Umpires Are Having Some Trouble with Aaron Judge
The absence of Mike Trout, however unfortunate, has the possible effect of opening up the field for the American League’s MVP award. It’s also possible we’ll see a position player other than Trout lead the league in wins above replacement for the first time since 2011, when Jacoby Ellsbury posted a 9.4-win season. Trout still leads the league this season (3.3). Given that he could miss two months of time to injury, however, he could be hard pressed to finish ahead of his peers for a sixth consecutive campaign.
So that brings us to the No. 2 player on the American League leaderboard, Aaron Judge.
I received some questions about MVP odds during my Monday chat and Judge’s name came up. As impressive as Judge has been this season, including a 510-foot batting practice shot in Toronto…
Aaron Judge hitting one 510 feet with 128 evit velocity in bp? Retweet if you want Judge to be in the Homerun Derby pic.twitter.com/F1xVbvHctL
— Student Athlete Problems (@athlete_studs) June 3, 2017
… I sense there are questions, concerns about the league’s ability to punch back when it accumulates more scouting material against an inexperienced hitter who possesses both a long swing and unusual baseball body. Judge doesn’t yet have the same type of exposure to major-league pitching and defenses that other MVP candidates have. When pitchers began to refine their approach against him, will Judge be able to counter punch?
There’s already some evidence that a considerable slow down is imminent: Judge’s strikeout rate has been inching up.
While Judge deserves credit for his offseason work — including a swing adjustment that has resulted in dramatically improved bat-to-ball skills and allowed his raw power to translate into games — the forecasts call for merely a good player, not a great one. Our Depth Chart projections, which are a combination of Steamer and ZiPS with curated playing-time estimates, have Judge slashing .253/.338/.500 for the rest of the season, with 22 more homers and 2.2 wins.
If those projections are reasonably accurate, Judge probably isn’t capable of holding off Carlos Correa, Francisco Lindor, Miguel Sano or even a partial season from Trout.
Judge has already proven to be an able and willing student, and the improvement he’s made from his first exposure to the major leagues has been impressive. Maybe he will counter punch effectively and put together a truly remarkable campaign. But there’s something contributing to Judge’s strikeouts, a factor working against him relatively more than his MLB peers to date in his young MLB career: the low strike.
Consider this third-strike call from Pirates pitcher Tyler Glasnow from earlier this season:
And consider another third-strike call, from then-Mariners pitcher Wade LeBlanc last season:
To the average major-league hitter, those pitches are around or above knee-level; they’re excellent pitches. They are clearly strikes thrown to the average batter. For Judge, though, they’re below the knees. Since there are no players the size of the 6-foot-7, 280-pound Judge in the majors — the 6-foot-6 Giancarlo Stanton is the nearest comp — umpires are being challenged to adjudicate a unique and large strike zone.
I employed the useful Baseball Savant search tool to get a detailed look at where strikes are being called against Judge. I was particularly curious to examine the 50-50 area at the bottom of the “detailed” zone now provided by Savant.
This season, 41% of pitches on the lower edge and just below the strike zone are being called as strikes against Judge (75 called strikes of 183 pitches in examined location). For MLB hitters as a whole, it’s a 24.3% rate (9,300 called strikes of 38,193 pitches in examined location). Last season, 24.6% of pitches in that location went as called strikes against Judge according to the search tool, compared to 17.4% for the league.
I also looked at pitches well below the strike zone. Judge has seen 379 pitches in his young career dating back to last season, 2.1% of which have been missed calls going for strikes. According to Statcast data, the going league-average rate for called strikes in the area is 0.4% since the beginning of last season.
Of the pitches in the top third of the zone since last season, at the top edge of the 50-50 area of the zone, only one out of 56 pitches thrown there has been called for a strike against Judge this season. The league-average rate is 12.3% (8,444 out of 68,547 pitches located there). So umpires are giving Judge a larger bottom of the zone to date, but a smaller top of the zone.
Still, the net result is negatively effecting Judge in two ways. For starters, he’s been more of a high-ball hitter to date in his career. Consider his career isolated slugging percentage per swing:
The other issue is that far more pitches are thrown to the bottom part of the strike zone, more than twice as many of them. Here’s a visualization of all called strikes against Judge to date in his young career:
At least at this point in Judge’s career, umpires are having trouble calling a correct zone on him. Judge would perhaps be even better, he would be in more hitter’s counts, getting more elevated pitches, if he were facing an accurately called strike zone. The good news for Judge is that perhaps umpires will learn to better call Judge’s strike zone. In that bottom 50-50 area of the strike zone, 21.4% pitches have been called as strikes against Stanton, his closest contemporary in terms of right-handed batting height, since the start of 2016.
