Minor-League Umpires are Prospects Too
Just yesterday, I was writing about pitches down the middle called balls, and I identified one from the other day thrown by Gio Gonzalez to Josh Satin. The umpire who called the ball was Clint Fagan, and I haven’t heard that name much before, but I didn’t think much of it, until a commenter pointed out that the strike zone was off all game. That one call, of course, was the worst, but Fagan called a zone that wasn’t the ordinary, familiar zone, and we can only speculate on the impact it had. There’s nothing to be done about it now.
Then last night, I started getting tweets to the effect of, “there’s another ball on a pitch down the middle.” That pitch was thrown by Roenis Elias (Seattle Mariners baseball player) to Nick Punto, and the umpire was Sean Barber, which is another name I’m unfamiliar with. Barber, like Fagan, had a weird zone all game, outside of the one call. Barber aggravated some players and his zone became a story, even in a tight game that went 12 innings. Barber and Fagan called strange zones on consecutive days, and it turns out the two of them are linked, besides just being included in the introduction of this post.
From an AP brief several days ago:
Eight Triple-A umpires have [been] called up to work all or part of the opening week of the big league season: Sean Barber, Clint Fagan, Hal Gibson, Pat Hoberg, Will Little, Mark Ripperger, John Tumpane and Quinn Wolcott.
Barber’s a minor-league umpire. Fagan’s a minor-league umpire, too. Stands to reason they’re considered two of the better minor-league umpires, but it also stands to reason minor-league umpires can be evaluated only so analytically. And it stands to reason minor-league umpires are inferior to major-league umpires, the same way minor-league players are inferior to major-league players. Transitioning to the majors is a learning curve, for everybody.
This was Fagan’s ball call, again:
From Brooks Baseball, this was Fagan’s strike zone:
Strikes were taken, and strikes were given. It’s not that Fagan called a miniature zone — it’s that he called an unusual zone. He essentially shifted it downward, and it isn’t easy for players to adjust on the fly. The Mets broadcast caught on quick.
Here now is Barber’s most controversial call, where by “controversial” I actually mean “non-controversial”. Being wrong isn’t a controversy.
The entire Mariners infield started to walk off. Even Punto responded as if he thought he’d struck out. On the next pitch, Elias allowed his first hit of the game. He had had better experiences before in his life.
Barber didn’t confine his impact to that single at-bat. The bottom of the tenth saw him irritate both sides in consecutive plate appearances.
I suspect it isn’t often that a catcher bitches out a home-plate umpire during the flow of the game. But then, Mike Zunino has more big-league experience than Barber does. Here’s the Barber strike zone:
As with Fagan, it’s more weird than tiny. Barber took strikes from the Mariners, and he granted a more or less equal number of strikes to the Mariners. But it’s hard to play regular baseball when the very foundation of the game goes tits up, and given the experiences with both Fagan and Barber, you have to wonder about the guys making calls after coming up from Triple-A.
I do want to note Pat Hoberg. Hoberg is the other of the Triple-A umpires to have been behind the plate so far this year, and his strike zone wasn’t particularly bad:
So it’s not like every minor-league umpire is a disaster. And we’re dealing with really, really small samples. But it wouldn’t be a surprise if minor-league umpires call meaningfully worse strike zones. It wouldn’t be a surprise if they’re inconsistent, and it wouldn’t be a surprise if there’s a bigger gap between Triple-A umps and big-league umps than ever. The process in the minors hasn’t changed very much. In the bigs, umpires have been subject to PITCHf/x feedback, and they’ve made progress ever since 2008 to call a better and slightly bigger zone.
There are a lot of questions you can wonder about, even going so far as to question minor-league strikeout and walk rates. How bad are those zones, really? Is anybody keeping track? Why were Barber and Fagan selected? What are they going to be like from this point forward? How quickly can umpires change for the better, and how do umps in the minors get feedback?
As much as people complain about umpires in the bigs, those are also, probably, the best umpires in the world, and probably by a lot. So if you’re one of those people who wants the worst umpires to get demoted and replaced by guys from Triple-A, understand that the guys from Triple-A might be even worse, at least for the first while. It’s not so much a question of umpiring talent. There are probably some very talented umpires coming up, waiting for a shot. But there’s also converting talent into performance, and that’s where big-league experience provides a massive edge. They’ve all been trained to be umps in the major leagues. The ones who haven’t, haven’t, and it must take some time for a minor-league ump to get himself to big-league speed.
Not a fan of the umpires we have? They’re probably better than the alternative umpires. At least, when it comes to calling balls and strikes. At least, for as long as it takes for a minor-league umpire to adjust. Relief from bad calls won’t be provided by any human being. It can only be provided by cold, heartless robots. Whether that’s a thing you want is entirely up to you.
