No sooner than I finished looking at the missed low strike calls in last night’s game, we get this “embarrassment” from Umpire Joe West:
“They’re the two clubs that don’t try to pick up the pace,” said West, chief of the umpiring crew that worked the three-game series in Boston. He was the home plate umpire Sunday. “They’re two of the best teams in baseball. Why are they playing the slowest?
“It’s pathetic and embarrassing. They take too long to play.”
Hey Joe, how about calling pitches IN THE STRIKE ZONE actual strikes? What, you say? How about some visual proof that your crappy ball/strike calling effectively slowed the game as much as anoy other reason you care to give. If the pitch is a strike, call it. You’re calling pitches balls that were really strikes is the real embarrassment.
Now, the proof (normalized and non-normalized strikezone plots for both teams from BrooksBaseball.net):
Those are Joe West’s strikezone plots from Sunday 4/4/10, Yanks at Boston. Notice the number of green dots in the lower third of the plate? Yeah, Joe West is squeezing the crap out of the strikezone.
Complaining about the other superfluous stuff is noise when you, yourself, are doing your very best to slow the game by calling so many balls… which results in more walks, more pitches, more time.
Call a strike a strike and let’s get this thing rollin’!
UPDATE (4/8/10, 12:20pm): Since there might be some confusion about what “normalized vs. non-normalized” might be, I asked Dan Brooks of BrooksBaseball.net, my source for Pitch f/x data. His reply via email:
Different batters have different heights. Normalized just means that the top and bottom of the zone (+1 and -1) have been set to be the top and bottom of each player’s strikezone as reported by MLB’s PitchFX operator. And then, the other pitches in the plate appearance have been scaled according to that same metric. Basically, it gives the umpire credit for knowing that different players have different strikezones.
In some cases, it can help explain why a particularly high strike was called (particularly tall batter) or a particularly low strike was called (long stride length, etc).
Non-normalized makes no such correction.
Got it? Good. Thanks Dan!
It takes a lot of chutzpah for a major league baseball umpire to call anyone else "embarrassing and pathetic," let alone 2 of the most successful franchises of the last decade.
Here's an example of what I was commenting in the last post… http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/the-com…
The point of this article is to show how umpires act differently in different counts, but you can see that a low "strike" is never called.
That's good stuff, Greg… but it only goes to further prove my point: If you (not you, personally!) complain about game times and slow pace of play, start with the umpires and work your way out.
1) Umpires calling strikes
2) Catchers (mound visits)
3) Batters (stepping out, calling for time)
4) Pitchers (stepping off, throwing over to let the BP warm up, calling the catcher out)
groan. Now I have to learn about pitch f/x. 15 minutes googling away, and few basic questions have been answered. For one, I can't figure out the difference between the true and the normalized data. Oh well. I won't solve this problem today.
By the way, an eyeball count tells me that last night's balls and strikes were called even less accurately than Sunday night's. There should be data somewhere, showing the percentage of strikes called as balls in the average MLB game. I wonder how much worse (or better) the umps did in this series, compared to average.
It looks to me like the normalized results show more balls called strikes than vice-versa.
Joe West is right; it is embarrassing and pathetic how long these games are. If only there were someone on the field who could enforce the rules that speed up the pace of the game. Maybe some sort official, or a referee…
I think that MLB should insist that umpires standardize the strike zone. A strike should be a strike and a ball a ball irrespective of who is behind the plate. But God forbid that anyone should criticize the umpires. When the obviously blow a call almost every announcer emphasizes what a really good job they do. What a crock.
Some umps are just plain incompetent, West is one of em. I noticed that when Brett Gardner got on base Papelbon must have thrown to first 7 times at least. There should be a limit set on that IMHO. 3 or 4 times is enough. Oh and BTW, for all those moves to first – BG still stole second base handily.
Keeping with the theme of this site….
Umpires should get paid "overtime" when a game goes over 2.5 hours. Maybe then Joe West will call the Yankees and Red Sox "heroes" instead of "a disgrace".
MLB needs to fine or suspend Joe West. His comments are more OR at least AS inflammatory and insulting as a manager kicking dirt on an umpire. He's an official who isn't paid to editorialize or express his opinion on the players or on the game. Based on his evaluation do pitching changes embarrass the game? Maybe he should skip dusting off the plate to retain the integrity of the game.
HIM thinks the this fat old ump should tuck all his chins under his lovely WEST body armour, eat some salad and take a few dozen laps. Oh yea, calling a good game would be novel for this fat overly officious FART!
HIM thinks the this fat old ump should tuck all his chins under his lovely WEST body armour, eat some salad and take a few dozen laps. Oh yeah, calling a good game would be novel for this fat overly officious FART!