So not that Judge needs much help, but perhaps he will get it eventually, and his power will play up even more often.
A Cleveland native, FanGraphs writer Travis Sawchik is the author of the New York Times bestselling book, Big Data Baseball. He also contributes to The Athletic Cleveland, and has written for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, among other outlets. Follow him on Twitter @Travis_Sawchik.
Yet again, if we had a laser guided strike zone none of this would be an issue.
Remove the human element from baseball umpiring – NOW.
From what I’ve read, the up/down aspect of the automated strike zone is still very much in need of refining. In/out is easy, but up/down is relative to the batter, and up is a particularly vaguely defined point.
That is my understanding as well. The top/bottom of the zone, by definition, depends on the batter’s height and stance. For pitch-tracking purposes, it is manually set by a human prior to each pitch.
The obvious solution would be to have some kind of RFID sesnor sewn into the knee and chest of the uniforms.
I’m a big proponent of doing this kind of thing – I wouldn’t totally automate it – I’d give the ums a hand-held (like an iphone) where they could see the same visual we see on TV, showing where the ball crossed, and then he still makes the call.
After “Deflate-gate”, I wonder how long it would take for such a system to give birth to “RFID-sensor-gate” 🙂
For me, the appeal of the umpire behind the plate lies in the reactionary aspect. It’s much more exciting when a pitch paints the corner with runners on 2nd and 3rd with two outs in a full count to have that reactionary call – GOT HIM!! It would deflate the excitement a bit to have the batter looking up at a scoreboard to see if the call is right or not.
Whatever method is chosen to make the zone more accurate – even if that’s having a 5th ump in the both with a monitor and the overhead and front-facing views to make the call – I think there should be an ump behind the plate with an earpiece in.
Not to say the game is about the ump, but the immediate reactionary interchange between ump and batter adds a lot of excitement. It can remain while also making the zone accurate.
You want entertainment, we want accuracy. I’m not sure that the twain will ever meet here.
You want “Truth” with a capital T. Not the same as “accuracy” 😉
you can’t handle the accuracy!
retracted
Exactly. And that would be cheap to do.
Just occurred to me: how the heck do you not title this article “Umpires Are Having Some Trouble Judging Aaron”?
He missed the call, that’s why.
I never want to hear any criticism of Cistulli, but that was obvious!
But then would there be an added element of checking that each batter hasn’t moved the RFID sensor before each AB, slowing down the game?
The other problem with an RFID is that the strike zone is based on the batter’s stance when the pitch is thrown. Hitters could manipulate the zone by crouching or standing up straighter.
They’ve always been able to. See Henderson, Rickey.
50 rfid sensors for all the players? That’s the *obvious* solution? Teams can’t even keep their 2 bullpen phones from breaking. And they’re not getting banged around on the field. That would be a disaster. I think the obvious solution would be having custom heights for each player set before the game and someone off field switching them before they come to the plate.
Why 50? You just need the front knee and the front shoulder/”midpoint”, right?
why sew it into the uniforms, which could be altered or worn differently and simply implant the sensors into the players?
Well once they define it more accurately they can track it precisely. The rules regarding the strike zone will have to be updated to be more clear and concise.
Sorry, just to clarify, you’re trolling here right? Otherwise, I don’t understand your demand, or its tone. I know trollers don’t like to troll-and-tell, but I really can’t figure this one out.
Oh, I guess you could be a Judge MVP/Yankees homer, maybe that’s it?
Not sure what I’m getting down votes for, must be about *my* tone, which I can apologize for. To clarify, my question is how can you make such a demand without giving any indication that you’d considered the consequences. You make it seem like bringing in lasers is like some magic bullet that renews “lost” “integrity” and “authority” with out having any impact on either the deep structure of the game, or its surface (just some guesses here), and that’s simply not true. So I hoped you would clarify, before I bothered with a response, that you were in fact actually interested in one, and not just being provocative. It seemed a fair questions, and I’m sorry if there was any offense.
If there’s ever going to be a change, the umps have to be on board. I think calling any new strike zone technology “robo umps” will get you nowhere.
