Baseball found a way to get weird on Monday night in Toronto. A scoreboard glitch, a blown appeal, and an obscure rule nobody thinks about combined to hand the Red Sox a run in the middle of a Blue Jays win, and by the time the umpires sorted it out, half of Barstool's baseball accounts were online calling the whole thing a joke.
The broadcast put up an on-screen graphic explaining MLB Rule 5.09(c)(4), the fourth-out appeal provision that decided the play.
Here's what actually happened, according to MLB's own rules explainer on the game: the scoreboard mistakenly showed two outs after a Nick Sogard groundout when only one had actually been recorded. Both Red Sox runners, thinking the inning was basically over, didn't tag up properly, and the runner on third crossed home before Toronto's fielders got their appeal in. The problem for the Blue Jays was that their infielders had already crossed the third-base line on their way off the field, meaning they could only appeal at first, not third, where it would've mattered. Because the runner touched home before that appeal was made, MLB's replay office in New York ruled it a fourth-out situation under Rule 5.09(c)(4) and let the run stand. Toronto still won the game 2-1, but the process getting there took a while.
A baserunner slides into second while the umpiring crew works through the disputed out call in real time on the NESN broadcast.
Streamer Hogdale was watching live and did not hide how he felt about it. Barstool Sports posted his reaction as the delay dragged on, and it's the kind of face you make when a sport you've watched your whole life suddenly needs a graphic to explain itself.
Hogdale reacts live on stream, calling the sequence one of the dumbest things he's ever seen while the scoreboard shows Boston trailing 0-2 in the bottom of the 7th.
Barstool Gambling and Barstool Baseball piled on too, with one post flatly calling the crew clueless and another mocking the idea that outs can apparently get rewritten mid-play. It's the kind of moment that makes even mild fans feel like they understand baseball's rulebook better than the guys enforcing it, even though this exact rule has burned other teams before in similarly bizarre fashion.
I respect how the ump came back off the headset and just said yeah we’re giving Boston a run and it doesn’t matter why
None of it changed the final score. Toronto took the series opener 2-1 despite gifting Boston a run out of pure procedural chaos, which is its own kind of funny. Barstool Baseball couldn't resist needling the situation afterward, joking that Tim Kurkjian is probably at home right now wondering why nobody knew Rule 5.09(c)(4) existed until Monday night forced it into the spotlight.