Cubs sure Pete Alonso was out at home plate in Mets loss: ‘They made the right call’
The story of the Mets’ 1-0 loss to the Cubs on Wednesday night was the controversial end involving Pete Alonso and his home plate slide.
With one out and men on second and third in the ninth inning, Jeff McNeil lofted a fly ball to left field and Alonso tagged up to try and score the tying run. Cubs left fielder Ian Happ hit the cutoff man, Nick Madrigal at third base, who threw a strike to catcher Miguel Amaya. Amaya blocked the plate and put down the tag on Alonso’s shoulder, leading the home plate umpire to call the Mets slugger out, ending the game.
Mets manager Carlos Mendoza asked for a replay immediately as he exited the dugout and what followed was a long wait as MLB’s replay center looked at different angles of the play.
“Not great, didn’t love it,” Happ said of the waiting with a grin.
MLB’s replay center looked at whether Amaya illegally blocked the plate and if Alonso got his hand on home plate before the tag. Initially, it looked as if Alonso got in there before the tag, but upon further inspection, the first baseman’s hand did come up on the slide.
“There’s probably 20 replays out there and I thought for most of them, he was safe and then you see his hand pop up on a different angle,” Madrigal said. “I thought for sure he was out, but I thought the whole time we weren’t gonna get it.”
Ultimately, MLB deemed Amaya was not in violation of their rules and that the replay official could not definitively determine whether Alonso’s slide was successful.
“I was 100 percent sure,” Amaya said of the play. “And they made the right call.”
Mendoza was adamant it was not the right call, going as far as to say the ruling cost the Mets the game.
"Their interpretation of the rule," Mendoza said. "It's one of those, they send out a memo in spring training, what's legal and what's illegal. And it's clearly on that email, that memo that we got, that catchers are not allowed to have their foot on in front of the plate, on top of the plate, they cannot straddle without possession of the baseball. It was very clearly that the guy had his left foot on top of the plate without the baseball. I think they got the wrong call.
"There's nothing that these guys can do, it's obviously coming from New York. And that's what [crew chief] Chad [Fairchild] told me, it's something that you're going to have to talk to the league. At the end of the day, it cost us a game. I'll have to wait and see what they say because they clearly got the wrong call."
The Mets and Cubs meet one more time in this four-game series on Thursday afternoon where New York will look for the split at Citi Field.
