Matt Kemp and the Problem With the Umpire Strike Zone
In the Dodgers/Cardinals game Monday night, Dale Scott served as the home-plate umpire, and when the game was over Matt Kemp couldn’t help but complain to the media that Scott had been terrible. Umpires have had better games, and umpires have had worse games, but one could at least understand Kemp’s frustration, given what happened to him in the top of the ninth. And what happened to Kemp in the top of the ninth really captures the whole problem with the human-called strike zone. Nothing you’re going to read below is going to be new to you, because this has been the problem forever, but the specific sequence with Kemp was too incredible not to acknowledge. In not writing about Kemp’s situation specifically, I’ll begin by writing about Kemp’s situation specifically.
This post might have my favorite-ever .gif. At least, it’s my favorite .gif so far of the month. I love it because of how much I hate it.
The setting for you: 3-1 Cardinals, top 9, Kemp leading off against Trevor Rosenthal. With the count 1-and-2, Rosenthal threw Kemp a fastball down and away.
Ball. All right, makes sense. Seemed a little off the plate away. At 2-and-2, Rosenthal came back with another fastball down and away.
Strike. All right, makes sense. Perfectly spotted, barely missed the plate. You see this pitch called a strike pretty often. The only problem being: welp. See, there was this other fastball, right before. Now we get to move on to just an absolutely amazing .gif. This is the problem with the umpire strike zone, in a couple of seconds:
See the green circle with the 4 in it? Not for long you don’t, because it’s replaced by a red circle with a 5 in it. That tells you everything, but just to really drive the point home, here are some PITCHf/x details, from Brooks Baseball.
The fourth pitch, called a ball, was a fastball measured at 99.1 miles per hour out of Rosenthal’s hand. At the front plane of the strike zone, the center of the ball was 13.1 inches from the middle of the plate, and 26.4 inches off the ground. Basically, the height was fine, but the pitch was a bit outside.
The fifth pitch, called a strike, was a fastball measured at 99.2 miles per hour out of Rosenthal’s hand. At the front plane of the strike zone, the center of the ball was 13.0 inches from the middle of the plate, and 26.2 inches off the ground. The location was different from the previous pitch’s location by 0.2 inches. Which is to say, the locations were not different at all. Which you can tell from the .gif just above.
That’s the problem. That is the whole problem. The pitches had very slightly different movements, but Dale Scott wasn’t perceiving that. Trevor Rosenthal threw a pair of almost literally identical 99mph fastballs. Both pitches were taken, and both pitches were called differently. The pitch that Matt Kemp heard was a ball was then subsequently a strike, his third of the at-bat in the ninth inning of a playoff game.
We’ve known forever that umpires are inconsistent, because calling balls and strikes is super hard, but seldom do you get to see it exhibited like that. Same pitch twice in a row, literally opposite calls. You can see why Kemp was upset, because, what he is supposed to do with that? You can tell him that maybe he should be protecting with two strikes, but literally just the pitch before Kemp struck out, he hard that pitch was a ball, so why swing at it? You swing at it because it’s a strike, even though it’s a ball.
Those were fastballs in the gray area. There has to be a gray area with anything that humans are judging, because we can’t mentally draw consistent borders, and when you have pitches on the edge, the call is nothing but a coin flip. Scott easily could’ve called the fourth pitch a strike. He easily could’ve called the fifth pitch a ball. Instead he did what he did, and it’s simultaneously understandable and unfair. We’re asking humans to do something that’s basically impossible to do right often enough, and when you see something like this, no one comes out of it looking good. Dale Scott wouldn’t want this to happen the way it did, but a man can see pitches only so well.
It wasn’t that long ago that Asdrubal Cabrera got ejected after arguing strikes. The pitches in question were neither obvious strikes nor obvious balls, so someone was going to have a problem. Brandon McCarthy distilled the issue into a tweet:
5 out of 10 times those are strikes. Therein lies the problem.
— Brandon McCarthy (@BMcCarthy32) October 5, 2014
Most pitches that are taken are clear strikes or clear balls. Yet when it comes to the edges, so much of it comes down to luck. A good take by a hitter can end up looking like a bad take, a take that was too close to lay off of. And pitchers, sometimes, get the bad side of this as well. All anybody wants is strike-zone consistency. The shapes of the zones tend to be pretty consistent, but ideal consistency doesn’t include those gray areas, because if a pitch is sometimes a strike and sometimes a ball, what is that but consistently inconsistent?
