The Season’s Strike-iest Called Balls, So Far
Used to be I’d refer to these as the worst called balls, or something. But I feel like that puts too much of the blame on the umpire. Which isn’t to say the umpire doesn’t deserve blame, because of course he does, but when an obvious strike gets called a ball, it tends to be due to a number of things, involving a number of people. I’m not here to umpire-shame. I just want to show off some called balls on pitches thrown basically down the heart of the strike zone, because it’s a fun thing to look at while baseball takes a little vacation.
According to Baseball Savant, in 2009, there were 111 balls on pitches middle-middle. Here are the year-by-year rates, calculated as balls / all pitches taken down the gut:
2009: 1.01%
2010: 0.37%
2011: 0.28%
2012: 0.34%
2013: 0.27%
2014: 0.25%
In a sense, 2014 is showing overall improvement. But 0.25% isn’t 0.00%, and pulling up balls on pitches in the middle third yields 15 different instances. Whenever anything is controlled by human observation, there are going to be mistakes, and when there are mistakes, there are going to be worse mistakes. Standard deviations, and everything. Out of those 15 different instances of pitches down the middle being called balls, here are the top five strike-iest since the start of this regular season.
5
Pitcher: Jeff Samardzija
Batter: Devin Mesoraco
Catcher: Welington Castillo
Umpire: Doug Eddings
Date: April 18
Location: 2.8 inches from center of zone
I wish I would’ve separated the .gif from the screenshot. I mean, I’m technically still editing this, so it’s entirely up to me, but I don’t want to go backwards. The point being: if you watch the .gif, you don’t think that is a pitch down the middle. It doesn’t look at all like the pitch that’s captured in the screenshot, and this is an insane example of the degree to which we can be biased by the behavior of the catcher, after the ball has already completed its journey to the plate and through the zone. Samardzija’s pitch caught too much of the plate, but Castillo wasn’t able to respond like a good professional catcher, turning his glove over and driving it into the ground. If you can believe it, this pitch was a fastball. I’m going to pull numbers out of thin air. If we’re looking for blame for this one, I’d say it’s about 10% Samardzija, 10% Eddings, and 80% Castillo. Samardzija missed location. Eddings missed a good heater. But catchers have to be able to handle pitches like this, and while this isn’t representative of how Castillo ordinarily catches, the impression you get about him isn’t inaccurate. He’s got some refining to do.
4
Pitcher: Gio Gonzalez
Batter: Josh Satin
Catcher: Jose Lobaton
Umpire: Clint Fagan
Date: April 2
Location: 2.8 inches from center of zone
The Mets broadcast caught on immediately and aired a few different replays of the pitch in slow motion, showing its height and showing that it crossed over the very center of the plate. After the ball call, Lobaton went out to the mound to have a little chat with Gonzalez, who was growing frustrated by Fagan’s inconsistent zone. Fagan wasn’t a regular major-league umpire, and in this game he was showing it, and apparently Gonzalez has something of a temper that needs to be cooled off before it consumes him. The pitch, sure, was supposed to be a little lower. It was supposed to be a little more in. The way Lobaton reached might’ve made it appear a bit higher than it actually was. But to go with the same approach, I’m going to say this was 10% Gonzalez, 10% Lobaton, and 80% Fagan. As long as we’re here, take notice of Josh Satin’s eyebrows in the above-embedded still.
3
Pitcher: Jeff Samardzija
Batter: Matt Carpenter
Catcher: Welington Castillo
Umpire: Gabe Morales
Date: April 11
Location: 2.7 inches from center of zone
We’ve seen three pitches so far, and two of them have been from the Samardzija/Castillo battery. That’s something of a coincidence, but it’s not an extraordinary coincidence, because Samardzija has live, fiery stuff, and Castillo could stand to be a better receiver. Here, we have Castillo all but letting a fastball fly by him. The umpire might not have realized how close he came to getting a baseball-sized bruise on the inside of the thigh. It’s a missed spot to a bad spot, to a hittable spot, and I’m not even sure why Carpenter wasn’t swinging behind in the count, but the way Carpenter reacted and the way Castillo reacted, this must’ve looked a lot more inside to Morales than it was in reality. Somewhat clever on Carpenter’s part. But Castillo got caught stabbing. Let’s go with…10% Samardzija, 40% Morales, 50% Castillo.
2
Pitcher: Josh Beckett
Batter: DJ LeMahieu
Catcher: Drew Butera
Umpire: Jeff Kellogg
Date: July 6
Location: 2.0 inches from center of zone
Something went badly wrong here, and it wasn’t just the television camera angle. You see an exaggerated reception by Butera, as if the ball was running away from him instead of darting in. I’m open to the possibility that Butera was crossed up, or that Beckett got weird movement on the intended pitch. But Butera caught this ball right behind home plate, and when he was done moving around his glove was behind the left-handed batter’s box. Butera did absolutely nothing to try to sell this, because it never could’ve been sold, the way he caught it. Kellogg almost didn’t have a choice. In theory, all umpires should be capable of calling strikes based only on what happens in front of the catcher, but if you allow that umpires, being human, are influenced by the catcher’s behavior, then of course Kellogg was going to be influenced by Butera on this one, because something got futzed up. Right away, I’m comfortable with 10% Kellogg. As for the remaining 90%, I’ll go with 30% Beckett and 60% Butera, pending further word on what, exactly, was supposed to happen. Further word will presumably never arrive.
