ST. LOUIS — Upon further review, the Mets aren’t good at catching a break.
Though a freeze-frame replay appeared to show Andres Torres’ left foot touching first base as he rounded the bag in yesterday’s ninth inning at Busch Stadium, umpire Dave Rackley said he watched the same video and concluded his call, on an appeal by the Cardinals, was correct: Torres missed the bag.
“It looked exactly like what I saw on the field,” Rackley, a third-year major league umpire, said after the Mets’ 5-4 loss to the Cardinals. “Which was his foot went over the base. His toe hit the dirt and his heel never came down and it just kicked dirt up and he never touched that corner.”
Torres stroked what would have been a leadoff double in the ninth against Jason Motte, but was ruled out on the appeal play, all but cementing an end to the Mets’ three-game winning streak.
Afterward, Torres at one point said he “definitely” touched the base with his left heel, but he also wavered somewhat from that statement.
“To be honest with you, I thought I touched the base — you can see the replays, it looked like I put my foot there,” Torres said.
Clearly the umpire got it wrong?
“I think so,” Torres said.
Crew chief Dale Scott said he noticed on the replay Torres stopped to look down as he rounded the base, signaling that the player was unsure. Both umpires also mentioned that if Torres touched the base, why didn’t he or first base coach Tom Goodwin seem surprised and protest the call?
Manager Terry Collins argued briefly, but was not ejected.
“I’ve never seen a call, not in the big leagues, like that,” Collins said.
Only adding to the plot, it was former Met Carlos Beltran — watching the play unfold on TV from an indoor batting cage; he did not play — who alerted Cardinals manager Mike Matheny to appeal the play.
”Our MVP of the game today is Carlos Beltran, who never hit the field,” Matheny told reporters.
Daniel Murphy’s two-run homer in the eighth had sliced the Cardinals’ lead to 5-4 and gave the Mets hope a second late-inning comeback victory in three days was imminent.
But the rally never materialized. Scott Hairston and Kelly Shoppach were retired in succession to leave Ike Davis and Jason Bay stranded after they had reached base following Murphy’s homer.
After pitching seven shutout innings against the Rockies in his major league debut, Collin McHugh (0-1) struggled against the Cardinals. The right-hander lasted only four innings and surrendered four earned runs on six hits with two strikeouts.
Skip Schumaker’s homer leading off the fourth put McHugh in a 4-0 hole after the Cardinals had scored twice the previous inning. The tone for McHugh’s afternoon was set by John Jay’s triple leading off the game. Matt Carpenter’s ensuing RBI ground out made it 1-0.
“I wasn’t super pleased with the way I went about my game plan today,” McHugh. “I made a couple of pitches that I thought were pretty good … against a team like that where seven of the nine guys are hitting .300, I’ve got to be smarter.”
In the seventh, the Mets got a two-run homer from Shoppach to pull within 4-2. The homer was Shoppach’s third in 32 at-bats since joining the Mets last month.
“We battled very hard against a team that is fighting for something big and they are certainly into it,” Collins said. “I was very proud of the way we came back and made it a game and certainly had chances to make it something real special, but it didn’t happen.”