Okay, Ted Barrett’s Zone Was Crazy Pants
Over the last few weeks, I’ve been pointing out that the strike zone graphic used by TBS is not representative of the actual strike zone used in MLB, and is giving fans the wrong impression of the quality of the home plate umpiring in the playoffs. After nearly every NL game, we’ve seen a cascade of calls roasting that night’s umpire for making a bunch of bad calls, but in most cases, PITCHF/x has confirmed that the umpires are calling the same pitches they always call.
Today, though, I’m not going to defend last night’s umpire. Ted Barrett worked the plate for the Cubs/Mets game, and his zone was atrocious.
Those two called strikes off the plate to left-handed batters — one against Lucas Duda, one against Curtis Granderson — are bananas. That down and away pitch that Pedro Strop threw to Kelly Johnson is almost never called a strike either.
But Mets pitchers got their own share of nutty calls as well, especially at the bottom of the zone. Anthony Rizzo, Kyle Schwarber, and Chris Denorfia all had strikes called on them on pitches so far down that they shouldn’t have been reasonably expected to swing. And Kyle Hendricks took a pitch from deGrom at the very edge of even the shifted right-handed zone, because apparently a pitcher hitting against another team’s ace also needs a huge strike zone to contend with.
Barrett’s zone went both ways, and he wasn’t favoring one team or another, but last night’s strike zone was worth complaining about. This wasn’t just TBS misleading viewers with a poorly drawn graphic. Ted Barrett’s strike zone last night really was enormous.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
Enormous on the X axis and shifted down on the Y axis. Notice that he didn’t give anything in the top quarter or so of the zone.
His zone definitely led to some interesting moments and I’d say as a Mets fan was a boon to deGrom. He managed a few questionable strikeouts to get out of trouble spots
To me, the key to this series has been the ability of the Mets pitchers to consistently throw pitches at the bottom of the zone (and below), both with offspeed stuff and hard stuff. They haven’t gotten every call, but they’ve gotten a lot of them. The Cubs led the NL in walks during the regular season and have 5 walks in three games. Credit the Mets pitchers for executing the game plan.
There doesn’t seem to be much asked in the top the quarter of the zone. Looks like the pitchers realized they could work low, so they worked low.
Inclined to agree this worked in Mets’ favor: going low quiets fly balls against a HR-happy team on a windy night; fringe calls force a team with contact issues to swing at harder-to-hit pitches; out-of-zone calls require young hitters with an eye for a reasonably-called strike zone to adjust on the fly.