Laz Diaz must have had his mask on backwards during Tuesday’s game.
The veteran MLB umpire was behind home plate for the Texas Rangers-Tampa Bay Rays game at George M. Steinbrenner Field in Tampa, Fla. During the fourth inning, Rays outfielder Jake Mangum was up at the plate against Rangers pitcher Tyler Mahle.
On a 1-2 count to Mangum, Mahle fired a pitch that was way outside the zone. But Diaz unbelievably ruled the offering to be strike 3, promptly confusing everybody in the stadium (likely even Mahle himself).
Take a look at the video.
Laz Diaz with one of the worst calls you’ll ever see pic.twitter.com/W2FTNiJaM1
— Jake (@TBRaysCentral) June 4, 2025
That pitch was at least three baseball lengths off the plate … and yet was still called a strike by Diaz. What an absolutely horrific call.
Fortunately for the Rays, they still managed to cruise to victory during Tuesday’s game, despite the Stevie Wonder-like call. Tampa Bay at least had nobody on at the time of Diaz’s doozy, and they eventually beat the Rangers by a final score of 5-1.
But Diaz, who has been an MLB umpire since 1999 and a crew chief since 2022, continues to pile up mistakes. He has a long history of bad calls behind the plate (including one that he admitted to screwing up on a few weeks ago) and just cannot get out of his own way at this point.
For many viewers, that comically awful strike 3 call on Tuesday brought back memories of the last time that something like this happened during a Rangers-Rays game.
