John Schneider's challenge on a Spencer Jones home run went nowhere Friday, and it cost the Blue Jays.
Jones drove a ball 385 feet toward the right-field bleachers, and first-base umpire Dan Iassogna ruled it a fair home run right away.
Schneider signalled for a challenge before Jones had even finished his trot around the bases.
The crew-chief review took a long look, but the call stood as a two-run shot for New York.
"It looked foul to me. I don't know if it goes over the pole," Schneider said after the game. "From my view, it looked foul."
He referenced a conversation with Rajai Davis, who played for Toronto from 2011 to 2013 and now works in MLB's baseball operations department.
"He said when it goes 260 feet, it just becomes math based on exit velo and things like that," Schneider said.
Why this call is becoming a league-wide flashpoint
Jones himself wasn't fully sure in the moment either.
"I was hoping the umpire saw the same thing as me. When he said fair, I was very excited," Jones said afterward.
That home run opened the scoring and ended up standing as the exact margin in Toronto's 3-1 loss at Yankee Stadium.
"We didn't see a good replay, and it's pretty obvious that whatever the call on the field was, it was going to stand," Schneider added.
This isn't an isolated gripe. The Orioles had a similar issue Wednesday when a Pete Alonso drive was ruled foul against the same Yankees club.
"I think a simple fix is like football, you have the pylon camera with the plane," Alonso said. "We could easily have a laser or a camera that shoots straight up."
Orioles manager Craig Albernaz went further, questioning why baseball hasn't adopted better ball-tracking technology already available on dugout iPads.
"There are teams using AI on the iPads and other sports use ball-tracking data for challengeable calls," Albernaz said. "Don't understand why we don't do it."
Two disputed foul-pole calls in the same week against the same opponent is starting to look like more than coincidence. Whether the league does anything about it before October is another matter entirely.
Should MLB add better foul-pole camera technology after these missed calls?
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