelland as crew chief. Despite criticism that McClelland blew the final play by calling Matt Holliday safe at the plate during the Padres vs. Rockies one game playoff, MLB has tapped him to head the crew of umpires that will work the Nation League Championship Series. This will be the last time this year that viewers will be able to see the “McClelland Doctrine,” (The belief that any call is the correct one as long as no replays show otherwise) put into practice as it is unlikely that he will get an assignment for the World Series this year given the normal pattern of rotation for that assignment.

By my calculations, McClelland will reprise his home plate roll when the series moves to Colorado for game five. That’s a potential storyline that would be hard to ignore. But, since it could lead to an on-air rexamination of his performance the last time he was behind the plate in Denver, the story could be ignored or downplayed since MLB might be looking to avoid any such critique.

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Tim McClelland is a seasoned professional umpire with over 24 years on the job. While there are a few unusual stories in his past in the form of the George Brett pine tar incident and Sammy Sosa’s corked bat game, his overall performance has been hailed by some, including Dan Patrick, as being exemplary. Recently he’s been a fixture in baseball’s post season having appeared in each of the past eight straight years. Yet despite his length of service, his botched call when he signaled Matt Holliday safe after Holliday missed the plate while sliding home in the bottom of the 13th, may cost him a trip to this year’s post season.

Q: What year comes next in the following sequence: 1999, 2001, 2003, 2005, XXXX?

A: 2007

Those dates are important because they are the most recent years that McClelland has umpired in a League Championship Series (LCS.) In addition to those LCS dates, he worked the World Series in 2000, 2002, and 2006, and Divisional Series in 1997, 2000, 2002, 2004, and 2006. If this pattern of post season assignments were to hold true this year, MLB would name McClelland to either the NL or the AL Championship Series in 2007.

It remains to be seen whether the blown call will prevent McClelland from getting one of this year’s plum post season assignments. If MLB names McClelland to a crew, his presence will generate increased attention to, and scrutiny of, the ending of the Padres vs Rockies one game playoff. This is a situation I’m sure MLB would like to avoid. On the other hand, if MLB leaves McClelland off the post season assignment list, it has to be considered a form of censure given McClelland’s recent post season appearance history. It would look as if MLB passed him by because they felt he handled the call of Holliday’s slide poorly. This could be spun several ways but in the end it would always look as if MLB was basically admitting that the Holliday safe call was wrong.

MLB can’t like its options here too much as either course of action will result in some sort of negative publicity for them. As of the time this article was written the LCS umpiring crews have yet to be named. It will be interesting to see what happens this week, as in a odd twist of fate, the first batter stepping up to the plate in the LCS will be MLB itself, as it attempts to resolve its McClelland dilema one way or another.

Tags: MLB, McClelland by admin
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