1
Pitcher: Matt Guerrier
Batter: Hunter Pence
Catcher: Kurt Suzuki
Umpire: Angel Campos
Date: May 23
Location: 1.4 inches from center of zone
I might’ve already mentioned this here before, but, in spring training, a pitcher noted that Suzuki is quite a fine backstop. He’s got all the fundamentals down, he’s a nice enough blocker, and he can call a ballgame. But the pitcher noted that Suzuki has relatively short arms, so in order to move around the zone, sometimes he has to really reach, and that can cost him and his pitching staff strikes. It’s something I’d never considered before, and it’s something I never would’ve caught on to, but the pitcher believed it and now I just look for instances in which it’s revealed. I think this might be one such instance. Guerrier threw a fastball a little more away than intended, and Suzuki had to reach across such that it looked like he was reaching further than he was. And that reach involves the shoulder, which affects the movement of the head, and from the back it might appear that Suzuki is moving quite a lot. This isn’t the most egregious catch on the list, but you can sort of understand how it went the way it did. In closing! I’ll go 10% Guerrier, 45% Suzuki, 45% Campos. At the end of the day, Angel Campos, you’re still calling balls and strikes on Matt Guerrier, and it seems like there should be more difficult tasks.
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.
I (heart) Jeff Sullivan…
Boy am I glad I didn’t make this list.
???
there are no current MLB players names Sean Barber
if you were on the list you would be an MLB player, you do not want that?
odd – what do you do that is better if I may ask?
He is an umpire
Try decaf.
We all are, too, Sean.
Well, that tag didn’t work…let’s try this:
http://www.lookoutlanding.com/2014/4/4/5581808/sean-barber-and-the-terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad-day
as much as i would like to believe that a major league umpire would read (and hopefully learn something from) this kind of analysis, common sense tells me that it’s highly unlikely that any umpire would actually comment herein – especially while using his real name.
I see that Josh Satin and Yoenis Cespedes share the same ‘brow stylist, Macho Manga Eyebrows Unlimited.
Stylin
One of my favorite things to watch is how the batter, catcher and pitcher react to these bad called balls. Maybe the catcher has a hitch in his return throw as hears the opposite of what he was expecting, or the batter shakes his head to get the cobwebs out and make sure he’s seeing what he thinks he’s seeing, or the pitcher just slumps his shoulders wondering what else he needs to do.
In other words, great stuff as usual, Jeff, but I wish the gifs went a little longer or maybe you gave us approximate times for the mlb.tv feeds so we could somewhat quickly go to the tape and see these babies for ourselves.
What about ball-iest called strikes?
I’d like to see, but I assume they were all 3-2 pitches where the batter started trotting to first too soon for the umpire’s sensibilities.
I’m surprised there are no obvious missed calls by Angel Hernandez, who is really a terrible umpire.
IMO he is the worst.
Forgetting someone?
Worse than CB Bucknor? C’mon. Angel’s bad, CB’s “epically” atrocious.
Hernandez is worse than Bucknor.
They’re both just awful, but I have never seen Bucknor intentionally blow a call before. It sure looks like that’s what Hernandez and his crew did, however, in an Indians/A’s game last year, on a reviewed non-home run that cost the A’s the game (not that that should matter, but still).
Remember that? There is no other rational explanation except that Hernandez did not want to overturn the call. I don’t think the league really looked into it appropriately.
http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20130508&content_id=47017588&vkey=news_mlb&c_id=mlb
At the end of the clip the radio guy from Cleveland, who benefited from the call, says, “Even with replay, Angel Hernandez got it wrong, and that is really not a surprise.”
I think I would give Samardzija more of the credit for each of those, especially #3. He missed his target by a wide margin. Sure, it was right down the middle, but it still doesn’t look good when you make your catcher reach.
I sure would like to see the gifs where a catcher takes a 95mph fastball that the pitcher has missed by 12 inches and deftly keeps it a strike. Apparently it is a pretty standard skill.
More like, you don’t usually get to be a major league catcher if you aren’t good enough to handle the occasional cross-up.
I echo these sentiments.
Google “Jose Molina”
Have you ever watched baseball?
Have you?
It never ceases to amaze me just how bad the umpiring is in the MLB.
I’m actually quite comforted by the fact every single one of these was almost completely due to bad catching than an ump just plain missing a curveball dropping in perfectly.
Relative to what other form of umpiring? Such as that what you see in soccer?
