Todd Frazier has seen enough. The Mets third baseman unloaded Wednesday night on umpires across the league over an issue that clearly has been boiling up.
It was a meaningless called strike one that did appear to be outside of the zone with two outs in the bottom of the ninth of a lopsided game, but it prompted Frazier to turn around and voice his displeasure to home plate umpire Lance Barrett. After the Mets’ 7-0 loss to the Braves, Frazier explained his annoyance.
“There’s no accountability,” Frazier said. “I’m getting really frustrated with these guys in the last five or six games that put you in a hole.
“Something has to be done because the more we talk about it, the more frustrated I’m getting. I’m not making excuses, we lost fair and square, the kid [Braves starter Sean Newcomb] pitched a hell of a game. But these umpires gotta get better, bottom line.”
Frazier, who went 0-for-4 with a swinging strikeout as the Mets managed just three hits, said he wants to sit down with commissioner Rob Manfred or somebody in MLB and talk about what he says is “rubbing everybody the wrong way” across the league.
Frazier said Sunday, when the Mets were in San Diego, he had a meeting with one umpire, who he declined to name, during a series in which he struck out four times, three of them looking.
“I asked one of the umpires, ‘Do you understand how many pitches you missed?’ ” Frazier said. “He said, ‘No, I didn’t miss that many pitches.’ I think I said he missed 14 in one game, which was the truth. He said, ‘My percentage was better than that.’
“He said, ‘Let’s have a meeting,’ and we had one. It was very good. I respect him for doing that, but at the same time, when you look back and see this kind of stuff where they’re blatantly not strikes, I just can’t sit back and let it go anymore.”
Frazier said the issue “has been going on for years,” but has gotten worse for him this season.
One night after Mike Soroka stifled the Mets in his MLB debut, Newcomb struck out eight, all but one of them swinging, and retired the final 14 batters he faced.
