Pardon my being called away from the TalkSox Board during the game.
I'll check Pitch f/x records tomorrow sometime. To my naked eye it looks as if Buchholz was screwed royally by Derryl Cousins, a guy who's been unfair to Boston in the past on occasion, IIRC. I don't know if it was a seven-run difference, but it really doesn't look good.
Edit: The data files are posted.
| Name | + | - |
| Buchholz | 0 | 10 |
| Lopez | 0 | 0 |
| Hansen | 0 | 0 |
| Timlin | 0 | 0 |
| - | - | - |
| Hernandez | 3 | 3 |
| Rincon | 1 | 2 |
| Crain | 1 | 0 |
Cousins called every pitch perfectly for Lopez, Hansen and Timlin. His calls for Minnesota were balanced, and every missed call was close. Cousins buttfucked Buchholz: by my quick count, Cousins had to make a call on 25 pitches that Buchholz threw through the strike zone, and he made the wrong call on 40% of them by calling them balls.
The odds of an umpire making 10 errors all in the same direction are one in 1,024. At the 99.9% confidence level, Cousins's calls weren't random chance.
We never had a chance to win this game, folks. That's the second time this season we've found something biased at the 99.9% level.