Pitchers shouldn’t have to feel around for the strike zone, and hitters certainly shouldn’t have to bat without knowing the dimensions of the invisible box. Hitting is already so difficult, due to its nature of being reactive, and players are trained for years to expect a certain zone to be called. It’s completely unreasonable to expect hitters to react to a strange zone on the fly, because so much is ingrained, and I just don’t know how you can explain to a hitter that a pitch is a partial strike. That’s essentially what the Rosenthal fastballs were. What is a hitter supposed to do with partial strikes? Calls are binary and definitive, and how can a pitch be definitely one thing and then definitely the opposite thing mere moments later?
This is the problem that’s never going away as long as people are making the decisions. It’s been like this for as long as baseball’s been baseball, and while overall umpires are getting better seemingly every single season, there’s still a lot of inconsistency, which leaves players on both ends feeling a little bit helpless. And while the inconsistency might approach zero over enough time, it’ll never actually get there, or even particularly close to there. Baseball is a game in which whole strikes or balls are assigned to fractions. Given what other sports deal with, baseball has far less error due to human subjectivity, but that isn’t really a point in its favor. It’s its own sport. It has this issue, which we can do nothing about but deal with.
Baseball doesn’t want an automated strike zone. A huge number of baseball fans don’t want an automated strike zone. Even a huge number of players don’t want an automated strike zone. People are extremely resistant to significant change, and most of the time, the game can proceed without incident. It’s obvious that the game isn’t broken, because it would’ve fixed itself if it were. People are willing to accept the current reality. Yet under the current reality, the reality of one pitch isn’t always the same as the reality of an identical pitch 20 seconds later. Matt Kemp got the worst of it, and there’s not even anybody to blame.
Jeff made Lookout Landing a thing, but he does not still write there about the Mariners. He does write here, sometimes about the Mariners, but usually not.
Another difference is the way Molina framed the pitch.
Good point.
The strike was .1 inches closer to the middle of the plate than the ball was. Maybe Dale Scott just has an extremely fine zone delineation
I’m calling BS. I just watched that gif like five more times. Molina’s movement (reaching his arm just slightly diagonally across his body and downward) is indistinguishable–as it should be, because he called for (and got!) the exact same pitch in the exact same location.
Even if “framing” were somehow a legitimate sporting endeavor (which it isn’t), this ain’t it.
Paul is calling it. Ready your press releases.
At some point there is a line between balls and strikes. Even if you use a computer to call balls and strikes there will be seemingly identical pitches that are on either sides of the line.
If the line was at 13.0 inches from the center of the plate, you would have the identical result.
Clearly this happens more often with humans than computers, but Kemp is taking a risk by watch that pitch go by even with Bender behind the plate. As they say… “expand with two.”
If a pitch is exactly on the line, maybe the real or robo umpire can call the equivalent of a “jump ball” and the call goes to whichever team didn’t win the last “jump ball” (like the way the possession arrow in basketball works)
Maybe that was Scott’s intent all along 😉
Yeah, this.
I don’t really see a problem here. Kemp knew that a pitch in that location might either be called a ball or a strike. Baseball players at all levels deal with this all the time. This isn’t a problem that needs to be fixed and it isn’t even a problem that can be fixed.
That’s a real funny gif, though.
Why would the line be set at 13 inches from the center of the plate? Home plate is 17″ wide and a baseball is 3″ in diamater, so 8.5″ from the center to the outside edge of the plate + 3″ for the ball itself = 11.5″ max or it shouldn’t be a strike.
The strike zone called today is much better than it was when umps like Eric Gregg were making a complete mockery of it but there’s still room for improvement. In this case Kemp had a right to beef not only because the exact same pitch was first called a ball and then a strike but because both of those pitches were in fact outside.
While that may be true, any batter who expects the current actual strikezone to match the rulebook strikezone would have flunked out of the major leagues long before reaching the postseason. As far back as 2007, when it first became possible to exactly and extensively measure what the umpires were actually calling, it was obvious that the called strike zone was several inches wider than the rulebook. (And that’s for RHB; it’s even weirder and less conforming to the rulebook for LHB).
FWIW, Dale Scott falls pretty close to the average in this regard.
