Umpire snatches defeat from the jaws of victory?

By Jason Wojciechowski on April 22, 2007 at 11:15 PM

I've got four pictures to show you. They're screen captures from the late innings of today's A's-Rangers tilt. I didn't start "watching" the game until it was already bases loaded, one out in the eighth, with Sammy Sosa at the plate and Justin Duchscherer on the hill. The below thumbnail (click for the full image) captures what happened:

What on earth happened there with balls three and four? Aren't they right down the middle of the damn plate?

Ok, so the A's got a couple of calls in the top of the night as well. Check out Mark Ellis and Jason Kendall's at-bats, focusing on pitch one in Kendall's at-bat and pitches one and three to Ellis:

But then the kicker came against Nick Swisher. Check out the last pitch in the at-bat, the pitch on which he struck out looking.

That's like a foot outside and low!

So I guess the real question is whether these are actually accurate depictions of where these pitches were being thrown. How good is GameCast at this thing?