Giants’ first baseman Bandon Belt was not just left raw after losing the series to the Reds on Wednesday. It was how the Giants 6-3 loss ended which left Belt the wrong way.
At the AT&T Park, Belt stepped onto the home plate along with a runner on the second base and two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning. Belt, who took a questionable third strike for the game’s final out on a fastball, said that umpire Doug Eddings called it a game-ending strikeout on a pitch where Belt feels he was way outside.
Belt said that the umpire has also previously expressed a desire to end the games faster and quicker and reiterated the same notion in Wednesday’s game. Belt said that Eddings was one of those umpires, who has said many times previously that he wanted to move out of San Francisco’s AT&T Park.
Belt said he does not whether Eddings was serious about that or not. The game between the Giants and the Reds was played in 2 hours, 41 minutes and the entire contest ended at 3:25 p.m. PT with Belt’s strike. Belt told the media reporters it gets tough as you hope an umpire does not affect the game like that, but Eddings did, and you are not sure if it was on purpose either.
When Belt was asked if he felt cheated with the last strikeout that he made, he said, “I’m not here to talk bad about the umpires. But there’s sometimes when you have a feeling that one or two of them are trying to get the game over with, whether it’s through what they say or what they do. And that can’t happen; you can’t have those guys affecting careers and affecting games like that.”
