Somebody Save Julio Rodríguez
When the 2022 season opened to fanfare and excitement, one of the main talking points was the record-setting arrival of top prospects. After countless rebuilds, a global pandemic, and a prolonged lockout, fans deserved to watch budding superstars duke it out in games that matter. Some of them, like Seiya Suzuki and Jeremy Peña, have been thriving right out of the gate; both rank among the top ten in batter WAR as of Thursday’s games. Others like Spencer Torkelson might have fallen a bit off the radar but have still been successful per wRC+ or batted ball metrics.
Much to our annoyance, though, there’s always a flip side we’d like to ignore. Enter Julio Rodríguez, whose triple slash of .136/.208/.159 is terrible not just amongst fellow rookies, but also all of major league baseball. This isn’t to say we should be concerned; Rodríguez remains one of the most talented rookies around, and in the grand scheme of things, 12 games and counting mean next to nothing. Don’t smash that emergency glass just yet!
But in his opportunities to prove himself, Rodríguez hasn’t been offered fair terms. One of the most fundamental and effective traits a hitter can possess is plate discipline, which is partly the ability to ignore unfavorable pitches. It’s something Rodríguez has demonstrated several times in a limited number of plate appearances, with confidence to boot, but that bravado hasn’t quite translated into results:
This is a chart showing all eight (!) called third strikes outside the zone against Rodríguez, a league-leading total. The plotted strike zone is adjusted for his height, by the way, so there’s no ambiguity here. It gets even worse when you actually look at some of these pitches, which the umpires gift-wrapped for pitchers who made objective mistakes. For example, here’s a Sonny Gray sinker that is rarely, if ever, called a strike, especially in a two-strike situation:
Uh-huh. Sure, that’s totally a decision befitting a stadium named Target Field.
You could maybe argue that Rodríguez, whose two-strike swing rate of 40.3% is the third-lowest among all hitters, needs to up his aggression. The cost of taking a third strike is high, so the math tells us that a batter ought to hack away instead. But Suzuki has a similar two-strike swing rate (42.7%), and he’s yet to be punished for his passivity. Whatever flaws Rodríguez might have right now as a hitter don’t excuse the fact that very few calls have went his way. This is a clear problem, one that has Mariners fans understandably angsty.
Naturally, Rodríguez’s string of misfortunes piqued my curiosity. What I first looked at is the track records of home plate umpires who have officiated Mariners games so far. If they’re known for mishaps, that would make me feel a teeny bit better about Rodríguez moving forward; umpire quality tends to come and go, so it’s good that he’s gotten the bad ones out of the way. In the table below, you’ll find the dates on which those inexcusable called strikes occurred, the umpires responsible for them, and their career accuracy rates, all courtesy of the Umpire Scorecards website:
| Date | Umpire | Accuracy | Percentile |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4/9/22 | Marty Foster | 91.3% | 19th |
| 4/13/22 | Cory Blaser | 92.5% | 55th |
| 4/14/22 | Mark Ripperger | 93.0% | 77th |
| 4/16/22 | Greg Gibson | 91.9% | 34th |
| 4/20/22 | Jeremy Riggs | 94.2% | 94th |
| 4/21/22 | Carlos Torres | 92.8% | 66th |
Well, this is far from satisfying. Here is a mixed bag of umpires: some not very accurate, about average, or excellent across a sample of multiple seasons. There’s no motley crew of incompetent umps conspiring against our young protagonist; what’s shown above seems like the result of picking five of them at random. Any individual, regardless of their aptitude, is capable of committing an error. Perhaps it just so happens that Rodríguez was caught in the middle of eight such instances.
Not willing to let go just yet, though, I next considered the fact that Rodríguez is young, even for a hitter in his first year. If there’s anyone who might abide by the archaic notion that rookie players must earn their place in the bigs, it’s a curmudgeonly umpire. Are all those called strike threes outside the zone a sign of disrespect? Is Rodríguez being penalized for his relative lack of experience? And if so, are older veteran players more likely to have close calls go their way?
