Umpire Hunter Wendelstedt Punches Out Trent Grisham on Strike Two in Yankees-Blue Jays Blunder
Hunter Wendelstedt has been an MLB umpire since 1998. On Sunday morning in Toronto, he made the kind of mistake a Little League volunteer would flush over.
In the top of the first inning of the Yankees and Blue Jays game, Trent Grisham stepped in against Dylan Cease with a 1-1 count. Cease dropped a curveball on him. Wendelstedt threw up the punch-out signal with real feeling. Grisham looked around, confused, because it was only strike two.
The umpire caught himself almost immediately, sheepishly corrected the count, and tried to move on. To make it worse, the pitch was not even a strike. Grisham had already burned one of his challenges earlier in the at-bat and did not want to risk his last one. He eventually struck out swinging anyway.
The Broader Problem
This is the second time in recent memory Wendelstedt has been the main character of a Yankees game for the wrong reason. He famously tossed Aaron Boone earlier this season for something a fan yelled behind the dugout. That one made ESPN’s top plays for a full week. This one is different because it does not come with any of the drama of a manager ejection. It is just a straight, cold miss.
Video replay, robot strike zones, challenge systems. Every one of those tools exists because moments like this one keep happening. MLB has been slow-walking the ABS system for years, and the players’ union has pushed back on parts of it. Games like Sunday’s make it real hard to keep arguing for the status quo.
Wendelstedt is a second-generation umpire. His dad Harry ran a famous umpire school for decades. That pedigree comes with pressure and also comes with a shorter leash from fans who feel like they have watched him blow calls their whole lives.
What the Yankees Are Thinking
The Yankees, sitting in the middle of a playoff race and still waiting on Aaron Judge to come back from a stress fracture in his rib, do not need this. Every close call gets scrutinized in New York. Every missed call gets memed.
Brian Cashman has not spoken publicly about it. He does not have to. The clip already made its rounds through the fan bases and reached the top of baseball social media within an hour of the pitch. That is the punishment.
Grisham handled it about as well as any hitter could. He gave the umpire a slow look and then went back to work. That is the only real move a big-league hitter has in that situation. Anything else earns you a warning and a shot at getting dumped from the game.
The Bigger Story
Baseball’s umpires are grading out fine most nights. The problem is the exceptions land on social media within seconds and stick around forever. This one will follow Wendelstedt for a while. And it will show up in every future argument for full-automated ball and strike calls, whenever the sport finally gets around to that decision.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
