Ump Runs Trachs in Fourth; Braves Lead Mets 8-4, After Seven

By Nicholas Stix


‘That ump just wore you out,’ might have been what Mets’ skipper Willie Randolph said to big righthander Steve Trachsel, when he took the ball from “Trachs,” with two outs in the bottom of the fourth inning in Atlanta.

Umpire Alfonso Marquez had just called Trachsel’s fifth walk. At that point, Marquez had also called four walks on Atlanta starter Kyle Davies. It wasn’t that the pitchers were wild; the ump was.

Willie Randolph had given Trachsel the chance to pitch himself out of the inning, but Marquez wouldn’t give any pitcher the call on the outside corner on right-handed hitters. As announcer Keith Hernandez, still on the job after Hernandezgate observed, “He’s a hitter’s umpire. Some umpires are like that.”

Except that “Mex,” as he was called by his Mets teammates (though he was born and raised in northern California), was being too kind to Marquez.

The next inning, Mets righthanded hitting third baseman David Wright, their best hitter, watched a two-strike, two-out pitch at the same spot, and Marquez rang him up. Wright, whom I’ve never previously seen argue with an ump, disagreed but bit it off short of getting tossed.

And so, Alfonso Marquez isn’t even a hitter’s ump; he’s just a lousy ump.

With two out in the bottom of the seventh, the Braves lead 8-4. The Braves’ Jeff Francouer stung Mets reliever Jorge Julio with a monstrous two-run homer in the sixth. In a show of confidence, Randolph left Julio in the game, and the latter pitched a scoreless seventh.