Excellent piece on umpiring

[msgkings322]

I know we already have a thread but this article is really terrific if you actually want to know what's going on and changing in the game in this area, and not just here to bitch. Read the whole thing, any baseball nerd will love it.

It’s a Really Weird Time to Be an Umpire (Published 2023)

With replay cameras watching every call, it has become an increasingly stressful job — and baseball’s new rules will just make it harder.

www.nytimes.com

Some excerpts:

"Since 2020, M.L.B. has been using the 12-camera Hawk-Eye system, installed in all 30 ballparks, accurate to within 0.16 of an inch, to capture data on every official pitch and evaluate umpire performance, which helps guide the awarding of postseason assignments and crew-chief promotions. For a modern ump such as Tichenor, a critical task occurs the morning after a game behind home plate, when he’s expected to log onto M.L.B.’s virtual office and review his work. The software allows him to compare M.L.B.’s strike zone with ESPN’s K-Zone, or one of the other “boxes” used by broadcasters, which closely approximate the official zone, so he can get a sense of what viewers thought of his work. (Please, on behalf of the umpires, if you take nothing else away from this article: That box on your screen is not the real strike zone.)"

"A limited challenge system of some kind that allows managers to question calls feels inevitable. What we aren’t likely to see in the near future is “full A.B.S.” — robot umpires calling every pitch."

"What all the metrics agree on is that M.L.B. umpires are astonishingly good at their jobs, and that the technology has made them much better. Even the grizzled, older umps whom most fans would probably guess are terrible at calling the box turned out to be quite adaptable. According to Umpire Scorecards, Joe West, who retired after the 2021 season, called a near-perfect game in his last turn behind the plate during the playoffs, correctly calling 155 of 159 pitches. Adjusting to the box itself wasn’t the hard part. What tripped up so many umps was everything about their work that changed because of it: the temperamental stuff, the long dispositional journey from projecting certainty at all times to embracing their innate fallibility. Some umps who thrived in the previous era have often seemed lost in this one."

"Consider the case of Angel Hernandez, West’s protégé and former crewmate, the bane of so many baseball fans who regard him as the worst umpire in baseball, even though by nearly all available metrics he’s about league-average. He’s fine. A bit below average on balls and strikes, but no worse than his generational peers. Umpire Scorecards indicates that he accurately called 93.5 percent of the 4,449 pitches he saw in 2022. He’s in the top 100 on the planet. It turns out his actual work behind the plate in no way justifies his brutal reputation. Indeed, the fate of Angel Hernandez has less to do with any calls he’s botched than with how he makes them, the drill-sergeant demeanor he continues to project, no matter how much the game changes around him. His mistake — misfortune, really — was getting caught on the wrong side of a generation gap."

 

[calsnowskier]

I know we already have a thread but this article is really terrific if you actually want to know what's going on and changing in the game in this area, and not just here to bitch. Read the whole thing, any baseball nerd will love it.

It’s a Really Weird Time to Be an Umpire (Published 2023)

With replay cameras watching every call, it has become an increasingly stressful job — and baseball’s new rules will just make it harder.

www.nytimes.com

Some excerpts:

"Since 2020, M.L.B. has been using the 12-camera Hawk-Eye system, installed in all 30 ballparks, accurate to within 0.16 of an inch, to capture data on every official pitch and evaluate umpire performance, which helps guide the awarding of postseason assignments and crew-chief promotions. For a modern ump such as Tichenor, a critical task occurs the morning after a game behind home plate, when he’s expected to log onto M.L.B.’s virtual office and review his work. The software allows him to compare M.L.B.’s strike zone with ESPN’s K-Zone, or one of the other “boxes” used by broadcasters, which closely approximate the official zone, so he can get a sense of what viewers thought of his work. (Please, on behalf of the umpires, if you take nothing else away from this article: That box on your screen is not the real strike zone.)"

"A limited challenge system of some kind that allows managers to question calls feels inevitable. What we aren’t likely to see in the near future is “full A.B.S.” — robot umpires calling every pitch."