To investigate, I sorted every player season from 2015 to ’21 with minimum 100 plate appearances into five different groups by age, then worked out what percent of taken pitches in the “Shadow” zone were called strikes. That’s the region Baseball Savant defines as the borderline between a strike and a ball. For context, 47.2% of all “Shadow” pitches in the Statcast era have been deemed strikes, which makes sense; when the placement of a pitch is vague, you would expect it to go either way at equal probability. After giving more or less weight to certain players based on how many pitches they took, here are the numbers I ended up with:
| Age Group | Sample | Called Strike% |
|---|---|---|
| < 24 | 230 | 46.9% |
| 24 to 27 | 1,053 | 47.1% |
| 28 to 31 | 888 | 46.7% |
| 32 to 35 | 456 | 46.7% |
| > 36 | 106 | 47.4% |
There’s some disparity between different age groups, but not to an extent that would actually matter. The biggest drop-off in called strike rate occurs between ages 24–27 and ages 28–31, but it equates to a loss of four called strikes per 1,000 takes, which (a) is not recognizable whatsoever and (b) has a microscopic impact on offensive performance. Interestingly, it’s the oldest players who see the highest rate of called strikes on borderline pitches. I’m not sure what that indicates or what’s responsible for it, but I appreciate a subversion of expectations.
We’re not here to focus on what a 37-year-old Rodríguez might go through, though; we’re here to focus on the Rodríguez of now. And so far, we’ve yet to unearth an explanation for his current woes. But there is one more angle worth approaching. Maybe what matters more so than a player’s age is his service time. Maybe, rather than how old a player is, umpires are aware of whether he’s new or not. And the more familiar a player becomes to an umpire over the years, maybe the more likely he is to be remembered and receive the benefit of the doubt on close pitches. Sounds plausible enough to me.
It’s time for more methodology talk! This one’s a little tougher to lay out, but here goes: Among the player seasons in my previous sample, I identified which were from rookies. Doing so allowed me work out, for example, that if Miguel Sanó’s 2015 represents his first season, then 2016 must be his second, 2017 his third, and so on. Afterward, I looked at the change in called strike rate between a player’s rookie season and subsequent ones. In theory, the negative difference between year one and year six should be greater than that between year one and year two: more exposure (to umpires), fewer strikes. That was the idea, at least. But hypotheses are all too often proven wrong, as is the case here:
| Comparison | Sample | Rookie Year | Comp Year | Delta |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year 2 | 285 | 47.3% | 47.3% | 0.0% |
| Year 3 | 203 | 47.1% | 47.4% | 0.3% |
| Year 4 | 135 | 46.6% | 47.2% | 0.6% |
| Year 5 | 81 | 46.4% | 47.4% | 1.0% |
| Year 6 | 38 | 46.4% | 47.8% | 1.4% |
Based on this, it seems as if the longer someone has been a major leaguer, the greater the difference is between his most recent called strike rate and his rookie season rate. But it’s not necessarily because hitters with more experience are subject to more strike calls. Rather, it’s because hitters who eventually made it to years four, five, or even six started off with a lower baseline called strike rate. Consider that among the players I analyzed, those with just two years averaged a rookie season rate of 47.3%, whereas the select few with six years averaged a rate of 46.4%. That isn’t a huge deviation, mind you, but it’s significant compared to the age-based numbers from earlier. Maybe it’s good hitters who are favored by umpires!
Circling back to Rodríguez, if you’re willing to put any stock into my findings — which, admittedly, amounts to junk math — then there’s reason for optimism. Barring a developmental catastrophe, Rodríguez seems like a hitter with a long, prosperous career ahead of him, meaning his high rate of called strikes is more likely to be corrected. But really, the heart of the matter here is sample size. Looking through my data, the outliers are players who saw the fewest number of pitches, and even they saw far more of them than Rodríguez has so far this season. Other than wait, there’s nothing much we can do. Again, 12 games aren’t enough to account for anything, let alone something as fickle as all this. Only time itself can save Julio, as exasperating as that sounds.
Justin is an undergraduate student at Washington University in St. Louis studying statistics and writing.
Bring on the robot umps!
bring on the downvotes:
roboumps will make baseball more sterile and won’t really impact the game that much. the only possible benefit i can think of is marginally less strikeouts, but it would come at the expense of one of the most entertaining parts of baseball. frustration and uncertainty with umpires is a constant point of intrigue for fans. its a dimension that i expect fans will come to sorely miss.
Heres something that would never happen that would be incredible: after three confirmed miss calls a team can petition to toss an ump from a game, wherein he moves to another base and is replaced by a colleague. That would rock
Counterpoint: incorrect calls are not one of the most entertaining aspects of baseball.
Counterpoint: Who cares? The sum of all incorrect ball and strike calls have amounted to close to nothing over the history of baseball.
Another counterpoint: I will have absolutely zero tolerance for the robots getting the calls wrong. Like how instant replay fixed all the bad calls in other sports…
“The sum of all incorrect ball and strike calls have amounted to close to nothing over the history of baseball.”