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.
TINSTAUP
Is it really THAT hard to call a ball or a strike, especially if you’re at the MLB level? I feel like some of these umpires are more interested in their egos and controlling the game than actually calling a good game…
it is definitely this
Have you umpired before at level where every pitcher isn’t throwing 85 mph or less?
So, you’re saying let’s just cut them slack because the pitchers are throwing too hard? Give me a break, these guys are professionals making good money. The umpire has the best view in the stadium outside of the batter and the catcher, it really is not that hard to call balls and strikes.
Yes it is.
This is probably a top-10 stupid comment on fangraphs. I’ve umpired high school games before where they’re not throwing nearly as hard and the pitches don’t have nearly the movement. Calling balls and strikes is hard.
The problem is that the easy calls either get hit or are taken because they’re nowhere near the zone. The tough one often aren’t hit and those are the ones the umpires have to call.
You’re looking over the catcher and trying to discern exactly whether the pitch was at the knees or slightly below. You’re on the inside shoulder of the catcher and now have to decide about one that’s on the edge or maybe an inch or two off. And you have a split second to make that decision. It, most definitely, is really difficult.
If players who are trained for years can’t tell what a strike or a ball is even on balls they watch (ou know, when you see players flip out on called third strikes which PitchFX show to be accurate), I’m sure we can cut the guys from Triple-A a little slack until they get some PitchFX feedback.
“It’s not that hard. Tell him, Wash.”
“It’s incredibly hard”
It is really, really, really hard. Comments like this show that even among more enlightened baseball fans, there is a real lack of appreciation for just how hard the job is.
Which of these is more likely:
1) MLB has consistently, throughout all levels, and for many years hired and promoted umpires who are incapable of calling balls and strikes
2) Calling balls and strikes at the major league level is harder than Internet Commentator Will thinks
I’m not saying it’s not hard to be an umpire, because it is. But that GIF of Elias was such an easy strike call that everyone in the stadium knew that it makes me wonder sometimes.
So here’s the thing with curveballs. Especially a really good one like that.
It’s exceptionally difficult to tell where the ball crossed the plate, as opposed to where it was caught. Where Zunino catches it, we’re all like “umm call it a strike ****”. However, when the ump is trying to decide did it cross the plate in the zone, or did it break over after it crossed, that’s a much more difficult thing to determine.
It is immensely difficult to call balls and strikes. There are a lot of times that “everyone in the stadium” knows something, but they’re all wrong.
Are you allowed to make a mistake on your job?
Why is it that umpires/referees aren’t allowed to make one at theirs? He messed up. It happens. I’ll make a mistake very soon at my job and you’ll doubtless make one at yours, too.
This whole ego argument is ridiculous as well. I know that my first day on the job, I like to walk into the office, stick out my chest and exclaim to the entire staff that the office is now mine: as documented by the water cooler I just toppled over with my manly muscles. Because god damn it, if you want to make it in the bigs the proven process is: step 1 – don’t care about your performance at all; step 2 – reap the profit of getting heckled by drunk fans and chest bumped by old men wearing baseball uniforms. Welcome to Obama’s America.
It looks like Zunino is trying to call time so that he calm down the pitcher, not that he is arguing with the ump.
it was both
I’m not the only one who thought of this when I saw the headline, right?
yes
Well, Fagan should be fixable: “Hey, Clint, just call the zone 6 inches higher, please.”
Not sure what to do with Barber, though. “Hey, Sean, guess better.”
Calling balls and strikes consistently is way harder than it looks. Check Pitch F/X. Even the best umps miss several pitches per game. You must concentrate for 3-4 hours. Focusing intently is tiring. Squatting is tiring. Even catchers get every half inning off. When tired you make mistakes.
Even fresh you must make judgments with very little reference. Inexperienced umps try to use an artificial physical reference. For example one can try to set up with your eyes at the top of inside corner to fix your reference. That way any pitch above or inside your eyes is a ball. Now have some 6’2″ friend squat in front of you and move. Imagine the low outside corner pitch disappearing from your view. Oh oh. Or have you friend pretend to set up inside. Now you must rise up to see over the catcher raising your frame of reference. This will unconsciously raise your strike zone. Want to try another reference point? How about position of the catchers mitt at impact. We have all seen what happens to umps when fooled by pitch framing.
OK try no reference point: just keep your head still and follow the pitch with your eyes. If you are successful 90% of the time but forget and turn your head ever so slightly to follow a sharp breaking ball your internal reference, your strike zone, shifts in the direction of your head. Major league pitchers have enough control to pitch to your bias even if you don’t realize you have one.
If it were easy we would not have read this article because no one would have written it.
