GIF and graph: Angel Hernandez's awful 'strike'

Perhaps a bit lost in the shuffle of Dominican Republic's 3-1 victory of Team USA Thursday night was that during the ninth-inning Dominican rally, home plate umpire Angel Hernandez gave USA reliever Craig Kimbrel an absolute gift against Erick Aybar before Aybar delivered the go-ahead single.

It wasn't a backdoor slider so much as it was a "foot-off-the-plate slider."

Here we are, in GIF form, thanks to Andrew Mearns:

And now, thanks to the brilliant BrooksBaseball.net, the pitch location from the behind-home-plate point of view (you're looking at number three, which was called a strike):

It might be the spring, but Hernandez is clearly in midseason form. Also, if he reads this he's definitely going to attempt to eject me from the blogosphere like I'm Steve McMichael.

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