With nobody out and a runner on first base in the first inning of Monday's Cubs/Phillies game, Cubs first baseman Michael Busch was called out on strikes on a fastball thrown by Phillies righthander Aaron Nola.

Now look at this screenshot of where the ball landed in J.T. Realmuto's mitt. It's clearly above the televised K zone:

Here is another screenshot showing the televised K zone and where the pitch landed, which appears to match the location where the ball hit Realmuto's mitt:

Realmuto did a good job of framing that pitch into the zone, and plate umpire Tony Randazzo called it strike three. Which it clearly wasn't. Okay, umpires get fooled by framing all the time, this isn't unusual. Happens all the time. It's why teams have tried to employ catchers who are good pitch framers.

Here's what IS unusual. I mentioned this in the game recap, but I want to show you these again. Here's a screenshot I took from MLB Gameday on my phone just after that strike three call:

Again, that appears to precisely match what you see on the video and screenshots above. The pitch was not in the strike zone and should not have been called a strike.

Here's a screenshot of the same pitch from Gameday on the MLB app as of earlier this morning:

No, my friends, that pitch did not magically move into the strike zone hours after it was thrown. Someone at MLB modified this grid to show that pitch in the zone, when it clearly was not. As a couple of you pointed out in the comments to this in the game recap, it appears that someone changed the strike zone on the Gameday grid for this at-bat to show that pitch in the zone. That's not something MLB should be doing, in my view. Is this a "simple correction," as one commenter pointed out? It's possible, I suppose... but should MLB be doing this? The strike zone is what it is. If a pitch appears to be out of the zone when it's thrown and called incorrectly, does changing that zone after the fact fix that? I would say not. Granted that the boxes as shown on the broadcasts are said to be not the official strike zone -- still. And undoubtedly, changes like this have benefited the Cubs as well as hurt them. Even so, just as we now have replay review to get calls right, why not do the same for balls and strikes?

Now, I don't know if this is a one-off thing. I haven't checked other bad calls like this to see if they, too, were modified in Gameday long after the pitches were actually made, but I have a suspicion this is not the first time this has happened.

This is a really bad look for Major League Baseball. Bad calls get made, we see them all the time. Don't try to make them look like they were actually correct when we have clear video showing that they weren't.

This is yet further evidence that we need the ball-and-strike challenge system instituted in MLB in 2025. It's working well in Triple-A and can easily be adapted to major-league games. Get it done, so we don't have things like this happen again.