Umpire Scorecard Thread

[Just Regular]

For sure I am interested in how the estimated runs of difference between NYY and BAL is progressing as the year goes along leading up to 3 weeks from now and whatever comes after.

I hope and trust Elias and Sig are sending some kind of reports to the league office.    140 games along the teams have played to basically a dead heat, and earlier this year it was tracking towards more than a 50 run difference.

I know Mad Dog Russo says the game "needs" a NYY-LAD series, but come on now..   Jose the Magic Framer has lost his starting gig to Austin Wells.    I suppose it is possible Austin Wells is the greatest framer in baseball history too.

[BohKnowsBmore]

3 hours ago, Just Regular said:

For sure I am interested in how the estimated runs of difference between NYY and BAL is progressing as the year goes along leading up to 3 weeks from now and whatever comes after.

I hope and trust Elias and Sig are sending some kind of reports to the league office.    140 games along the teams have played to basically a dead heat, and earlier this year it was tracking towards more than a 50 run difference.

I know Mad Dog Russo says the game "needs" a NYY-LAD series, but come on now..   Jose the Magic Framer has lost his starting gig to Austin Wells.    I suppose it is possible Austin Wells is the greatest framer in baseball history too.

If I'm reading this chart correctly, NYY are far and away the most favored team with 26-runs to the favorable side, while the O's are the 10th least favored ream, with -5.14 runs to the negative. O's unfavorable balance is driven by -6.64 runs when Orioles are batting, muted somewhat by 1.5 runs to the positive from the pitching side of things, which largely tracks with eye test / my perception of where we've been the victim of poor calls.

https://umpscorecards.com/teams/

[Can_of_corn]

Just now, BohKnowsBmore said:

If I'm reading this chart correctly, NYY are far and away the most favored team with 26-runs to the favorable side, while the O's are the 10th least favored ream, with -5.14 runs to the negative. O's unfavorable balance is driven by -6.64 runs when Orioles are batting, muted somewhat by 1.5 runs to the positive from the pitching side of things, which largely tracks with eye test / my perception of where we've been the victim of poor calls.

https://umpscorecards.com/teams/

How much of that favoritism is the result of framing?

[ShoelesJoe]

17 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

How much of that favoritism is the result of framing?

None. 

"Framing" is just a polite way of saying the home plate umpire is too lazy and/or incompetent to do his job. A pitch is either within the rule book strike zone or it is not. How it is caught (or even IF it is caught) has no bearing on whether it is a ball or strike. This is why MLB needs some form of robo-umps. Blaming or crediting the catcher for umpires who make bad calls is like blaming the color of your car when you get a speeding ticket. Just as speed cameras don't care if you're driving a red mustang, an automated strike zone system won't care how the catcher receives the ball, where he initially set up, or even what the count is at that point in the AB. Bad umpires care about all those things.

[now]

Those scorecards quantify what I was griping about earlier, that irks me the most: that the umpires generally are way more prone to expand the strike zone to favor pitchers, by a factor of 97% compared to 88% calling balls inside the box... in a game that's already inherently favoring the pitcher, plus the increasing advantage of extreme velocity and breaks.

The ideal should be an elegant balance between pitcher and hitter, so for the umps to routinely favor the pitcher just seems fundamentally unjust. As many commenters note, it's just like they want the game to end quicker so they can go to dinner. 

[Can_of_corn]

4 minutes ago, ShoelesJoe said:

None. 

"Framing" is just a polite way of saying the home plate umpire is too lazy and/or incompetent to do his job. A pitch is either within the rule book strike zone or it is not. How it is caught (or even IF it is caught) has no bearing on whether it is a ball or strike. This is why MLB needs some form of robo-umps. Blaming or crediting the catcher for umpires who make bad calls is like blaming the color of your car when you get a speeding ticket. Just as speed cameras don't care if you're driving a red mustang, an automated strike zone system won't care how the catcher receives the ball, where he initially set up, or even what the count is at that point in the AB. Bad umpires care about all those things.

I am in favor of the ABS system.

That being said it isn't always laziness or incompetence.

Is 100% accuracy and an immunity to framing techniques a requirement for being considered "competent"? 

As for the car thing, back in the 90's I drove a '79 Seville, two toned black and grey.  The diesel engine had been replaced with a Chevy 350 with a 4 barrel.

It was invisible to police.  If it had been a red sports car, I guarantee you with how I drove I would have gone broke with tickets.

We can gnash our teeth about it all we want but it's a thing.

[HowAboutThat]

4 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

I am in favor of the ABS system.

That being said it isn't always laziness or incompetence.

Is 100% accuracy and an immunity to framing techniques a requirement for being considered "competent"? 

As for the car thing, back in the 90's I drove a '79 Seville, two toned black and grey.  The diesel engine had been replaced with a Chevy 350 with a 4 barrel.

It was invisible to police.  If it had been a red sports car, I guarantee you with how I drove I would have gone broke with tickets.

We can gnash our teeth about it all we want but it's a thing.

Sevilles come with a fine V-8. Why change it?

[Can_of_corn]

6 minutes ago, HowAboutThat said:

Sevilles come with a fine V-8. Why change it?

Did you miss the part where I said diesel?

The Diesel it came with was 105 HP and that was before it blew up.

We couldn't get our hands on the Old's 350 that would have dropped right in.

