Before things got out of hand in Sunday’s loss to their rival New York Yankees, the Boston Red Sox felt like a controversial fifth-inning call changed the outlook of the game.
With the score 0-0 in the bottom of the fifth, Yankees second baseman Jazz Chisholm Jr. lofted a shallow fly out to centre field that a hard-charging Ceddanne Rafaela laid out in an attempt to catch.
And although the ball ended up in Rafaela’s glove, umpires ruled that the Gold Glover trapped the sinking liner and hadn’t managed to secure the first out of the inning.
Despite a Red Sox challenge, the call on the field stood.
The Yankees went on to score five runs in the frame, including a three-run, one-out homer from Heliot Ramos, on their way to a 16-1 victory.
“We, in the dugout, feel like our centre-fielder caught the ball, but if they don’t have anything that they can definitively overturn it, that’s usually where you end up,” interim Red Sox manager Chad Tracy said post-game. “And obviously, it’s frustrating.”
“I did not even have to watch it. I know I made the catch,” Rafaela added. “I know when a ball drops and a ball doesn’t drop. And I know I made the catch.”
“It’s out of our control, but I was really mad in the moment. I really wanted to help my pitcher there and I feel that changed the whole game right there.”
Rafaela also took to Instagram to dispute the play after the game.
“Ha ha ha. It’s OK,” he said in a story. “It’s a man above that saw it.”
The loss dropped the Red Sox to four games back of the Yankees in the American League wild-card standings and gave New York the tiebreaker between the two clubs, should they finish with the same record.
Boston and New York currently sit fourth and fifth in the standings, and if the season ended today, would be set for a Wild Card Series matchup at Yankee Stadium for the second straight year.
“We can stand here and talk about ‘I thought it was a catch; they didn’t think it was a catch,’” Tracy said. “I know when you hear ‘call stands,’ not ‘call confirmed,’ that’s a pretty good indicator that they’re saying it’s very difficult to see anything on video for us to overturn the call in the field. If you hear ‘call confirmed,’ that’s different. That’s not what you heard.”