You think that’s bad?? I hear they pay millions of dollars to baseball players who completely screw up their job 70% of the time! Can you believe that!
I’m so glad we got rid of context, you and I. We’re gonna go far together Johnston.
Only the batters screw up 70% of the time.
The pitchers screw up 30% of the time.
Could you possibly do a post titled “John Lackey’s D-bag-iest reactions to non-strike calls” with the accompanying gif’s? Because let me tell you, that guy is a d-bag.
I think you’re blaming the catchers way too much. #5 was the only one that was really bad by the catcher, the other ones were just pitchers missing their location. I’m not sure how you expect them to catch the ball without moving their arm when it comes nowhere near the target.
It’s not just about moving the arm. Of course they have to move their arms. It’s about the exaggeration, the post-catch drag. It seems like they make those pitches look real bad.
Try to catch a fastball thrown by a Major League pitcher. Just a fastball; forget about the breaking stuff or change ups. That experience would give you a different perspective, and I suspect you would not be so critical of catchers who are unable to frame a pitch where the pitcher missed his target by more than a foot.
He didn’t say it was easy, he just said that it was bad. Also, major league catchers should probably be better at catching a fastball than a guy who is writing articles from behind a computer. 🙂
Yeah, nerd!
What an annoying response. Try comparing these gifs to a thousand examples of professional, major league caliber catchers across the league. That’s the standard.
I don’t agree at all. Seems pretty normal for the distance they have to move their glove. It’s very hard to arrest the glove’s momentum immediately after making the catch when you have to make such a jerky movement. I see it every time I watch a game. The thing that’s exceptional about these examples is that they missed in the middle of the strike zone and A) weren’t swung at and B) weren’t called properly.
Hey, Enkidu, wanna hit the stripclub? Inanna’s working tonight.
Were any of those on two strike counts? If not, which was the strike-iest ball on two strikes?
Can you make a sequel? Ball-iest called strikes?
I DESERVE SOME PROPS ON THE SEQUEL JEFF!
#5, #3, and #2 all look like the catcher’s fault to me. Bad job framing.
Loved this, thanks! And: Gimme more of it! 🙂
I can’t blame the umpire for #5, I wouldn’t have known it was a strike either from that gif!
It’s Enrico Pallazo!
Thank God! Eyebrows are finally getting some respect. Why wear eye black when a good set of brows can shield you from the sun? And yeah, Anthony Davis says hi.
When you don’t hit your spots, it’s hard to get the umpire to make calls your way. On the other hand, a good receiver has quick enough reactions that he can still frame a pitch that missed its spot by a foot so an umpire can see that it was still in the zone. Watch guys like Yadier, Lucroy and McCann frame pitches. You’ll see a couple pitches a game like those above where a pitcher will miss their spot but still get the call.
I would generally speaking give more “credit” to the umpires. #1 ought to have been an easy strike zone call. Yes, Suzuki has short arms. The umpire knows that. So, the umpire ought not to be fooled if he has to reach a little bit. Similarly, on #3, it is pretty obvious that Samardzija missed his spot completely, but the umpire can see that and ought not to take any account of the fact that the catcher has to move from the outside black to the inside 1/2 of the plate to catch the ball in judging whether the pitch is a strike.
Umpires ought not to let the catcher define the strike zone for them, both positively and negatively.
Your last sentence is a bad one. I also didn’t read the preceding ones, so I pass no judgment on them.
Do you really think they sit there and think “catcher moved, I’m calling ball!” They do not “let” the catcher define the strike zone. They let their eyes define the strike zone.
Geezus. We have all these catcher-apologists in this thread (oh booo hoo I’m paid million dollars to crouch and catch a ball and I do it below average and people on the internet make gifs about it boo hoo) but no one capable of acknowledging that if you were behind the plate you’d call it the same damn way? Because it looks like a ball?
What stands out to me in both of the Castillo/Samardzija calls is that the majority of Castillo’s body is positioned outside of the strike zone. He would have to reach in even for a pitch that hit the outside corner. It’s almost as if there is no intention at all to throw a strike, and so I would think that the umpire might be biased toward a ball before the pitch is even thrown. I cannot think of a reason why it would be advantageous to set up your body outside of the strike zone, even if the target is slightly outside of the zone.
I guess the hope is that he will get a strike call on a pitch 8-10 inches outside the zone by hitting that target precisely. I would hope that umpires cannot be fooled in such a way beyond an inch or two, and would notice that the target is positioned 10 inches outside the zone.
Zuke didn’t even try to frame that pitch
good stuff, jeff – feed us more of these delicacies!
Also interesting how only one lefty on there. I really think these are all on the catcher! It’s not so easy for a batter to determine balls or strikes. I think umpires’ eyes are probably slower than batters overall and umpires rely on the catcher’s glove being in the zone. The catchers looked like they were out of position relative to the pitch in 4 out of 5 of these.
Next can we get some .gifs of Mike Zunino getting strike calls on pitches out of the zone?