Instead it should be designed, implemented and communicated as a tool for the umpire. Eric Byrnes had a segment on Real Sports on HBO where he umpired an independent league game using a strike zone system that fed strike/ball info to his ear.
To the rest of the world he looked like any other umpire you would see. He also had final say on whether the pitch was a ball or strike. But he was armed with better information than other umps.
Give the ump a new tool to do his job better and than let him do his job: don’t replace him because as others mentioned, you still need a home plate ump even if the strike zone is managed with technology.
An automated strike zone would introduce a laundry list of potential problems, and it’s simply not at all necessary. I appreciate that pitch framing is a part of the game. I also don’t mind that umpires have different strike zones as long as they are consistent within the game. I’m all for getting rid of poor performing umpires like Bucknor, but on the whole I think umpires do a fine job and I believe the game would be lessened without them.
In recent Toronto series, only área Jays had any success with Judge was pitching up. And very reluctant to go up and in on him, which, for a man his size and with his reach, seems to be the sensible place to attack.
Judge hit a beautiful 2 strike hit to RF against Pomeranz last night, so my conclusion would be to pitch up and in, and not to pitch anything near the outer half of the zone.
I’m guessing part of the problem with pitching up on him is that pitchers aren’t used to throwing that high on batters. I mean, “up” against Judge would probably be over the head of a guy like Pedroia. So if you’re not used to throwing that high, maybe you miss a little down, which happens to be right in his wheelhouse.
This is what Kimbrel did in the 9th and struck him out on three pitches – including a called Strike 1 at the very top of the zone.
That whole at-bat was a mess because of how nasty those fastballs were. Kimbrel gets tremendous rise from his fastballs so he’s able to locate upstairs. Not sure other pitchers can do the same consistently without being taken to court by Judge.
Dear lord. Can we please let technology call balls and strikes? I have no idea how an incorrectly called strike zone adds anything to the game.
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/who-will-hate-robot-umps-the-most/
From the end: “But the strike zone is also currently a negotiated entity. The pitcher, the catcher, the hitter and the umpire (and sometimes even the public analyst on a free website) all come together to produce a living, breathing document. No, it’s not consistent every night, and it has holes. But that negotiated zone is a unique thing in sports, and losing it would lose something real, call it whatever you will.”
I would add, as has been said elsewhere, that negotiating the strike zone is a skill like any other baseball skill, and it’s a skill that pitchers, hitters, and catchers can all master. And it’s a compelling skill to see practiced if you know what to look for. If you don’t like watching that part of the game, and you want it designed out, say that instead.
It’s been discussed here many times. You like the argument or you don’t, but don’t pretend to not understand it, unless your just some commenter passing through, in which case, you can have a pass.
I’m not someone’s grampa saying the fingers of gloves shouldn’t be laced, or that hitters who wear elbow protectors are chickens, or that the DH should be abolished and we should love the game for what it was in 1870. Innovate! I’m all for the shift, those little thumb things, the new slide rule, hell, the new way they handle domestic violence. Pick a recent change in baseball, and I’m for it. The data revolution has been a gift to management and fans, if not always to players. And I agree, on home runs, safe/out calls, use the cameras. Getting *those* calls wrong adds nothing except some shouting matches that are sometimes (only sometimes) amusing.
But pretending that nothing changes when you take the umps out is an exercise in willful ignorance. The change might be subtle at first, sure, but it would be a different game, one that takes a little less skill and is a little less fun to watch.
Don’t mean to single you out here, other people are saying it, and people are starring it so you’re not alone, just the one I occasioned.
“those little thumb things”
What are you talking about?
Not sure what they’re called, but you see some hitters wearing those plastic or rubber disks on their thumbs, presumably to reduce bat vibrations when you don’t square up? Or maybe it’s a grip aid? Not even sure what they do, but it falls into that category of things that guys can do that give them and edge (or a sense of one) to point out that I don’t care about the sanctity of the historical game against all else.
It’s called a pro-hitter and it helps you to grip the bat more with your fingertips. It should increase your bat speed. Many hitters in the MLB use it.
Of the last two graphics, it seems Judge strike zones don’t match. Maybe judge hits stuff high in zone well because he knows anything up over plate is a strike to him and not that high in actual zone based on the last graphic. Doesn’t look like pitchers expect they can throw pitches truly up in zone and get it called a strike.
Though this is based on graphics only as I’ve not seen him tested high.
