Baltimore Orioles pitcher Chris Bassitt says Major League Baseball being cheap helped cause the controversy over a Pete Alonso home run-foul ball call on Wednesday.
The controversy Chris Bassitt was referring to occurred in the bottom of the seventh inning with the game tied 3-3. Pete Alonso hit a fly ball down the left field line that narrowly missed the foul pole. The umpires called it a foul ball, but the Orioles weren’t so sure that it was.
After a video review, the call was upheld. Alonso ended up striking out, and the Yankees went on to score twice in the eighth inning. New York went on to win the game 5-3.
After the game, Pete Alonso was asked if he expected the foul ball call to be overturned after the video review.
“Yeah, 100%,” Alonso replied. “I mean, just based on the video, also the Hawkeye had it fair in the dugout, there was no, like looking at the video, the view from where the camera was pointing straight down the line. From what it looked like, I mean, it was to the right of the yellow and the pole. So, I thought it was fair.
“But what I was told was in order to overturn a call, you need to have two camera angles to confirm it. But, the best view, there’s the only view that shows the ball fair or foul, the one down the line, but no other camera angle is available. So, I mean, the video room ruled it foul, the umpire obviously called a foul initially. It is what it is.”
Chris Bassitt blames MLB for being too cheap to have the proper technology
While Pete Alonso was somewhat diplomatic in his reaction to the possible home run being called foul, his teammate Chris Bassitt was much more direct.
“Yeah, obviously, I think it was fair,” Bassitt said after the game, according to the Baltimore Sun. “It’s just crazy that we still have this issue. I think we might be the only major sport with an issue like this. It’s been years that we have technology that can easily use to say this is exactly the right thing or wrong thing, and the fact that we don’t have it in 2026 is crazy. That’s my take. It’s not so much that they got the right call or the wrong call or whatever. I think if you’re going to ask the general public and get a 50/50 answer or something like that.
“But it’s just the fact that we don’t have the technology in place to actually say, ‘Hey, this was fair or foul,’ is literally crazy in 2026. It’s crazy.”
When asked why MLB doesn’t have the technology, Chris Bassitt replied that it was about money.
“Because it would cost money. That’s it. I mean, that’s literally it,” he said. “You ask every fan of this game, that’s a true fan, every single fan would want those cameras. If you ask every single player, they would want those cameras. If you ask every coach, they want the cameras. It costs money. That’s it. That’s literally it.”
Pete Alonso’s solution? Look to the NFL
“I think a simple fix is like football: you have the pylon camera with the plane where it shoots right across the goal line. And I feel like, for us, we could easily have a laser or a camera that shoots straight up,” Alonso said. “I think having a camera or laser shooting straight up, we have all the technology, analytics and whatever and funds.
“I don’t see why we can’t do it. The reason why I’ve been told we can’t do it is because every ballpark is different and that every ballpark is unique, it’s not the same dimensions everywhere. So that’s my understanding of it.”