Red Sox's Strange Umpire Mishap Shows Everything Wrong With This Season

Sometimes, a brutal five-game stretch can be summed up in one unusual baseball moment.

On Tuesday night, in the middle of the Boston Red Sox's fourth-straight loss and second-straight thumping at the hands of the Houston Astros, starting pitcher Brayan Bello struck out Cam Smith on three pitches. Or at least, he got three swings and misses, which is how the baseball dictionary would define a strikeout. That just wasn't how it went on the official records.

Home plate umpire Mark Wegner somehow didn't register that there were already three strikes in the count, calling it 1-2 after nothing but swings and misses. Bello went on to walk Smith, and manager Alex Cora pulled him from the game with a 6-1 deficit and two outs in the fifth inning.

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Wegner says no one from Red Sox corrected him

Wegner said after the game that he had made a mistake, likely due to the fact that a chaotic play unfolded on what should have been strike two. He wasn't happy with himself, of course.

The ump and everyone else forgot the count here as this should’ve been a three-pitch strikeout, all swinging

Astros’ Cam Smith ended up walking, and Red Sox pitcher Brayan Bello was pulled from the game. Reliever Ryan Watson did retire the next batter pic.twitter.com/zF1QcPVQqz
— Jomboy Media (@JomboyMedia) April 1, 2026

“I just watched the video,” Wegner told a pool reporter, per Christopher Smith of MassLive. “I didn’t know what happened until I came in here and apparently I somehow didn’t count the second swinging one because I said the count was 1 and 2. It was actually strike three. Had anybody caught it, we can always go and call replay and check the count. I’ve never done that before. I’m not happy about it. Just made a mistake.”

However, Wegner also reported that no one from the Red Sox was on the ball to warn him of the discrepancy in the count. Small as it may seem, it's a microcosm of everything that's gone wrong with the Red Sox this season, as teams that don't take care of the details tend not to succeed.

“I don’t even know what to say about that,” Cora said, per Smith.

All that needs to be said is that the Red Sox have yet to wake up this season. And they might want to do so soon, because this is likely going to be a season in which some unfortunate American League team misses the playoffs by one or two games.