CB Bucknor’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week worsened Wednesday when the home-plate umpire left the Milwaukee Brewers-Tampa Bay Rays game after taking a foul ball off his face mask.
Bucknor was behind the plate in the second inning when Brewers starter Jacob Misiorowski delivered a 100.2 mph fastball, and Rays catcher Nick Fortes fouled it back. The ball caught Bucknor flush in the mask. He fell to his hands and knees in the dirt. After athletic trainers attended to Bucknor, he got to his feet and headed up the ramp to the umpires’ room at American Family Field in Milwaukee.
It was a sudden ending to a potential bounce-back game for Bucknor, the embattled umpire who in the past week became the early-season face of MLB’s Automated Ball-Strike challenge system. Bucknor, who has clashed with numerous players and managers over ball/strike calls since he started umpiring MLB games in 1999, now must contend with the sport’s new challenge system. So far, it’s been a difficult adjustment.
Bucknor’s stretch in the spotlight began Saturday when he was the home-plate umpire in Cincinnati. The Cincinnati Reds and Boston Red Sox challenged eight of Bucknor’s ball/strike calls, and six were overturned. Back-to-back successful challenges by Reds slugger Eugenio Suárez prompted roars from the home crowd. Later in the game, Bucknor called the Red Sox’s Trevor Story out on a check swing. The Red Sox were out of challenges, so Story settled for shouting at the home-plate umpire. Bucknor permitted Story to stay in the game but ejected Red Sox manager Alex Cora for arguing.
“He has one job to do, it’s (to) call balls and strikes,” Cora said after the Red Sox’s 6-5, 11-inning loss to the Reds. “It wasn’t his best day. That’s what the system does. It’s out there, everybody sees it, and he’ll be the first one to accept it. I saw him putting his head down after one of the challenges. And we’re all human. It’s not easy, what we do and what he does.”
On Tuesday in Milwaukee, Bucknor was umpiring first base. In the sixth inning, the Brewers’ Jake Bauers lined a ball off the glove of Tampa Bay Rays second baseman Ben Williamson. Williamson recovered quickly but threw wildly to first base. After Bauers passed first base, the Rays’ Jonathan Aranda tagged him, and Bucknor called the runner out, ruling Bauers had missed the bag.
Bauers never made a move toward second base. Yet, he was still tagged by Aranda and called out because Bucknor mistakenly believed that Bauers never touched the first-base bag.
On the Brewers TV broadcast, Jeff Levering declared it “a horrendous call.” Bucknor appeared to be watching the errant throw, not Bauers’ right foot strike (or miss) the base.
“Where is CB Bucknor looking?” Levering said.
The Brewers challenged Bucknor’s call, and it was overturned. Bauers stole second and scored on Brandon Lockridge’s double. Milwaukee won, 6-2.
The introduction of the ABS challenge system has drawn criticism from former umpires. Five recently retired umpires spoke to The Athletic’s Sam Blum and derided both the precision of the new zone — over the years, many umpires deployed what they refer to as a “living zone,” which fluctuates slightly based on game situation — and the perceived injustice of umpires being blasted on social media for close calls.
“The strike zone has never been an exact science,” said former umpire Gary Darling. “They’re flipping pitches that are missing by a tenth of an inch, in a system that’s not exact anyway. … As much as baseball wants to define the strike zone, it’s still not defined.”
Dale Scott, another retired umpire, said he has talked to active umpires who are adjusting their calls to what “the machine is going to call a strike,” rather than calling the strike zone as they see it.
“As an umpire, what you’re trying to do is not get overturned,” Scott said. “Obviously, it’s close to what the normal strike zone is. But the problem is when you’re talking about 1/10th of an inch, being close doesn’t really help.”
Now, being wrong doesn’t just mean getting barked at by a manager. It might mean taking heat — be it laughter, jeers or boos — from an entire crowd as the mistake is blared on the ballpark videoboard.
On Wednesday, there was only polite applause from the crowd as the shaken Bucknor departed. Chad Fairchild took over home-plate duties as the umpires operated with a three-man crew for the remainder of the game.
— This story will be updated.
