PCA Livid, Nearly Ejected After Egregious Balk No-Call
It may not have mattered in the end, but it sure was big at the time. Pete Crow-Armstrong led off the 6th inning with a double, then advanced to third on a grounder by Seiya Suzuki and remained there when Alex Bregman popped out. Then, with Michael Busch at the plate, PCA took an aggressive secondary that caused Diamondbacks pitcher Eduardo Rodriguez to hitch.
The lefty stepped off the back of the rubber in an attempt to rush his delivery, resulting in an obvious balk…that none of the umpires tasked with paying attention to the game managed to notice.
Crow-Armstrong was so livid at the no-call that he had to be physically restrained by third base coach Quintin Berry. It’s surprising that he wasn’t tossed, and the fact that he wasn’t makes you wonder whether the umps knew they had screwed up. The no-call cost the Cubs a run, which would have been huge in a game that was locked in a scoreless tie at the time.
Pete Crow-Armstrong and Craig Counsell were livid that this quick pitch was not called a balk on Eduardo Rodríguez. pic.twitter.com/8Mt77cyjmd
— Foul Territory (@FoulTerritoryTV) August 26, 2026
Here’s an isolated look at the balk.
The umpires in Arizona rules no balk was committed on this play.
Eduardo Rodriguez stepped off the rubber mid windup. pic.twitter.com/MqC6dIqItn
— Carson Wolf (@TheWrigleyWire) August 26, 2026
Busch walked, but Nico Hoerner struck out to end the inning with no harm done. The Diamondbacks wasted no time taking advantage of the gift they’d been given as Jordan Lawlar homered to lead off the bottom of the frame. They didn’t even need the insurance run against Ryan Zeferjahn two innings later, which did nothing other than take a little sting out of the idea that the idea that the Cubs could have at least tied the game.
“They just flat out missed it,” Craig Counsell said after the game. “It’s obvious to everyone on TV, it’s obvious to anybody: They missed it. I don’t even know what to say. It’s hard to argue when they just flat-out miss it. It was clear…the umpires said he did not disengage from the rubber. He disengaged from the rubber in his windup.
“Tough call for the home plate and second base umpire. Easy call for the first and third base umpire.”
Easy, and totally avoidable. MLB has implemented ABS to overturn calls that are wrong by less than a tenth of an inch, and they use multi-angle video replay to overturn a safe call because a runner lost contact with the bag by a millimeter for a millisecond. Many of those calls are beyond the discernment of human ability, yet something very clear like this can’t be reviewed.
The umpires even agreed after watching video that they had missed the balk, not that it made a difference by then. Taking this beyond one missed call in one game, it’s ludicrous that MLB allows for such egregious errors when it’s taken such pains to ensure that balls, strikes, tags, and forces are correct. And I still believe some of those replay reviews run contrary to the spirit of the game, but that’s water over the dam.