Should the umpires be calling the rulebook strikezone? I don’t know; I do know what they’re calling should conform to what the rules specify, but whether that’s by changing what they call or changing what the rulebook says is (to me at least) an open question. The rulebook should be followed, and if it can’t be then the rules should be changed.
It was an example since the fourth pitch was 13.1″ from the center while the fifth was 13.0″. Therefore, if the strike zone were delineated automatically and at exactly 13.0″ from the center, the end results would have been the same — pitch #4 = ball; pitch #5 = strike.
You’re arguing based on results (which would perhaps be the same in this situation, were the line 13 inches off the center), but the issue is with the process that generates those results. I don’t think Dale Scott perceived any difference between those two pitches, and the issue is not one was a ball and one was a strike, it’s that two “identical” (to the umpire) pitches were called (by the umpire) differently.
Would you feel differently if the first pitch was 13.0″ off-center, and the second was 13.1″? Because that’s still the same situation as this, and the same problem.
I 100% favor going to machine called strikes/balls. Think a big part of the point is missed by focusing on just one pitch. What happens on previous pitches plays mind games on batters. The shifting strike zone within a game is as maddening as one specific “bad” call during an at-bat. Consistency matters just as much as whether one specific pitch borderline pitch was indeed a strike.
Amen, brother. Let’s get some sensors out there.
In little league they teach you that with 2 strikes you have to protect the plate and swing at anything close.
Except that’s not really wise if you think you’ll have a hard time making contact or if you do, you stand a good chance of it being weak contact for an easy out.
Fouling off a 99MPH fastball that is basically the perfect pitch with a two strike, non-3 ball count just off the low, outside corner is no certainty. So you have to weigh the expected outcomes of swinging and not swinging accordingly. My first guess, is hoping that pitch is called a ball and you end up in the 3-2 (or 2-2 count on the first one) and get a better pitch to hit or another ball is far better than attempting to swing at that pitch.
I don’t see how “protecting the plate” is persuasive here.
I get that the downside risk of taking a strike 0-2 is higher than the upside of swinging at a ball, but isn’t a big part of managing this risk derived from the uncertainty that results from by umpire error?
Besides, Kemp’s not working in an informational vaccuum. He literally just saw that same pitch called a ball. So it’s not “close” to being a strike.
Exactly. I don’t have any sympathy for Kemp. A pitch is a strike when the umpire says it is, not when Brooks Baseball say it is.
You have to expand your zone in a 2 strike count. Good hitters do that. To leave it in the umpire’s hands on anything close is stupid. Kemp has to look back at that and admit that both pitches were borderline, and that he just rolled the dice twice and came up losing. The pitch called a strike was measured as being closer to the center of the plate, so where is the issue? Moving right along.
A strike is a strike when it’s in the strike zone and I give zero effs about either team. Just another argument to have an automated strike zone. Feed us more platitudes though. Good stuff.
Did you read the article? The season is on the line, It is a great pitcher vs. a great hitter. He calls a pitch outside a ball, then He throws an identical pitch and gets rung. How is this OK? Because when you were in little league they told you to swing at borderline pitches with two strikes? Get a clue.
In little league, they teach you to bunt with two on and nobody out too. Are we really comparing little league anecdotes to MLB?
In little league, I was taught to swing at a pitch in the dirt with two strikes, because the catcher would definitely sail the throw over first base and I could get to second or maybe even score. Just saying.
The difference in framing is very slight but it does remind me of an interview here on fangraphs (Lucroy maybe) who said that on close pitches, it’s better not to try to frame (actively move the glove) and better to just stick pitches and let the ump call it. Sticking the second fastball made it look better than bring it back even ever so slightly.
Framing might be an explanation, but it doesn’t really change the point here. Framing happens after the ball has crossed.
And framing doesn’t change how the hitter needs to react.
Definitely, I simply meant to highlight how the human element can be influenced by such a small variance in the circumstances surrounding what is basically the same pitch.
With an automated system there are still going to be lines. Also isn’t the strike zone a volume not a plane?
No it’s a plane. It’s the plane at which the ball crosses the front of the plate
No. Its a volume. The ball only has to cross the plate at some point. It can avoid the plane at the front of the plate and still be a strike but entering the volume after the front of the plate (like a curveball, for instance)
I do have a slight problem with the author saying the pitches were exactly the same. In fact the 5th pitch was .1 inches further in. That .1 inches may not be much, but its also not “nothing”.