Re-watch the 1995 World Series
For the robots getting the calls wrong, I mean right now, with the strike zone box you see on the broadcasts, has there ever been a time where you’re like, “No, that pitch was not where it said it was” or “that strike zone box is malformed”? I would imagine some kind of discretion might be left up to the home plate umpire anyway, where if there’s a borderline pitch the human behind the plate can override or make the final call or whatever
mods: can somebody please ban this fucktard already??? all he does is troll the comments section and ofc the people here cant just ingore him, they have to feed.
Oh come on, it’s not that bad.
dude has like -20 on every comment he makes in every thread. and ofc the dorks on here cant just ignore it they have to thoroughly argue against his strawmanning bc sOmeBoDy is WrOng oN tHe iNteRnet.
Is this your first day on a website with comments?
so because theres dumb comments all over the internet we should have to put up with somebody trolling literally every single thread??? it would take one minute to ip ban him and not have to deal with this anymore. it just bums me out bc i generally feel like this is one of the smartest groups of baseball minds anywhere on the internet. but what this is compared to what it could potentially be makes me sad.
I don’t require the robots to be 100% accurate. I just require them to be 100% consistent.
No “This guy’s a rookie so he doesn’t get the call” or “he’s a lefty so the strike zone is different.”
Or “He missed his spot by too much so it can’t be a strike.”
There is absolutely nothing entertaining about incorrect calls.
Incorrect calls are a second-order form of entertainment. First, you have to not care about the outcome of the game. Second, you have to have a fan you can watch who does care about the outcome of the game. Third, that fan has to be an absolute lunatic. Any one of those three falls apart, it’s not entertaining anymore.
i disagree. my favorite moment as a baseball fan came as the result of an incorrect call. the trea turner “interference call” in g6 of 2019 ws that resulted in davey martinez losing his mind, was the absolute peak of entertainment. my heart was doing things i didn’t know it was capable of. it was absolutely insane. and then it was followed by a home run. that home run would not have felt nearly as insanely cathartic if it weren’t for that call.
Some men aren’t looking for anything logical, like money. They can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.
I do find it interesting that some (many) umpires have known, consistent…let’s call them “individual strike zones”, to be kind, and that both pitchers and hitters have to try to adjust accordingly. However, it’s not that interesting and it’s definitely not interesting when the umpire is simply inconsistent or biased.
Before I commit to 100% on roboumps, though, I would like to see some data on roboumps calling outliers like say Altuve and Judge or somebody with an Oscar Gamble crouch.
You find correct calls entertaining? This is a bunch of people looking at tweets of bad calls pretending that it is a thing that anyone cares about. A bad call for one is a good call for the other. This is a zero sum game and doesn’t matter at all except the reality of internet people being outraged about anything they can.
“You find correct calls entertaining?” logic fail 1.
Just because I don’t find bad calls entertaining, it doesn’t follow that I find good calls entertaining.
“This is a bunch of people looking at tweets of bad calls pretending that it is a thing that anyone cares about. ” logic fail 2.
Clearly the people who tweet about it care. Your “evidence” that no one cares literally comes from people who care.
“A bad call for one is a good call for the other.” logic fail 3.
Good and bad are not the same as favorable and unfavorable. (Though this does enlighten us a bit about your mindset re: umps). Good calls and bad calls are calls that adhere to or do not adhere to the strike zone as defined.
3 for 4 with a closing sentence that is pure unproven, emotional word salad. Good show!
It will be terrible. People who already don’t enjoy watching baseball want robot umps. Go play your baseball simulations people!
Weird hill to die on, this pro-inaccuracy hill.
But you can see why it would be an appealing hill for Ronnie to defend.
It’s a strange world, CC AFC 🙂
the haters seem awfully quiet about my incredible idea of tossing umps for being bad… craig edwards.. i know you’re reading this.. youre welcome
Amusing. But take my upvote just for calling your own idea incredible.
Put below:
Roboumps will make baseball more sterile and will not affect the game much. The only advantage I can give is small delays, but that will come at the expense of one of the most fun games in baseball. Frustration and uncertainty with the referees is a constant point of curiosity for the fans. That is something that I hope the fans will miss a lot.
This is something that will never happen and will never be great: after three confirmed missed calls, the team can ask the UMP to take a break, where he moves to another base and is replaced by a colleague. It will be a stone.
asking the ump to take a break is even better than my original idea. this worked out great
This schtick is whack.
> is replaced by a colleague. It will be a stone
Yes.
“Hit the showers, blue.”
Would the NBA be better if the refs just sort of estimated if a jump shot was far enough out to count for three points? Yay human element, right?
That NBA refs should really be calling fouls according to the rules, and not provide preferential treatment to the stars is a more accurate analog. It’s almost the same issue – not calling the strike zone as it’s established in the rules.
