Controversial umpire takes away Trey Yesavage's attempt at history

Trey Yesavage came as advertised to the Toronto Blue Jays in his MLB debut. He pitched five innings of almost perfect baseball. He gave up just three hits, one earned run, two walks, and struck out nine hitters. Those nine strikeouts are the most by a Blue Jays starting pitcher in their MLB debut.

While the outing was down right dominant, it was very very close to also being historic. In the bottom of the fourth Yesavage struck out Josh Lowe, Jake Mangum, and Nick Fortes in order. He threw a splitter, a four-seam fastball and a slider to dispose of Lowe. Mangum then looked at a four-seam fastball, before swinging and missing at back-to-back splitters - which was Yesavage's best pitch on the evening.

Then with Forte up to bat Yesavage got a called strike on the four-seam fastball, before throwing a second one at 94.7 mph that caught the bottom of the zone on the middle part of the plate. That pitch was called a ball. Yesavage then threw back-to-back splitters that got two more swinging strikes to set down Fortes to end the inning. If you're keeping track, that's three strikeouts on ten pitches which was almost an immaculate inning. If you watch the video below, you can be the judge on whether the eighth pitch of the inning was a ball or not.

There have only been 117 immaculate innings thrown in MLB history and only seven times has an immaculate inning been thrown by a rookie pitcher. Never, according to this writers research, has an immaculate inning been thrown by a pitcher in their MLB debut. Yesavage, could have and maybe should have, been the first. But alas, controversial umpire Laz Diaz took that opportunity away.

Diaz has been around the majors for a long time and it's very rare that a season goes by that he doesn't pop up in a headline for a bad call every now and then. In fact, already this season, Diaz made a call in Tampa Bay in June that set a dubious record for a missed call. With Mangum at the plate, Diaz called a strike on a pitch that was 6.83 inches off the plate.

It doesn't appear as if Diaz is going to apologize to Yesavage publicly for taking away his historic moment, akin to umpire Jim Joyce and Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga. The former made an erroneous call on what should have been the final play of a perfect game for Galarraga in 2010. But Joyce publicly admitted his mistake, Galarraga forgave him, and a friendship formed out of a true test of sportsmanship on both sides.

In the case of Yesavage and Diaz, it's just one bad call of likely many that Yesavage will get over the course of what is hopefully a long and storied career as a Blue Jay.