Since the topic of robo strike zones are being discussing, here’s my take:
I’d really like to still have the home plate umpire in the mix of the game. I would feel so lost without a ump behind the plate. However, I do like the idea of some computer-based strike zone. My idea is this: wearable technology, likes glasses or a visor, that has the strike zone set on it. It would be like a red box that would flash when a pitch is a strike. The ump would then call it a strike or ball it the red box flashes or not.
The wearable tech would have the count, number of outs, lineup, whatever within the screen so the umps know what’s happening in the game. I don’t see the union being okay with getting rid of an ump for a robot so this is my compromise.
I think the problem with that is an umpire’s job becomes reading off a screen (which almost anyone can do) and they become a bit of a joke to the players and the fans.
Home plate ump does more than just call the zone. Even with talk of robot umps, I’ve never assumed home plate ump would need to go and always assumed he would be responsible for communicating count and calling pitch clock violations.
Umps still need to call swings or not. They need to call foul tips. They need to call safe/out. They need to call HBP (although given that that can be challenged, maybe not). So yeah, even with a robot zone, you still need a guy behind the plate. He just moves from being the only ump you care about in the game, to being like any of the other umps on the field, who only come into play sometimes.
Agreed. Removing the ump entirely is dumb. Enhancing the ump with sick tech is the way to go. #OneStepCloseToIronMenUmps
Also calling safe/out at the plate, fair/foul near the plate, whether a pitch is caught or hits the dirt first, whether a pitch is a swinging strike or a foul tip, whether a checked swing is a swing or not, balks, catcher’s interference, etc etc.
If it ever happens I think the answer is that the HP umpire’s little ball-strike clicker is set up so that it vibrates if the pitch is a strike, and the umpire still calls them just the way that he does. Not even the batter or catcher would probably know.
That way the umpire is also still watching the pitch the same way in the event of a technological failure, which does happen.
I’m fairly certain the 510 foot/128 mph homer may have been hyperbolized.
Someone please explain to me why we don’t have automated ball and strike calls so that travesties like this and bad ball and strike calls in general can be easily avoided forever.
Because automated systems are never as easy or accurate as certain individuals would like to believe.
That, jdbolick, is 100% crap. A well-designed and properly backstopped automated system will always work with greater accuracy and efficiency than the human eye and brain possibly can. And I know this for a fact, as I’ve helped to design and implement a number of automated systems.
Someone who has “helped to design and implement a number of automated systems” would know better than to say that “bad ball and strike calls in general can be easily avoided forever,” as that claim is the only part of this exchange that has been “100% crap.” An automated system with sufficient development and testing would indeed be much more accurate than C.B. Bucknor, but it would still have pitches being incorrectly classified as well as some missed entirely, and that’s even without getting into potential bugs in the system where the entire game is put on hold while they try to figure out what went wrong.
Why should Judge have a larger strike zone than a smaller batter?
Is that fair?
Eddie Gaedel was barred from baseball because he was “too small” to have a strike zone… is that fair? (though I would imagine in today’s environment, he would have good grounds for a discrimination lawsuit…)
I have said this before, and I’ll say it again. The strikezone not only needs to be automated, it needs to be standardized. ie. it needs to be the same size, for all batters, no matter how big or small.
This eliminates the need to “adjust it” for each individual batter, immediately eliminating one element that is holding up deployment.
This also eliminates discriminatory rules which work against both tall and short baseball players.
This would also allow MLB to set a larger or smaller strikezone (each season?) to decrease or increase offense as needed/desired.
Having a standard strike zone the same dimensions and location for everyone creates unintended consequences that you have to consider.
For a bigger player like Judge or Stanton is it fair for them to have to swing at pitches that are nearly at their ankles and the top of the zone near their thighs. They may as well go to bat with golf clubs at that strike zone.
For smaller players like Altuve the strike zone would be starting near the mid thigh and possibly extend to their armpits.
The strike zone as it is supposed to be called is the area that is natural for a player to swing in and have a reasonable expectation for success.
It also allows for teaching and educational consistency throughout the sport. Adjusting swings for size would make it more difficult if not impossible for someone to teach a proper technique for success.
And I nearly forgot the issue that you would have to deal with from teaching players from a young age, growing to adults what the strike zone is. IF it is the same size for MLB as it is for Little League, then you have to get them to swing at nearly everything when young, and as they grow, alter that approach. It is just much easier and practical to learn to swing at something if it is at the knee up to around your belly button, no matter how big you are.
Because the strike zone was defined, from the beginning, to fit in with a batter’s swing mechanics.