I can think of one big downside to robot umps, and that’s the near total negation of pitch framing, which is a catcher skill and analytical field Fangraphs has really pushed to develop and one that I’ve really come to appreciate over the years. For example, it’s why we have the ultra rare Buster Posey double digit WAR season.
But that doesn’t negate the positives of better calls, fewer strikeouts and more offense, and history of the sport has shown us repeatedly that fans LOVE more offense. The rise of Babe Ruth and the steroid era are two pretty significant examples.
foolishly, perhaps, i never considered that robo umps would lead to more offense. if thats the case, i am all for them. If all other things remained equal and all we got was the satisfaction that this or that particular call was correct, then i would prefer to have error prone umpires, cause i really think it just evens out.
With robo umps, would there even be a need for the pitch to be caught by the catcher? Could the C just take a breather until there were 2 strikes or runners were on base?
This is a reasoned take, so I upvoted it. But I see catcher framing as the exact same thing as James Harden’s “throw my leg out to get a foul call on a 3-pointer.”
It’s taking advantage of the rules in a way that was never intended by the rule-creators. And both make for worse games, in my opinion.
The only time it was ever entertaining to have umps stupidly miss calls is when the manager would stomp out onto the field, scream, yell and cuss at the ump, and kick some dirt. Nowadays you don’t see that anymore because it’s an automatic toss if the nanager even thinks about setting foot on the field after a bad call.
That would indeed rock.
And you’re completely right about the human element. Talking about calls is fun, and the ambiguity inherent in the subjective zone animates the conversation.
Lets just stop playing! Any new idea is a great one that is long overdue!
How is having an automated balls and strikes system remotely like stopping playing?
You do realize the umps don’t play the game, right? If the ump is ever a substantial part of the narrative of a game, it’s for a bad reason. Success for an ump is defined as the absence of failure and the degree to which he/she gets out of the players’ way.
I would love to see robot umps for one big league game and watch fans completely melt down when they find out what the rulebook zone actually is. I am certain that there would be significantly more calls that fans and players disagree with.
I do wonder if they eventually implement a robo-ump/electronic strike zone if it will lead to MLB actually changing the strike zone.
One of the best parts about robo umps is that any changes to the strike zone could be implemented almost immediately. Human umpires take months (years?) to adjust to a lower or higher strike zone.
My big objection to robot umps is that I think they won’t actually work. At least not any better than what we have currently. My concerns are practical / technical and not philosophical.
But my second is this–this is going to really mess with the casual fan who thinks they know what the strike zone is. Do you really want to completely change how the game works? One can argue that everyone will adjust eventually and that it won’t do damage to the game’s popularity in the meantime. But it’s still worth worrying about.
I don’t understand this take. We’ve had gameday showing live ball/strikes for years. While it may not be 100% accurate, especially vertically, it’s not like it’s common to see a pitch in gameday show up in the box and watch it live and see that it was actually off of the plate? Even if whatever they introduced was no better than the live strike zone stuff shown on TV, it’s way more accurate than umpires calling balls/strikes
It’s also going to be particularly fun to see the box over home plate on TV not match what the ABS system is calling. On top of not matching what we expect based on our past expectations.
Eventually, everyone will get used to it. I think it’s reasonable to think through what will happen in the meantime. It may not be a big deal, but it also might.
Your concerns are rather vaguely described for ones you consider practical/ technical.
In what way practical/ technical way(s) will correcting from the typical umpire accuracy (the best individual season to-date being 94.3% and median is somewhere around 85% to Statcast-level accuracy (while I don’t know, I would expect it to be >95% and wouldn’t be surprised if it is north of 99%)?
How will it “… mess with the casual fan…” when the casual fan is completely dependent on “that box on the TV” to know the zone?
How exactly will it “completely change how the game works” other than making the described most important sport-specific skills (controlling the strike zone) be more important than a soft skill (know the HP ump’s zone)?
I don’t see an expression of worries about anything specific, practical or technical; only vague, anomalous abstracts.
This is pretty much my feeling as well. The other thing about Robo umps that i think alot of people haven’t considered is that its going to be equally frustrating/confusing to watch, just in a different way, because you are going to see many pitches that look the exact same to us being called differently due to the robo ump seeing a difference that is imperceptible to us.
The people who are losing their minds about umps making questionable calls are probably not going to be any happier with a robot calling two pitches that look the same, differently.
I’m not for or against robo umps, i just dont think they are going to be all that amazing or game changing. Its going to be a “same stuff, different pile” situation.
