(Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)
“Every night was a guessing game.” When former MLB player Eric Byrnes stepped into the righty batter’s box, the inconsistencies of home plate umpires were in his head, and for MLB players today, nothing has changed. In fact, the flaws that MLB umpires have had for over one hundred years are being scrutinized more heavily than ever with the relatively new technology that has allowed everyone to become an umpire from their couch.
Sportvision, the company that created the yellow first down line that viewers see on TV while watching football games, created the PITCHf/x system that tracks every pitch from the time it leaves the pitcher’s hand until it hits the catchers mitt. It uses three permanently mounted cameras— one halfway down the first base line, one halfway down the third base line, and one in center field— to track the location of every pitch with an error of only half an inch, as well as the speed, pitch type, and movement.
PITCHf/x is used during every baseball game and is readily available on MLB.com and the MLB At Bat app, allowing viewers to see where exactly each pitch is located. This gives everyone the ability to judge balls and strikes from anywhere in the world. This judgment is then placed directly on the umpires calling balls and strikes behind home plate.
Umpires are being scrutinized now more than ever because of the wide availability of technology like PITCHf/x, but is the criticism they are receiving warranted? And if it is, can a computer actually replace home plate umpires in the future?
To start out, I thought it would be fun to examine umpires individually to see who has made the highest percent of correct calls, and who has made the lowest. According to Umpire Auditor from Bloomberg Businessweek, the only umpire who has made the correct call on 90% of opportunities is Eric Cooper. Carlos Torres, Tom Woodring, Sean Barber, Fieldin Culbreth, Dana DeMuth, Alfonso Marquez, Pat Hoberg, Gary Cederstrom, Lance Barksdale, John Tumpane, and Gabe Morales have all made the correct call on 89% of opportunities.
The two worst umpires, who both have a correct call percentage of 85% this season, are Kerwin Danley and Doug Eddings. There is a large group of umpires with an 86% correct call percentage, including Angel Hernandez, who Tigers second baseman Ian Kinsler is not too fond of. (If you haven’t heard what Kinsler said about Hernandez, click here).
With the increased scrutinization and criticism of umpires over the years, you would think that they have been increasingly inaccurate. However, that is not the case. According to Fangraphs, MLB umpires’ correct strike percentage increased every year from 2012 (76.80%) to 2015 (82.70%). This is almost a six percent increase in four seasons. Their correct strike percentage in 2016 was 82.21% which is a very minimal decrease from 2015.
Last season, umpires only made the correct strike call 82.21% of the time, and that includes pitches in the middle of the zone that no MLB umpire should ever get wrong. If you look at the strike zone below, on pitches in zones 11, 12, 13, and 14,— these can still be strikes because a ball that hits any part of the zone is considered a strike— umpires made the correct strike call only 55.17% of the time.
(Fangraphs.com)
In a “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel” episode, Toby Moskowitz, a math professor at Yale, presented similar statistics about umpire accuracy on pitches on the edge of the strike zone. Of the 32 pitches per game within a four inch region around the edge of home plate (two inches on each side of the zone), umpires are only 69% correct, which is a 31% error. When this region was extended to three inches on each side of the strike zone, umpires were 74.1% correct, which is an error of 25.9%.
There are many factors that affect umpire accuracy, and one of those is the count. In a count where the batter is ahead, umpires have a higher correct strike percentage than when the pitcher is ahead. For example, in 3-0 counts, umpires, from 2012-2016, have a correct strike percentage of 91.06% (Fangraphs). In 0-2 counts, umpires are only correct on 56.66% of strike calls.
The opposite is true for balls. In 0-2 counts, umpires were correct 98.73% of the time. In 3-0 counts, they were correct 90.32% of the time, which is still a high percentage compared to their correct strike percentages, but it is a significant decrease from umpires’ correct ball percentage on 0-2 counts. You can see visualizations of the strike zone on 3-0 counts and 0-2 counts below, which show how umpires adjust their strike zone depending on the count.
(Fangraphs.com)
One of the notorious factors that affect the decision making of MLB umpires and of officials from every sport is home-field advantage— the idea that umpires and officials make more calls in favor of the home team than the road team. Moskowitz did some research on this as well, and found that eight more mistakes were made in favor of the home team.
Frank Drebin, the umpire from the movie “The Naked Gun,” realized he could win over the home fans by making calls in favor of the home team, including calling pitches a strike before they even crossed home plate. Whether or not this is the motivation for umpires to call pitches in favor of the home team, it is still an outside factor that affects decisions made by umpires when the only thing that should affect these decisions is the location of the pitch when it crosses home plate.
It is no secret that MLB umpires miss numerous calls throughout a game, and many fans and players believe it’s time to reimagine the strike zone. As technology improves, people around the game of baseball are looking for ways to incorporate technology to advance the game, and the inconsistency and inaccuracy of umpires is at the forefront of issues that could be fixed with technology. The solution: PITCHf/x will call balls and strikes.
In the “Real Sports” episode, there was a person near the field that used PITCHf/x to call balls and strikes and communicated to the umpire using an earpiece. There was also a red light in center field that flashed when a pitch was a strike.
(HBO/Youtube)
One of the biggest concerns regarding an automated strike zone is if it will interrupt the flow of the game. If the umpire has to wait for someone in center field to relay the call to him, it could delay the game, especially if there are some technical difficulties which is bound to happen.
However, the manager of one of the teams that participated in the experiment said it did not interrupt the game at all. This is very encouraging for someone like me who had some concerns about game flow since the MLB has been trying very hard to speed up games. Although the technology still has to be perfected, the experiment that HBO ran showed that an automated strike zone could be the solution to umpire inconsistency.
The hard part to this solution is not figuring out the technology, it is convincing current umpires and the Major League Umpires Association to agree to this monumental change. Imagine if someone approached you and asked if it was okay if a computer did half of your job for you. I doubt you would be up for the change. Likewise, I doubt, actually I know, that umpires are going to be sternly against any incorporation of technology into the strike zone. Adding replay review was enough, and many fans, including Bryant Gumbel, believe that replay review is too much technology to begin with.
Convincing umpires to incorporate an automated strike zone— home plate umpires would still be needed to call plays at the plate— is an uphill battle, but the technology is almost there. No one likes it when the umpires are the deciding factor in a big game, so why not eliminate the possibility of that happening. Former MLB umpire Jerry Crawford said in the “Real Sports” episode that “traditions make the game of baseball,” but traditions shouldn’t stop us from advancing America’s Pastime and making it the best game we can make it.