"What all the metrics agree on is that M.L.B. umpires are astonishingly good at their jobs, and that the technology has made them much better. Even the grizzled, older umps whom most fans would probably guess are terrible at calling the box turned out to be quite adaptable. According to Umpire Scorecards, Joe West, who retired after the 2021 season, called a near-perfect game in his last turn behind the plate during the playoffs, correctly calling 155 of 159 pitches. Adjusting to the box itself wasn’t the hard part. What tripped up so many umps was everything about their work that changed because of it: the temperamental stuff, the long dispositional journey from projecting certainty at all times to embracing their innate fallibility. Some umps who thrived in the previous era have often seemed lost in this one."

"Consider the case of Angel Hernandez, West’s protégé and former crewmate, the bane of so many baseball fans who regard him as the worst umpire in baseball, even though by nearly all available metrics he’s about league-average. He’s fine. A bit below average on balls and strikes, but no worse than his generational peers. Umpire Scorecards indicates that he accurately called 93.5 percent of the 4,449 pitches he saw in 2022. He’s in the top 100 on the planet. It turns out his actual work behind the plate in no way justifies his brutal reputation. Indeed, the fate of Angel Hernandez has less to do with any calls he’s botched than with how he makes them, the drill-sergeant demeanor he continues to project, no matter how much the game changes around him. His mistake — misfortune, really — was getting caught on the wrong side of a generation gap."

Just doing some really quick math here…

There are never more than 15 umpire crews doing field-work on any given day. On top of that, I believe they station 2 crews in NY for replay duty. Let’s figure another 2 crews are “off” during each cycle as well )total guess on this one).

That tells me there are 19 umpire crews in total. Times 4, than make 76 MLB umpire jobs (factor in 15 floating positions for specific time off, promotions, demotions, etc), that makes approx 90 MLB jobs per season.

So to call Angel Hernandez one of the top 100 is actually not saying a damn thing at all.

Further, the 93% figure they used is misleading. The VAST bulk of called balls/strikes are rather obvious (I am not looking this up, so feel free to offer up research that says I am wrong on this assumption). The ball is either right down the pipe or WAY oit of the zone. I don’t care how many he gets right outside of the “red zone” (my term; there may be an actual term for the gray areas). Tell me how he does on the borderline calls. Though I do acknowledge that there should probably be some leeway given to umps in this zone, it should still be tracked (and I bet that it is tracked). I also care about consistency and if he offers any edge to one team or the other. I believe that Umpire Reportcard does, in fact, track these metrics.

Anyway, bottom line, I do believe that umpires are better than we give them credit for. Even Hernandez. The extreme scrutiny they have been under for the last 20 or so years is a result of the improvement in video quality and the access to rewatching their screwups on the internet. But I also believe that the Umpires union, for some odd reason, is strong enough to make these guys next to unfireable.

 

[msgkings322]

Just doing some really quick math here…

There are never more than 15 umpire crews doing field-work on any given day. On top of that, I believe they station 2 crews in NY for replay duty. Let’s figure another 2 crews are “off” during each cycle as well )total guess on this one).

That tells me there are 19 umpire crews in total. Times 4, than make 76 MLB umpire jobs (factor in 15 floating positions for specific time off, promotions, demotions, etc), that makes approx 90 MLB jobs per season.

So to call Angel Hernandez one of the top 100 is actually not saying a damn thing at all.

Further, the 93% figure they used is misleading. The VAST bulk of called balls/strikes are rather obvious (I am not looking this up, so feel free to offer up research that says I am wrong on this assumption). The ball is either right down the pipe or WAY oit of the zone. I don’t care how many he gets right outside of the “red zone” (my term; there may be an actual term for the gray areas). Tell me how he does on the borderline calls. Though I do acknowledge that there should probably be some leeway given to umps in this zone, it should still be tracked (and I bet that it is tracked). I also care about consistency and if he offers any edge to one team or the other. I believe that Umpire Reportcard does, in fact, track these metrics.

Anyway, bottom line, I do believe that umpires are better than we give them credit for. Even Hernandez. The extreme scrutiny they have been under for the last 20 or so years is a result of the improvement in video quality and the access to rewatching their screwups on the internet. But I also believe that the Umpires union, for some odd reason, is strong enough to make these guys next to unfireable.

Good comments. Did you check out the whole article? I thought it was really interesting, learned a lot of detail about modern umpiring