I don’t want the market from frame first catchers to implode so I live with the bad calls
2030 fan: “What was wrong with that pitch! Is that umpires sensors broken! “
2030 fan starts yelling: “Fix the sensors! Fix the sensors!”
I can’t wait!
Robot umps will be the final nail in the coffin that kills MLB. Want to give fans even more reason not to care? Make the professional game look even less like the one every other person in the world is playing.
“Only time itself can save Julio, as exasperating as that sounds.”
And robot umpires, which in my opinion can’t get here soon enough.
That is the thing that has been missing forever, said nobody until a few years ago. But yes, it is going to be so great!!!! The game is swirling the drain but we need to keep chewing up what is left of it.
People been talking about an auto-zone for way more than a few years. The uptick in recent chatter is probably due to the technology almost being ready to go.
No one thinks roboumps will make the game so much greater. It’s just a minor improvement.
“Nobody”* said it up until a few years ago because it wasn’t technologically plausible.
*(“Nobody” being abstractly interpreted as a feverish exaggeration of “Nobody in MLB with actual power and authority to make it happen”)
8/22 strikeouts being bogus is nothing to sniff at! this actually has made me feel better about him. that 40% k rate is just absurd, poor guy.
the idea of umps showing up young players is interesting. as someone who watches a ton of soto AB’s, it seems like he suffers for this more than any player i can think of. Those who are familiar will know soto regularly out umpires the umpires – he’s literally always right about what is and isn’t a strike, and I think they’ve made a habit of squeezing him on certain calls just to stick it to him. They’re defensive cause he embarrasses them regularly!
Is there a way to check how often soto gets boned by this?
That doesn’t make the strikeouts bogus. There’s three strikes to a strikeout, and you can’t just assume the PAs with bad calls wouldn’t still be strikeouts if the call was reversed, except for 3-ball counts.
You can’t just assume they *would* still be strikeouts either. The bad calls fundamentally change the outcome of the situation and no assumptions can be made.
What we know is that it wasn’t a strike and *everything* that happens after that could be different.
Well, 2 of them (on 4/10 and 4/11) were on full counts, so I think we have a good idea what would’ve happened if the ump had gotten those ones right.
Another 3 came in 2-2 counts, robbing him of a decent chance to draw a walk (though of course he still could’ve struck out after the bad calls).
It wasn’t a called third strike, but he was also the victim of the worst called strike of the weekend in the Twins series according to a twitter account I follow that tracks such things. It was over 4 inches off the strike zone.
Of course. It doesn’t make the strikeouts “bogus”, but it doesn’t guarantee any other outcome, including a non-strikeout. All I’m saying is that we can’t just act like a third of his K% don’t count. The ones on the 3-2 counts are fair to “convert” to walks, but that’s it. Maybe breaking it down into run expectancy thing would be better, but it’s all hypotheticals at that point, and if we do it for one bad hitter, we should do it for all of them and not just the ones with pedigree.
He’s getting plenty of bad calls earlier in the count, too. I’ve watched almost all of his ABs, and it’s starting to seem like a bad joke … first pitch last night (which he spat on) was about six inches inside and clearly below the zone. Called strike, naturally!
Let me guess… you are a Soto fan? I don’t have any opinion on Soto’s deal but if you are an irrational fan then everything starts to look bad. I have been there – I get it. I very much doubt that unps have gotten together to squeeze him. He could swing the bat more – I wouldn’t be mad about that.
Matt Carpenter had issues kind of like that at his peak too. Not that he was nearly the caliber of hitter Soto is, but similar in some ways: lefty who is unafraid to spit on close balls, rack up lots of deep counts. Basically just give the umo more opportunities to job you.
This is pretty interesting, but you’d also need to control for the pitcher. My guess is that the pitcher’s age, experience, command, and movement have more to do with it than the batter.
Umpires are not participating in some grand scheme of systemic discrimination. I actuakky think the idea makes sense but I have seen too many instances of some rookie getting calls over some future HOF pitcher… or some scummy RP that isn’t sure where the strike-zone is getting calls. I really don’t think that umpires have any real agenda.
Unconscious bias =/= an agenda
In my experience, umps always seem to have larger strike-zones for young stars. I don’t know if it’s as much showing them up or making them “pay their dues” or something more subconscious, but I’ve watched a lot of baseball and it’s definitely a thing and sucks.
You think that there even exists a cohort of veteran players that get a proper strikezone? There are not enough veteran players with regular at bats to form a basis for comparison. The group of veteran players that get all the calls would be single-digits. I do’nt doubt that this might have existed 20 years ago. This community like to pretend that they are from the future bringing their wisdom to the past.