Edited September 4 by Can_of_corn

[LGOrioles]

4 hours ago, ShoelesJoe said:

This is the Rangers' walk off last night. I watched from the 5th inning on, and Wegner was obviously giving Yankee pitchers an extra two inches on either side of the plate that Rangers pitchers were not getting. I'm convinced beyond reasonable doubt that home plate umps are (subconsciously?) giving NY the benefit of any and all doubts wrt balls and strikes because they know if they miss even one call that goes against the Yankees Boone will go nuclear. They've had seven years of his abuse and would rather not have to deal with it. That's the innocent explanation for why the Yankees get so many bad calls in their favor. There's a not so innocent explanation that we are all thinking from time to time. 

 

 

It might have been Cousins or Hill in the 8th, but there were about 2-3 called balls that were clearly off the plate, that they were ticked off about not being called strikes. Watching just the last few innings, the umpire was clearly awful, but what stuck out to me more was how the Yankees pitchers just expected to get 4-5 inches off the plate and reacted on the mound if they didn’t get it.

One of the pitches was the last pitch of Adolis Garcia’s walk in the 8th. It was literally closer to being in the other batters box than it was to the very edge of the plate, yet Cousins stared in and Boone was yelling at the ump “Where was that” when he went out for the pitching change. Well, it was in the batters box Aaron. 

[Morgan423]

So I run YouTube videos in the background for background noise on my WFH days, and this morning I got this in my recommended feed.  It touches heavily on this very topic: catcher framing and how it directly impacts favoritism.

A good watch if you have a spare 15 minutes to kill.
 

 

[Fiver6565]

55 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

I am in favor of the ABS system.

That being said it isn't always laziness or incompetence.

Is 100% accuracy and an immunity to framing techniques a requirement for being considered "competent"? 

As for the car thing, back in the 90's I drove a '79 Seville, two toned black and grey.  The diesel engine had been replaced with a Chevy 350 with a 4 barrel.

It was invisible to police.  If it had been a red sports car, I guarantee you with how I drove I would have gone broke with tickets.

We can gnash our teeth about it all we want but it's a thing.

I agree that framing is a thing.  I also agree with the previous poster that its stupid that its a thing.  Even with 'good' framers, its very clear they are moving the glove as/after catching the ball.

I'm all in for ABS now, and I wasn't until recently.  I'd settle for the compromise of the challenge system - use that and perhaps umps start to call the game better knowing they are about to be corrected in real time (although these 'ump scorecards' haven't seemed to make them any better, so who knows if a challenge system would).  I think in the minors its only 3 per game (that you can incorrectly challgenge).  I'd even be inclined to give them more than that, honestly.  Though as long as its unlimited as long are your challenge is right, I'm fine with three as well. 

Either way, hopefully something is in place next season.

[Aristotelian]

20 minutes ago, Fiver6565 said:

I agree that framing is a thing.  I also agree with the previous poster that its stupid that its a thing.  Even with 'good' framers, its very clear they are moving the glove as/after catching the ball.

I'm all in for ABS now, and I wasn't until recently.  I'd settle for the compromise of the challenge system - use that and perhaps umps start to call the game better knowing they are about to be corrected in real time (although these 'ump scorecards' haven't seemed to make them any better, so who knows if a challenge system would).  I think in the minors its only 3 per game (that you can incorrectly challgenge).  I'd even be inclined to give them more than that, honestly.  Though as long as its unlimited as long are your challenge is right, I'm fine with three as well. 

Either way, hopefully something is in place next season.

I don't have any faith that the challenge system will make the umpires better, and honestly I really sympathize with them as it is very hard to consistently call balls and strikes for 100+ mph fastballs and pitches with crazy movement. These guys are human and they are going to mess up and that's why it needs to be automated. A challenge system, while not perfect, will at least cut down on the most impactful calls, similar to the replay challenge system.

[Fiver6565]

9 minutes ago, Aristotelian said:

I don't have any faith that the challenge system will make the umpires better, and honestly I really sympathize with them as it is very hard to consistently call balls and strikes for 100+ mph fastballs and pitches with crazy movement. These guys are human and they are going to mess up and that's why it needs to be automated. A challenge system, while not perfect, will at least cut down on the most impactful calls, similar to the replay challenge system.

I think the challenge system also eases people into the idea of a fully automated system, rather than just jumping off the cliff into it.  It leaves the 'human element' that people love so much (but decreasingly so, it seems) in place but also, as you pointed out, offers the chance to correct the most egregious errors that occur.

I agree, I don't know why anyone would want to grow up and be an umpire, LOL.  Impossible job.

[Can_of_corn]

16 minutes ago, Aristotelian said:

I don't have any faith that the challenge system will make the umpires better, and honestly I really sympathize with them as it is very hard to consistently call balls and strikes for 100+ mph fastballs and pitches with crazy movement. These guys are human and they are going to mess up and that's why it needs to be automated. A challenge system, while not perfect, will at least cut down on the most impactful calls, similar to the replay challenge system.

Having the data they do now and giving the ump's feedback after every game behind the plate has improved their performance so we do have a precedent.

[SteveA]

Last night Paul Skenes threw a ball he thought was strike 3 and started walking off the mound before he realized it had been called a strike and caught himself.   Plate ump Doug Eddings, who we have discussed in this thread before and is one of the old guard still around, and always has a big strike zone, chewed him out for starting to walk off the mound.   

Now in this particular case Eddings was right on the call, it WAS pretty clearly a ball according to the box in the replay.   But I still don't think an ump needs to yell at a pitcher for a momentary reaction that is borderline reflexive.   It wasn't some attempt to show up Eddings.