OAKLAND

Jose Bautista is fed up with the replay review system.

The tipping point for him was a call on a play at the plate in the eighth inning Saturday night that would have brought the Jays within a run of the Oakland A’s, with the tying run at second base.

Instead, Melky Cabrera was called out at the plate for the third out of the inning, keeping the score at 3-1.

With Cabrera at first base, Bautista hit a two-out double into the left field corner. Left fielder Yoenis Cespedes threw to shortstop Jed Lowrie who relayed to catcher Derek Norris. Cabrera was just going into his slide as the ball arrived and Norris tried to swipe him on the helmet. Home plate umpire Bill Miller called Cabrera out but Jays' manager John Gibbons asked for a replay review of the call.

After a review of 2:53, the call was confirmed by the replay umpires in New York.

“He missed him by a good foot or two,” said an angry Bautista after the game, eventually won by Oakland 5-1.

“I don’t really know which replay they were looking at but clearly they must have had a different video feed than the one we had. It’s pretty frustrating for you to battle as a team, keep the game close, for our pitchers to be doing what they’re doing, for us to keep grinding through games and facing some tough pitching and somehow be able to tie the game in the eighth inning, it all goes down the drain because somebody, initially, made a bad call to begin with. And then it gets upheld by god knows who, in some room in New York supposedly.

“This whole replay thing has become a joke in my eyes. I think they should just ban it, they should just get rid of it, I don’t really understand the purpose of it, but getting the right call on the field is not the purpose. That’s pretty obvious and evident. I don’t know what kind of agenda the people that are doing the replays are on, what their plan is, what their purpose is, who they’re looking after. But obviously getting the right call on the field is not what they’re doing.

“It’s not only the one tonight, for us, that have gone against us when they had a chance to get the right call and reverse a bad one that has been made on the field. I can remember another one or two in Baltimore, that same thing, to tie or go ahead in the game like that when you’re on the road. I don’t see the point of having this replay system that doesn’t work.

Bautista was clear that his frustration with the system is unrelated to the fact that Toronto’s one-time six-game lead in the AL East has evaporated and the team is having trouble scoring runs.

“It was over this,” said Bautista of his blow-up. “It’s not frustration over anything else, that situation, that moment. I feel like there was a chance for Adam Lind to tie the game in the eighth inning and it was taken away from us. Man on second, two outs, 3-2 ballgame, we were right in it. Unfortunately some people, I don’t know what the right word is, lack of integrity, lack of accountability, or some really good comaraderie that are looking after each other, are not doing what they’re supposed to be doing. Because getting the right call on the field, which is why instant replay was instituted, is not the purpose of what’s happening. The best evidence is what happened today.

ken.fidlin@sunmedia.ca