This is very much how Kelenic’s career has gone early on. Maybe promoting kids aggressively in a dysfunctional organization isn’t a good idea. I have seen this play out quite a few times in organizations. Another significant part of it is that entire organizations get too much hype and then the players all get overrated and they all get promoted too early. Unrealistic expectations get out of hand quickly and the unspoken truth is that the team has now compromised the entire organization by gutting its minors and having really bad players at the MLB level. The upside to handing this guy a job without earning it was what again?
Here is the reason that people like him are eating it. The minors are trash. Sure he tore up the low minors but the minor are complete trash from top to bottom. The short-sighted perspective is, look at all the shiny prospects getting handed opportunities. The long-term outlook on promoting and handing an everyday job to anyone with a marketable pulse is that it further thins the minors. Lets not even get into the fact that MLB has become what should be AAA. The entire thing is collapsing in on itself.
Sir, this is a Wendy’s
If I bought a membership would I be able to block certain commenters?
Sadly, no.
Um, are we watching the same sport? The talent level in MLB is insane. Every team in baseball seems to have a guy with a biting slider he can throw faster than most of the fastballs I saw watching MLB when I grew up. Average velocity’s never been higher, finding the gaps in the field’s never been harder, advanced technology has made breaking balls move in ways we couldn’t have imagined 25 years ago, and teams have abandoned the outdated notion that taking your gassed starter out of the game is emasculating, regularly pulling guys in favor of fresh-armed, fireballing relievers instead of waiting for their starters to implode before going to the bullpen. And despite all these advances in pitching and game management, contrary to what should seem humanly possible, there are still dudes who can mash.
Older =/= better, especially in sports. There are plenty of things you can complain about in today’s game (I’m particularly sensitive to complaints about pace of play, but that’s mostly because I’ve got kids and staying up to 11 to finish a game and then waking up for work isn’t as easy as it used to be), but talent level isn’t one.
Between Julio Rodriguez, Bobby Witt, and CJ Abrams (and to a lesser extent, Bryson Stott), we’ve got a whole bunch of guys where we weren’t worried about the hitting but oh my this is not good now.
There’s still a pretty good chance they get themselves straightened out, because they’re all very young and even this is a small sample. But it seems not likely it’s going to be smooth. Not smooth like, say, Steven Kwan.
Every once in a while I play around with AAA leaderboards. Regardless of the time in the year it is almost always former big league/quad A guys hitting the best. And it makes sense. Right now a list of few of the guys hitting the best in the minors as of two nights ago when I looked : Kevin Pillar, Tracyee Thompson, Matt Davidson, Refsynder, Franchy, Lewin Diaz, Sam Huff, Jaylin David, Jake Lamb.
It makes sense that those guys are more capable of hitting minor league pitching that top prospects, as they are more experienced. And it is a small sample size, but basically any point in the year when I look it is usually the same type of hitter who is tops in the minors. But I think the gap between AAA and MLB is even bigger than ever before, partially with the lost minors season of 2020 playing a part in prospects development. We were just spoiled with Acuna, Tatis, Soto…that isn’t how it usually works.
The one guy I thought was going to tear it up was Oneil Cruz, who of course isn’t in the majors.
But I do think that if Witt was, say, only striking out 3x as much as he was walking instead of 6x, or if he had more than 6 hits in 43 PAs, I’d feel a lot better about it than where he is now. Usually when we talk about top prospects “struggling” it is like Brandon March running an 86 wRC+, or Victor Robles back in 2019. This is more like with Kelenic last year, where your head knows that you shouldn’t panic but it’s so ugly it’s hard to ignore entirely.
Vladdy Jr. was probably the best prospect bat in the past 20 years
and it took him two seasons to figure things out.
If people are genuinely worried about some prospects after two weeks, it mostly means they had unrealistic expectations.
At first, I was going to bring up Vlad Jr. After all, it took him a couple of years to figure things out. But then I looked it up–he was a better than league average hitter the moment he got to the big leagues. Of course, he also was a better prospect than these guys specifically because of the bat.
I think the more reassuring thing is that it’s been only 11-14 games for them. Lots of weird things can happen in a dozen games.
Vlad Jr. has been on the receiving end of a bunch of bad calls. like 2 called strikes 3+ inches outside same at bat. And a close one on the line right after. Maybe the Nathan game? This year has been the worst I remember for just completely blown calls. Not sure if it’s getting bunched up, I have better access to games, or everybody’s keeping an eye out.