Fascinating. Apparently sometimes these pitches are so deceptive they fool not only the umpires, but bloggers who watch them repeatedly and gif them.
The Barber pitch to Punto had the Mariners running off the field. Even the A’s announcers were incredulous, wondering out loud what on earth the umpire was thinking. The author here thought it so obvious he didn’t bother to check the pitch f/x location and says that “Being wrong isn’t a controversy.”
Barber’s only apparent defender on earth? Pitch F/X, which thought the pitch was unambiguously a ball (although in that zone that, in a mirror image situation, would be called a strike on a lefty hitter).
I’ve got to go with pitch f/x here, but obviously something was at work that was highly persuasive to many people. I think the Mariners’ body language was highly influential (not that they were faking it), and the Coliseum’s rotten camera angles are no use in resolving anything. Interesting stuff.
I think you are looking at the wrong pitch in the pitch f/x data.
The pitch from Elias to Punto is the green triangle very close to the middle of the strike zone in the first pitch f/x image. It is at 2.7ft vertical and 0.4ft horizontal.
It is a bit easier to see it looking only at the individual matchup. It is pitch 5.
http://www.brooksbaseball.net/pfxVB/pfx.php?s_type=3&sp_type=1&year=2014&month=4&day=3&pitchSel=606273&game=gid_2014_04_03_seamlb_oakmlb_1/&prevGame=gid_2014_04_03_seamlb_oakmlb_1/&prevDate=43&batterX=37
How much longer do we have to wait until we just allow a stick behind the plate to blink green or red for a ball or a strike based completely on pitchfx?
Baseball is over 100 years old, embrace technology. It’s a joke that instant replay took this long.
The joke is the number of totally clueless people that are incapable of understanding the problems of locating the pitch. Not a surprise, since throwing all sorts of fancy but meaningless info processing on anything is so simple nowdays. It’s like using a calculator to divide two guessed numbers and reporting the answer to 12 decimal places. Happens all the time nowdays, waste of time to explain.
I just don’t think the human eye can track a 90 mph pitch in well enough to call borderline pitches balls or strikes. At this point in technology it is trivially easy for a computer to do. I don’t blame the umpires, the ones in the MLB are probably doing about the best a human can do just by eye.
In my experience they tend to get safe/out and fair/foul right the large majority of the time. There are a lot of times where I think an ump blew a call in the field only to see the replay and see he was right. But pretty much every ump is going to call some balls strikes and some strikes balls each game.
Let Pitch f/x call the strike zone with human umps still making calls in the field that are reviewable.
We ask every hitter in baseball to determine if it’s a strike or ball.
How often do they guess wrong? More often than we would find acceptable in an umpire, I’d say.
One small problem with that. The hitter has to decide a lot earlier than the umpire!
Do we know if the infrastructure for Player Tracking is independent from PITCHf/x? If so, what happens to the PITCHf/x cameras after Player Tracking has been completely rolled out? It might make sense to relocate them to AAA stadiums for both umpire and player evaluation at the level just before it really starts to “matter”.
Well, I watched the replay on Fagan and it was pretty obvious he DIDN’T miss, the pitcher missed. Catcher jumps inside and pitcher misses his spot outside (even if the pitch was on the edge) isn’t going to get called. Baseball penalizes the team that made a mistake. Unless you watched your first game yesterday or learned baseball from reading a book, this is pretty well known.
As far as inconsistencies based on PitchFX, REALLY? PitchFX is very well known to have significant inconsistencies based on the Operator. Google it, not tough.
I am glad to not know you.
Typical response when faced with facts. You should know that Fagan is regarded as one of the best ball/strike umpires in the business. Called an 18 inning game and was still perfect in 18th inning.
You’re being a dick for no reason. You want people to take you seriously?
Fagan has 21 games of big-league home-plate experience. He’s regarded as one of the best in the business, is he?
The pitcher didn’t miss, the catcher barely had to move, and the pitch was well within the zone, and not on the edge.
PITCHf/x is not nearly as screwed up as you make it out to be. The Fagan and Barber zones were not PITCHf/x miscalibrations. They were umpire miscalibrations.
It’s hard to take you seriously when you’re both smug and wrong
TXFAN, that is, not Jeff Sullivan
Yeah, because you included a lot of facts in your screed.
Google the word “fact” and read the definition. Not tough.
Too bad they’re all going to be replaced by computers.
“There are a lot of questions you can wonder about, even going so far as to question minor-league strikeout and walk rates. How bad are those zones, really? Is anybody keeping track? Why were Barber and Fagan selected? What are they going to be like from this point forward? How quickly can umpires change for the better, and how do umps in the minors get feedback?”
It seems like this community might have enough connections within MLB/MiLB to actually ask someone who would know? What do you think, Jeff?