I chalk this up to the Dodgers doing more muck-raking to try to turn this series into something more than just two teams playing to advance. As a team, they don’t seem to be able to focus on baseball at all, only sign stealing, supposed throwing at batters, and of course their bubble machine.
Please provide 1 example of the Dodgers bringing up sign stealing. The only person who brought it up was “I love to hear myself talk” Harold Reynolds. The rest of the press picked up on it and started asking the Dodgers about it. This was not the Dodgers complaining, they all downplayed the issue.
I would love to see the reaction of Cardinals Nation if it had been Puig and not golden-boy Molina who had pushed the umpire. They’d be crying for an execution, or maybe that he should be banished to where he came from: http://deadspin.com/cardinals-fans-get-ugly-in-clash-with-ferguson-proteste-1643282285
Apparently the clue in the article of “they could be yelling worse things” wasn’t strong enough for you. Deadspin writes parody articles about the Cardinals and Cardinal fans constantly in order to needle their founder, who is a huge Cardinal fan.
Considering that .1 inch further in than the previous pitch was still 1.5 inches outside the strike zone then practically, yeah, the difference really is nothing.
1.5 inches off the plate is about exactly where the typical RHH zone ends…
Which brings up a good question. If MLB went with an automated strike zone would it be to generally accepted strike zone of today (zones actually, since they slightly different for left- vs right-handed batters), or would it be to the actual rule book strike zone?
I’m not expecting to see it in any form but if MLB ever did go to it I think they’d have a hard time justifying setting it to anything other than the rule book zone in which case both of those pitches are still outside.
In the graphic, both pitches are on the border the white strike zone box graphic (i.e. on the black of the plate). Frankly Kemp wouldn’t have had a legitimate reason to argue about either pitch being called a strike.
And even if the first pitch wasn’t a strike, why can’t a pitch which is .1 inches closer to the center of the plate be a strike when the other pitch wasn’t? Its not like there’s a grace period rule that says that can’t be the correct call.
Okay, pitch 4 was called a ball, pitch 5 was 0.2 inches closer to the plate and it was called a strike. The line between a ball and a strike in the umpire’s mind has to be somewhere, and maybe it was in those 0.2 inches. Ultimately though, this was on Kemp. He really shouldn’t have taken either of those pitches with 2 strikes on him. He also should have been even more alert after pitch 4 went his way. Maybe Dale Scott simply thought he screwed Rosenthal on pitch 4 and corrected his error on the next pitch. Kemp’s gotta be aware of that and swinging at the next close pitch in that situation. For him to be whining about it is just sour grapes. How about just giving Rosenthal credit and saying he made a great pitch, or putting the blame on yourself? Nope. Instead, waaaaahhhhhh…
I will say that Kemp better be swinging at anything close for as long as the Dodgers stay alive. Right or wrong, umpires have long memories and hate being shown up.
I would contest that this was a deliberate choice over those .2 inches. The ball is 3 inches wide. 2/10th of an inch is then 2/30ths of the diameter of a ball. It would appear to me that difference would be completely indistinguishable if we attempted to test it (and in fact we could try to do that with pitching data from this umpire).
And I completely fail to see the logic behind not taking a close pitch with two strikes. If you can’t hit the pitch with authority, and it might be called a ball, it would seem to me its better to let it pass for a ball.
The “make up call” does seem to have some evidence of support however, and umpires do seem to like to call two close pitches in an AB differently. But that’s about the only leg you got.
You can argue he should have swung at the first one. But once it is called a ball, he definitely shouldn’t swing at it if it’s thrown again. The chances of hitting that ball well are remote and the chances of it being called a ball *should* be extremely high.
This is exactly right.
Once it was called a ball there is no way Kemp should swing at the second one. And I believe Kemp should have offered at the first pitch, but when he didn’t and it was called a ball the next one should have been as well.
So he’s supposed to read the umps mind? It was a ball outside, but it was close, so Kemp is supposed to know that the next time he throws it there it will be called a strike because… “Dale Scott simply thought he screwed Rosenthal on pitch 4”? So calling a pitch off the plate a ball is screwing the pitcher? How do you sleep at night?
Why do we need human umpires anyway? Why can’t the human element of the game be player performance? Baseball, with its fluctuations in batted ball results is already excellently unpredictable, why do we need to allow the results of a six month marathon of a season to depend on whether or not an umpire was having a bad day, when it is so easily preventable in this case?