You allude into something I think the author didn’t think to look into: Are the calls in 2022 out-of-whack league-wide? In other words, is Julio’s record-destroying wrong-end of bad calls just the symptom of a wider problem?
I can’t understate how much this is a very relative statement.
Vlad Jr.’s first three seasons by age and wRC+
1: 20, 105
2: 21, 110
3: 22, 166
Compared to say… Kelenic’s first season last year:
1: 21, 73
Yes, unrealistic expectations abound in the first 2 weeks of every MLB season and for every high-profile young player (especially rookies), but while Vladito wasn’t barnstorming from Day 1, Kelenic had one of the worst rookie years from a player of his pedigree in a long, long time. Elite corner-bat early-20-somethings don’t have 73-wRC+ seasons.
Thus what the carter said about him:
Great point. I think the lack of any baseball for every prospect in 2020 is really having a large knock-on effect this year (and in years to come).
As nothing else seems to be the case, is there any chance that it could be at least partly due to racial bias? This article from Baseball Prospectus last year demonstrates a small, but noticeable bias toward same-race players when calling balls and strikes.
Wouldn’t be surprised. Some of these Umps look and act like they were hanging around a certain building in early January ’21.
That article is a good start, but I’d like to know how they classify certain players. Is a guy like Derek Jeter considered black? What about David Ortiz?
I would like to see a more exhaustive study that actually considers players by skin tone and not just race. Colorism is a huge problem in almost every industry, and I would not be at all surprised to see that it’s a better predictor than just race.
Based on his comments I can only assume Ronnie Dobbs is an umpire
Did you think of looking at race as a variable?
I don’t believe this to be a factor. Like mp2022 mentioned, there is a somewhat significant correlation between race and calls, but the difference is so incredibly small that it’s not likely to manifest itself through a 12-game sample. It could be something like his stance/set-up, height, or just odd statistical noise. I guarantee it will regress to the mean
I have no clue how to figure this out, but does anyone know what the most backwards K’s on called strikes is in a season on pitches that were balls? A quick looks makes me think around 75% of strikeouts are swinging, thus 25% of strikeouts are looking. If that is true, and a guy who is an extremely high strikeout guy, lets say 200x in a year on average 50 of his strikeouts are looking. Assuming umps perform at 90%, that is 45 called strikeouts on strikes, 5 on balls. Unsure if this the correct way of looking at it, but he obviously is pacing for an MLB record if they kept track of such a thing, and he might be close to record territory, already, in April.
Another one tonight. Just gonna give him the crown
Judge during his first few seasons would reguarly have balls below his knees called strikes. I’m not sure it was because he was new. It seemed more because umpires had difficulty adjusting their strike zone to his height.
Judge is certainly a height outlier though, that can certainly be expected. I wonder what robot umps would do to the game. Level the playing field a bit I guess. Trout for example routinely gets strikes called balls. Constantly.
I’m completely against robot umps because I’m PRO-HUMANS HAVING JOBS. What is an old ump gonna do when a robot takes his job? Just retire? Flip burgers? What happens when the robot starts flipping the burger? This is a bigger picture people, this is our right to maintain our human inaccuracies!
Pretty sure they’re only talking about using robo-umps for balls and strikes. In the AFL’s trial run of robo umps, there was still a home plate umpire, much like tennis still has line judges even though there are sensors all over the court.
It’s pretty hard to see how that could ever change. Robo umps aren’t being discussed for safe/out calls at the plate, and it’s tough to see how they could make calls on whether a batter leaned into an HBP, whether the ball caught the jersey, etc. You can assess a lot of those things on replay, but someone has to make the call in the first place.
Also tough for a robo-ump to assess pitcher intent on an HBP, issue warnings, or eject players.
To be fair, early reports of robo-umps from the AFL suggested they were a disaster. The idea is sound and they’re probably inevitable, but seems like the tech isn’t ready for primetime.
In the interim, some accountability on the umpire side would be nice though. I’m as pro-labor as it gets but I’m not sure seniority should dictate who gets to umpire the game at the highest level.
This is hilarious. Also there is a shortage of burger flippers.
Technically, there is only a shortage of burger flippers at $12-15 per hour with no benefits. Several restaurants are doing fine by paying more and offering insurance.
What about the framing catchers?
Bobby Witt Jr has a .454 OPS and a 13/2 K/BB number. Must be the umps
Anyone know if there’s any research into the stickiness of shadow zone calls for specific hitters?
E.g. Does Juan Soto get fewer calls against him in the shadow zone compared to other hitters?
We need roboumps, cause I know when I see a kid with all the tools, and this kid is cant miss. Right Wash?
