Cuzzi call hurts Giants vs. Mets....It's part of the game, right?

HE'S OUT, RIGHT? NAH, CATCHER MADE A DECENT TAG ATTEMPT. SHOWS YOU WHAT YOU KNOW ABOUT UMPIRING IN THE BIGS.

It's continuing to attract national attention when it happens, umpires are under the spotlight due to the replay issue, but they aren't stepping up their game on the MLB level, it seems.

They are violating the first rule of umpiring repeatedly, which is to not influence the outcome of the game on the basis of a demonstrably bad call. It's an umpires biggest nightmare.

Here's the Mets replay:

http://newyork.mets.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20100718&content_id=12387276&vkey=recap&fext=.jsp&c_id=nym

It cost the Giants a game, a game they will have to make up somewhere so this one doesn't come back to haunt them in late September. Which it won't. They have time left in the season to make up ground lost, they know the situation, these things happen. But they seem to be happening to umpires this year with too much frequency to be tolerated by MLB. Umpires costing teams games, players are robbed at milestone events, these guys have got to get better.

The Giants replay is here: He's still safe

http://bleacherreport.com/tb/b4ZM2

After seeing the replay, Cuzzi is not even on the right side of the plate for this play. He should be third base line extended, then he can see a tag, the slide, the touch of the plate. As it was, he blocked himself off.

Even Blanco was shocked.

"I was surprised when he called him out," Blanco said. "He was safe all the way."

Cuzzi's explanation after the game:

Minutes after the game, Cuzzi said that he had not yet seen the replay. "I'll look at it, but I figured I'd eat first," he said. "(Blanco) made a decent attempt to put the tag on him. That's what it looked to me, and that's why I called him out."

ARE YOU SERIOUS!!! HE MADE A DECENT ATTEMPT??? 
WAS "CLOSE ENOUGH FOR GOVERNMENT WORK" TAKEN???

He doesn't even sound like he cares. "I figured I'd eat first"?? C'mon dude. You're paid good money to get it right. The spread can wait, see how out of position you were and how badly you blew the call and take a page out of the Jim Joyce book and take your lumps. Don't justify. That attitude hurts all umpires, all the way down the line.

Considering that this, closely followed an incident between Cuzzi and K-Rod and the appearance is that Cuzzi just lost his poise and concentration for a spell and it came up to bite him. He may have been sub-consciously not wanting to deal with the Mets catcher and dugout again after the prior confrontation.

Here's the mets.com side of the story:

http://newyork.mets.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20100718&content_id=12387276&vkey=recap&fext=.jsp&c_id=nym

Even Blanco was shocked.

"I was surprised when he called him out," Blanco said. "He was safe all the way."

Blaco added further detail here:

As Blanco put it to the New York Daily News's Andy Martino:

"I hope somebody sees that and punishes him. That's one thing that should not happen in a baseball game. It doesn't matter how mad you are, it should not happen, especially from them. I hope somebody was watching that.

"Bad calls all day. He missed a lot of pitches. I thought he said stuff to Frankie. Then he told Jerry (Manuel) that he wasn't talking to him, he wasn't talking to our dugout. A lot of weird things happened that inning."

There was another controversial call regarding Aubrey Huff and a ball ruled foul that appeared to be clearly fair. It just seems like this is turning out to be a nightmare season for MLB umpires. No excuse for not being in the right position to make the call. Judgement is judgement, but you can't justify being in bad position to make the call initially.

I'm not a big proponent of expanding replay until the game becomes a mockery, but there has to be some sort of penalty for these guys, because they act like they just don't give a shit and that hurts the game. Maybe if they lose some games, sit out and do some remedial umpiring work, these incidents would occur less frequently. The umpires fraternity should be really embarrassed about this and on the MLB level they should do what would be done at every other level when this type of obvious incompetence and lack of professionalism occurs.

THE UMPIRE LOSES GAMES, TOO.