The pitch thrown by LeBlanc would not have been a strike to anybody.
There have been big dudes before… hell Richie Sexson is 6’8″. It would be interesting to get some anecdotal info from tall players on how they think the zone is called and see if that is backed up in data. And to my recollection, Stanton has no problems with the low ball.
I have a bit of advice, and maybe Judge is doing this, but it is really simple. He should remind the umpire during his first at bat that he is taller than most hitters. People can easily just forget that a person is super tall.
I am all for this, but only if it is accomplished by patting the umpire on the top of the head and asking, “How’s the weather down there, Tiny?”
I think umpires would often see that as insulting.
Good.
#BigHitterProblems
What should be a fruitful avenue for further research would be the case of Kris Bryant. He’s 6’5″, and if I recall correctly his uniquely-crouched batting stance (he’s 5’9″ in the box) is mostly due to getting beat by low pitches, whether due to his swing from his (former) batting height or low pitches being called strikes that maybe shouldn’t have been.
The only reference I can immediately find is this: http://m.mlb.com/news/article/189320918/kris-bryant-tweaked-stance-to-unleash-power/ which admittedly doesn’t mention umpires, but it’s also an official MLB article so maybe they’d be biased against mentioning umpiring problems for Bryant… but maybe asking him or someone else from the organization (or maybe even from the college team if you feel like tracking them down lol) would be willing to comment on the matter.
This sort of research into Bryant and Judge would be right up your alley, Travis. I look forward to great quotes from either/both of those guys in the future… awesome start here too.
Do we have any information on called strikes against Stanton over time? Do umps eventually “learn” how to call them against tall guys? How about other tall guys? Do we have any info on Corey Hart? John Mayberry Jr?
I have watched a lot of Judge. Since adjusting his swing path he has been crushing fast ball pitches at the low and middle parts of the zone. Its high heat he has had trouble with although he will crush high off speed stuff. Similarly he can be beat with good breaking stuff down low but any hangers will be crushed.
ISO is probably not the best measure since all it takes is one HR on a hanger to skew the numbers in a small sample
Look at last nights AB against Kelly and Kimbrell. Granted these are elite fastballs but thats where he has to be pitched. Umps are actually doing him a favor if they are lowering the zone on him
Really enjoyed this article and some insight into your thought process and the tools you use for research. I would be really interested in a fangraphs series of tutorials of how to use all of fangraphs resources along with baseball savant / statcast and other public resources along with any relevant skills for pivot tables in excel or basic SQL / R commands. There is some basic stuff out there with Andy Andres’ EdX sabr101 class but I think FG could do a great job of building on that into something similar to the Khan academy platform
This is a problem that Adam Dunn used to have to. In fact, when he’d take one of this low-strikes that were below his knees despite being at or above the majority of to other players’, he would pointedly hitch his pants/socks up while looking at the umpire in order to call attention to the fact that his knees were way up there.
Innnteresting. Thanks Travis
They just referenced you and this article in the yankee game tonight on YES!
So thrilled to see Fangraphs becoming more and more mainstream in broadcasts and articles. It’s a real joy to have watched this site emerge as a premier place for baseball research.
Thank you Travis!
Wasn’t the opposite the true for altuve? I think the umps have an internal database in their head what a strike looks like and that is orientated on the normal 5″10-6″3 guy.
If a guy is different from that it is not easy to change because the ball moves very fast and you can’t really see the ball crossing the knees or letters, it is always an estimation.
Compounding this problem are Judge’s very low swing rate and high rate of pitches per time up. He has stayed remarkably disciplined since his initial HR burst, which is why his BA and OBP have risen as his SLG has fallen.
Nice analysis. I doubt that MLB umpires will be reading this, however. For years, I’ve complained that MLB umpires are not neurologically proficient enough to be umpires because they are not able to pre-visualize the strike zone for each player that comes to the plate. This inability is brain related. Just as elite athletes have extraordinary vision, umpires at the MLB level also require extraordinary vision. The tragedy is that MLB does not require a visual test of its umpires that would eliminate the ordinary men who now occupy these positions. The umpires retaliate against any players/coaches who challenge their failures and MLB permits them to do so. Consequently, there are no checks and balances and therefore no reason for umpires to overcome their individual handicaps to perform better. Ridiculous.
Have you noticed anything about balls up in the zone being called balls, when in actuality they are strikes? From some of what I’ve seen, it seems as though they are having trouble up as well.