Free mah boi
Nice work. I’ve been wondering about this. I think looking at race as a variable as others have suggested would be helpful. It also seems to me like this happened to Kelenic to a lesser extent last year. Is it possible umpires have a thing against Mariners rookies? Or highly regarded Mariners rookies? How bad was it for Kelenic last year compared to Rodriguez and compared to the rest of the league?
Except Kyle Lewis won ROY the year before… Mariners need to figure out why Lewis was so successful when all their other position player prospects have faceplanted initially.
I hope he doesn’t start swinging at pitches outside the zone out of frustration.
He did last night. Hit a hustle double and knocked in two runs on a pitch 5 inches above the zone.
It’s April.
It is April, but what has happened to him by my count isn’t realistic. If 1/4ks is looking and 90% of pitches are called correctly he might have already had the unluckiest season in statcast era on strikeouts looking on balls.. and it is April. He got called out again today one of the most egregious strike calls that never gets called, above letters, 5 inches out of strike zone. So that is 9 this year. A batter who strikes out 200x and takes the standard amount of called third strikes (25%) should expect 5 in an entire year.
He is already on pace for 70+ strikeouts looking on balls in a season. To the best of my knowledge no one has ever struck out 70x looking in a year. Let alone on balls. It’s already unprecedented territory.
You’re right. I was mostly saying that tongue-in-cheek. Maybe “it’s April” for the umps, too.
This is why this is such a good article. We are used to saying it’s April and thinking anything weird is probably a BABIP thing, but this article is giving a solid example of another thing that I hadn’t considered that can drive a goofy small sample
See my response to carter above. Julio went outside and got one of those pitches yesterday 🙂
Just random noise and probably has little to do with his slow start, which is just as not surprising (dude’s only 21!). Likely would have made outs on the next pitches in those sequences.
Wait a month or two before we try to find reasons for a 21 year old not hitting like Babe Ruth out of the box, other than the obvious of trying to adjust to the best pitchers on the planet.
Delightful article.
I attend many games, and don’t want robot umps simply because I enjoy seeing in person the umpire do silly things like flail his arms around in various game situations and unleash an incomprehensible guttural howl to indicate a strike while making no movement to indicate ball.
And I also enjoy when a manager becomes so infuriated that he kicks dirt on the umpire’s shoes, or yells so closely at the umpire, spit goes flying from one face to another, covid boogers and all. With robots, all the Lou Piniellas of the world could only kick at a tin can with no personality. Unless it had wheels and could chase the manager around the field. Then, that would be awesome.
Just because robots are making the calls doesn’t mean the human umps have to stop doing histrionics while communicating those calls. In fact they could focus a lot more on those histrionics if they didn’t have to worry about getting the call right. Indeed, robot umps could usher in a golden age of human ump histrionics, some real performance art shit.
I do love the idea of a physical robot that managers could direct their ire at. What if the human home plate umpire had a robot dog for a companion, whose only function was that anytime a manager wants to throw a tantrum over one of the robots’ calls, instead of initiating a screaming match with the human ump he would have to physically fight the robot dog. Just go full Black Mirror. This is the kind of outside-the-box thinking that baseball needs tbqh.
Trying to think of another athletic skill (in addition to catchers’ pitch framing in the inevitable robot era) that becomes obsolete only at the game’s highest level.
Oustanding work here!
Why is the uppermost called strike depicted in Figure 1 not a strike? Isn’t a strike supposed to be called when any part of the ball passes through any part of the zone?
Since the box for that sort of display is typically at the front of the plate, and the ball is a strike if it passes through any part of the zone, I’d say that one was almost certainly a strike.
Assuming a measurement error of 0.5 inches (it is frustratingly difficult to get an official estimate of this quantity), I’d say 3-4 of those pitches are strikes with decent probability.
There have been some bad calls but he is also having a 16% swinging strike rate (league average 11%) and just a 77% zone contact (league average 84%).
I’m not worried about him long term but so far he is Clearly having trouble making contact, his called strike rate is much closer to average than his swinging strike rate and the biggest issue have been in zone swings and misses.
Still think he will figure it out, it is just a new level of pitching
Just re-read the article and was disappointed to notice that the information presented isn’t sufficient to establish even that Rodriguez has been more unlucky than lucky with regard to called strikes.
Instead what I can glean is that, of the eight called third strikes that were deemed by the author to be out of the zone, seven appear to be actually out of the zone.
In order to establish that Rodriguez has been unlucky (or worse) on the whole, we would need to know the rate at which ‘true’ third strikes are called balls, and/or what is the rate of strikes called against Rodriguez in the phantom zone (so we can say to what extent he is an outlier).