Absolutely. I think eventually we’ll get there as more and more people become comfortable with the technology.
People seem to be missing the point. The idea that as it stands close pitches can be a coin-flip is not being disputed. The author and others appear to be positing that responses like “that’s just the way it is” and “the batter’s gotta know that” represent an antiquated and apathetic attitude that rationalizes accepting a flawed system, which differs from the written rules, in the name of resisting change. “Shit happens” is a useless, gutless ideology.
The system can be improved, so let us look into improving it. Fuck umpires’ precious “feelings.” And while we’re at it, fuck these postseason partisan conspiracy-theorists. There is no evil bias against your team. The other team is not comprised of evil people. Just enjoy the game.
Dude, you need to take a pill. Chillax.
He doesn’t really sound that angry. Unless you were suggesting a general health vitamin?
“Fuck umpires’ precious “feelings.” And while we’re at it, fuck these postseason partisan conspiracy-theorists. “
What a poor piece, the second was obviously a strike.
And the first too!
Was it? http://www.brooksbaseball.net/pfxVB/pfx.php?s_type=4&sp_type=1&year=2014&month=10&day=6&batterX=66&pitchSel=572096&game=gid_2014_10_06_lanmlb_slnmlb_1/&prevGame=gid_2014_10_06_lanmlb_slnmlb_1/&prevDate=106
Are you questioning the integrity of a commenter named “GoCards”? How dare you.
Just call him Dale “Schrodinger” Scott.
You beat me to it. I was going to make a Schroedinger joke myself.
The game should be played and officiated by human beings, flaws and all. The point is not perfection, the point is the striving for perfection. Umpires will never achieve it. Nor will players. Use technology to keep statistics for umpires, including their success on balls and strikes. Publish umpire statistics. Create umpire standings. This is already being done in some form, I’m sure. Acknowledge the great ones, tip your hat to the good ones, send the bad ones to the minors, or release them, just like players. Baseball is a game. It should be played and officiated by humans, flaws and all.
Maybe we should also get rid of the first down chains in football and leave it to the refs to decide first downs by eye.
Acknowledge the great ones, tip your hat to the good ones, send the bad ones to pop warner, or release them, just like players.
So you’re against using instant replay in all sports?
This is precisely the point. It’s unfair to the batter and, ultimately, the viewer.
If the first pitch was called a strike, then Kemp would definitely be swinging to protect the plate on the second, exact same pitch. And as we saw, if it’s called a ball ANY batter must assume that next exact same pitch will also be called a ball.
Jeff, you’ve done studies on just how many outside pitches are called strikes against LH batters, and it’s something that’s really unfair.
I’ve got no dog in the NLDS fight, but it’s becoming increasingly annoying to watch clear balls called strikes — in all the games. I don’t know if it’s because of better TVs or angles, or the graphs showing the pitch locations. But it’s annoying. And I’m tired of hearing about an umpire’s strike zone. The rules say there’s only one strike zone. And I’m even more weary of hearing of just how good some catchers are with pitch framing. Really, that’s nothing more than cheating — trying to fool an umpire into calling a ball a strike.
I know — humans doing a tough job. But, really, who says we need humans doing this with the technology available?
I don’t know why MLB or, more importantly, the players wouldn’t want an automated system, but it’s long overdue.
My only quibble is with the reappearance of the “framing is cheating” argument. This assumes that the catcher has a better idea of the strike zone than the umpire and is trying to be deceptive about the location of the ball. The catcher would like most every taken pitch to be called a strike, so he catches every borderline pitch as though it were a strike.
Bear in mind that framing is only partly about having balls called strikes, and also (perhaps much moreso) about having strikes called strikes. Bad framers lose strikes for their pitchers. The catcher is taught to minimize movement, place his body correctly, and so on, so that the umpire will agree that the pitch was a strike, but the catcher isn’t any more certain than the ump.
Ideally, the umpire can determine ball/strike without any input from the catcher, but that’s very difficult for a human to do . . .
If they won’t go for an automated strike zone, then how about a system where the umpires get real time feedback on how they’re doing, perhaps using a Google-Glass type headset that feeds in the view every fan watching the game ultimately gets with the various pitch trackers out there.
On borderline calls, the ump, if he chooses, can then wait that extra second to make the call until he gets to see the tracer, and otherwise can just call it normally as he sees it. If the system is setup smooth enough, the delay in these cases would almost be zero.
