With the ball still climbing, McNeil wheeled toward the first-base dugout, pulled his helmet off and muttered as behind him Brian Anderson recorded an out that dropped McNeil to 0-for-10 in 2021.
Rojas, in fact, thought some spring training/early-season doldrums for McNeil were due to him inside-outing the ball for “Jeff is a pull hitter.â€.
And Bass put that 3-1 pitch into a lefty pull hitter’s happy spot, 95 mph thigh high on the inner half, a present to McNeil on his 29th birthday.What McNeil knew before the ball even landed 409 feet away beyond the right-field fence was that the score was tied 2-2.Like with his earlier foul pop out to Anderson, McNeil did not need to watch the ball land to know the outcome, and so he sailed his bat in a high arc as he faced the Met dugout and exalted.
His 1-2 slider to Conforto would have been strike three, and that is initially what home plate ump Ron Kulpa called.
But then he recognized the ball had nicked Conforto’s elbow guard and awarded a walk-off hit by pitch.
The Marlins argued that Conforto had purposefully jutted his elbow into the path of the pitch — and Conforto’s elbow was in the strike zone.Intent is the judgment of a home plate ump who has milliseconds to call if the pitch was a strike or a hit by pitch.
Only after seeing the replay did Kulpa tell a pool reporter, “The guy [Conforto] was hit by the pitch in the strike zone.
After the Mets’ first victory of 2021, in Philadelphia, Rojas grabbed the final game ball to present to Steve Cohen for his first win as owner.In the ninth inning, McNeil off his bat and Conforto off his padded elbow delivered meaningful hits for the first time in 2021, bringing a joyous finale for the 20 percent capacity