This will also allow the ump to see during the game if his strike zone is a little off that day and make the corrections in-game.
Umps still have full control and get to call the strike zone, but it gives them a tool to do it better than they ever could have before. It’s win/win.
This is actually a pretty solid idea. I wonder what would happen to ump response time.
Sounds to me like Dale Scott is accurate down to 1/10th of an inch.
No, he’s precise down to 0.1 inch.
Except he’s not. Because the ball was 2.25 inches outside.
Get rid of umps. Batters should call their own strikes and balls, honor system style. If the other team has a problem with it, they can bean them.
Baseball is entertainment, things like non-automated strike zones make games more interesting.
Football is entertainment. Using contraptions like goal posts to determine field goals makes games less interesting.
And they could hurt someone.
I doubt you’d find many people who agree with you on the goal posts issues, on the strike zone issue I think I have a lot of support. These are two completely different things so your analogy is poor.
They are not really that different. Once the technology existed to properly determine field goals, football people used it. Same with foul poles, base lines and outfield fences. Now the technology exists to do the same for strikes, so it ought to be used.
I would love to see electronic balls and strikes, buy Yeah has a point. With replay challenges it’s already become too genteel on the field anymore.
I love that GIF. Can someone please explain to me how to get Gameday to replay an at bat? Or do you need to capture it as it happens?
i look at it slightly differently — both were borderline. the first got called a ball and the second one a strike. if its in the gray, then that’s what you should expect. It doesn’t happen the other way around because if the first one was strike he’d be outta there.
Kemp bet it all twice and lost on the second bet. so be it
Grey is a mix of black and white.
That 5th pitch looks a cunt hair closer to the plate than the 4th by eye.
Kemp was playing with fire allowing that first pitch to go by and he was plain foolish to allow the pitcher to go right back there nibbling a tiny bit closer to the plate.
Who are you…Paulie Walnuts?
It was strictly a “I have this goofy, possibly inflamatory expression that I want to use, so let me build a couple sentences around it” post.
Idea for an automated strike zone:
Ump gets an earpiece that makes a sound when it’s a strike. He’s the only one who hears it so everyone must trust him. And if he wants he can override the auto-call.
Why have it at all, if we’re giving him the ability to override the call? Completely defeats the purpose.
While we are on umps can we outlaw home plate umpires making calls on whether the batter swung at the pitch. We have the guy with basically the worst view in the stadium to arrogant to check with the guy with the best view in the stadium – even in the ninth inning of an elimination game. The umpire really is a deplorable creature. The show is not about you!
Oh and also can anyone tell me that they truly believe in a job that entails a level of physical fitness and extremely good vision that guys in their 50s and 60s are the best men for the job?!
yeah, that was bad. Usually the home plate ump only rings up a check swing when its really obvious the batter went around. That one last night was not obvious at all, since replay showed he probably didn’t go around in the first place. I think this was a case of an ump wanting to go home early and get an extra day off…
The umpire made one mistake- calling the first pitch a ball or the second pitch a strike but Kemp made two mistakes- letting both pitches go by without a swing.
The only thing an automated strikezone would solve is that you have nobody to blame for a call.
In fact, the automated strikezone would probably be even more pedantic, meaning that pitches that are more similar to each other than these two would still be called differently.
With that said, had this call been made by a roboump, the only thing that would change is that Kemp doesn’t get to complain against the umpire. Which might be worth the investment 🙂
No, if you had an automated strike zone it should head off any such argument at all. Sure, pitches that are 0.1 apart may still fall across the ball/strike border and be called differently, but then you would know with certainty that one was within the strike zone (however they decide to define it) and one was not. Now, you can have two pitches (not these two particular pitches in question) that are 0.0 apart – in the exact same location – but can be called differently because the ump simply missed one, had it in for a pitcher or hitter, decided to call them differently, issued a “make-up call”, or they were framed by the catcher differently. At least with an automated system you would know one was in the defined strike zone and one was not, and that zone would stay fixed for the entirety of a batter’s plate appearance and his subsequent plate appearances.
I agree with you on: “it should head off any such argument at all” (which I mentioned with “nobody to blame”, “doesn’t get to complain”).
Your arguments about framing, make up calls, etc are all valid and good.
My point however is, that while on the surface these two pitches look like a good example, they really are not. One was closer to the strike zone then the other. This is exactly the kind of calls an automated strike zone would make.
Had the pitches been reversed (i.e. number 5 first being called a ball, followed by number 4 being called a strike), the article would have an argument.
If the human eye and brain could discern a location difference of .1 inches at over 99mph, I might agree with you.
But they can’t.
Has no one told the batters that within a plate appearance every called ball makes strikes more likely, and vice versa? We’ve known this anecdotally for at least as long as I’ve been alive, and empirically since the first week data became available.
Schroedinger’s Fastball
“What is a hitter supposed to do with partial strikes? Calls are binary and definitive, and how can a pitch be definitely one thing and then definitely the opposite thing mere moments later?”
not that it matters, but that pitch was called a strike all night by Dale Scott. If anything, Kemp should have been surprised he called it a ball on the 4th pitch. That doesnt make it right. I’m just saying that pitch was a strike all night, and with the way things are (and again, I dont agree with it, but it just is that way), hitters are supposed to adjust to the umpire’s strike zone. The main issue is the fact that Scott called it a ball, and then a went back to calling it a strike literally on the next pitch, which threw Kemp off, but he technically could have struck out on the 4th pitch, and we wouldnt be talking about this
I think the umpire specific strike zone is just as much BS as an inconsistent strike zone. The idea that a hitter can relearn what to swing or not swing at over the course of 3-4 PAs each night is just silliness. This is skill that is learned over decades and executed in 1/10ths of a second. How do we expect rational thought to enter the hitters brain while the pitch is on the way? First he has to think, “this looks like a ball.” Then he has to think “but its maybe something this ump is calling.” Then he has to swing? Err, what? And how many times does a batter actually get to see a particular umps zone in the first person? So he has what maybe 20 pitches to learn the umps zone, then the game is over?
Blah
As I said, I dont agree with it. I’m just saying that it was a strike literally the whole night besides the 4th pitch in this AB. Nobody seemed to complain earlier. If Kemp strikes out on that 4th pitch, does he say anything? Or did he say something b/c he took 2 pitches in a row, in the same spot, and one was called a ball, while the other was called a strike? Again, it doesnt make it right. Not only is the pitch a ball, and should be called as such. It was called a ball, and then immediately called a strike on the next pitch. Both of those things cant happen
The only answer is a glowing column emanating from home plate capped at the top and bottom of the zone using refraction from mirrors placed systematically around the stadium adjusted per at-bat for player height.
You really don’t hear enough about glowing columns and how they can aid mankind in many of our endeavors.
“Pitchers shouldn’t have to feel around for the strike zone, and hitters certainly shouldn’t have to bat without knowing the dimensions of the invisible box.”
Why shouldn’t they? It’s a game, hence arbitrary to some extent. Working with fallible umpires is part of the game. The objection here seems to be that this element of the game is “unfair” because it introduces inconsistencies and even chance into the game. But surely such inconsistency and chance are just part of the game? They are structural elements of baseball, not bugs but features (maybe you don’t like that feature but they’re not “unfair”, they are the way the game has been set up).
“We’re asking humans to do something that’s basically impossible to do right often enough.” Yes, exactly, that’s the whole point. That’s why it’s freaking amazing that some guys can do it really well with such consistency that even given all the chance and inconsistency their skills can be measured and compared.
They shouldn’t because they don’t have to.
If it was part of the game that ties were settled by a coin toss, then part of the game should be changed.
I’ve always thought home plate should be replaced by a hot girl with a computer thingy that says ball and strike, and she repeats it.
umpire lingerie of course.
Watching the game I didn’t see a difference but looking at those gifs, it looks like Rosenthal might have changed where he was on the rubber for the second pitch. He looks to have moved right a couple inches. Maybe that little bit of a different angle gave it the extra smidgeon it needed to be a strike as well. That last pitch gif seems top assume all pitches come from the same origin which isn’t always the case.
I see no problem with this sequence. It comes down to how comfortable you are, and think hitters should be, with uncertainty. Uncertainty is part of baseball, and of statistical analysis, which is why I find it surprising that so many fangraphs readers are uncomfortable with it.
I don’t see why the human/machine question has to be an “either/or”. Give the human a handheld device that gets pitch-location data in real-time. Let his ball/strike routine be “see the ball, glance at the handheld as a double-check and make the call”. WE the viewers have that data, give it to the poor bastages in blue that have to make the actual calls, and leave the ultimate call to the human.