Baseballhead:
Excuses, Excuses

Michael Cox

Happy Memorial Day—even as you read this (considering you read this on Monday morning) I’m performing my calisthenics and precisely positioning the cashews and vodka for the all-day baseball orgy on ESPN. (In fact, I recommended to ESPN that they call it “the All Day Baseball Orgy,” but the buffoons in marketing grumbled something about “poor taste” and had me ejected from the building.)

More on that later, but first, this just in: Curt Schilling blames Questec for his poor pitching performance on Sunday.

In fact, after giving up nine hits, two walks and three earned runs in seven innings of work, Schilling smashed one of the Questec cameras and called the system “a joke.” Why? Because the umpires told him the system was to blame for their poor ball and strike calls. One wonders whether, if plate ump had blamed his problems on bad BBQ ribs, Schilling would have walked over to Cooper’s Town restaurant and punched out Alice.

Seriously, I think Schilling is a smart man, and he has to know that his move will win him a few fans among the umpiring in-crowd. And, logic follows, he knows those umpires will be thinking fondly of him as they judge his pitches from behind the plate. Think of it as psychic payola, because I think Schilling knows Questec causes umpires to call games badly like the infield fly rule causes batters to pop up to the infield.

Evidence is as close as Schilling’s opponent on Saturday: Padres starter Brian Lawrence, who somehow triumphed over Questec adversity to throw a complete game two-hitter.

I do believe that ball-strike umpiring is one of the hardest jobs in sports, along with that of the Yankees’ postgame buffet chef and Todd Jones’ towel boy. But the umps’ objection to Questec has revealed something some of us have known all along: umpires interpret the rulebook as they see fit, against even the direction of their employer.

On Saturday, umpire Mike Winters described his co-workers’ approach to the strike zone thusly:

In the old days, we were taught “Go get ‘em. Call those pitches strikes. Today it's the exact opposite: “Hey, if it's off the plate it's a ball. I don't care if it's a quarter-inch or an eighth-inch, it's a ball.” It goes against what we used to be taught, but major league baseball pays my salary, and they're the boss.

The sad thing is that Winters is correct. Umpires have long been taught to call balls and strikes in a freeform manner that allowed an Eric Gregg to add six inches to either side of the zone and get away with it. Then there’s the ongoing high-strike war:

MLB: For 1999, call the high strike.
Umpires: No.

MLB: For 2002, call the high strike.
Umpires: Okay.
(MLB leaves the room)
Umpires: We’re so not gonna call that.

MLB: For 2003, call the high strike. We will be monitoring it using objective technology.
Umpires: D’oh.

So the umps are firing back by claiming Questec is making them squeeze the strike zone. Well, call me Mr. Conductor and let me punch your ticket for the clue train—Questec sees the actual strike zone and expects the umps to call a ball a ball and a strike a strike, with no variance due to whim, favoritism, hubris, petulance or sudden spells of vertigo. If umps feel “forced” to call anything differently than they do otherwise, they were doing it wrong in the first place.

Years ago, I noticed that when David Cone pitched, the plate umpire would often give him an extra little “bump” on the low outside corner, like a strike zone goiter. I called it “the Cone zone.” And Cone would hit that goiter with precision, and the rest is literally history. As a great pitcher, he took advantage of umpires’ weaknesses.

There’s no evidence that the new zone is causing more balls to be called or more walks to be issued. Umpires have actually been calling a higher percentage of strikes this year. Walk and strikeout ratios between the Questec ballparks and all ballparks are so similar one should sue the other for likeness rights. All signs point to a properly called strike zone with no real negative effects.

But that won’t stop the umpires from complaining, because it’s in their own best interest to be allowed to “go get ‘em.” More freedom and fewer repercussions for poor performance is always nice. If MLB has made a mistake here, it’s that they haven’t put Questec in every park.

I say give them the ultimate freedom: have Questec do all the ball/strike calls. Let’s see Curt Schilling suck up to a computer.

Credit Where Credit’s Due: As regular readers may know, I regularly find unintentional humor in the various prose and spoken musings of the crew over at ESPN. Even as their TV channel continues its relentless quest to become the worldwide leader in opinionated sportswriters (at least maybe Jim Rome can now afford to have his goatee properly groomed), they do some things very well.

One of those things is the masterstroke of having some great broadcasters call the Wednesday Night Baseball game. Of course, part of the reason these play-by-play men retired in the first place is that they’ve lost a step or seven from their prime. Also, as I discovered last Wednesday when I tuned in to hear Curt Gowdy call the Yankees/Red Sox tilt, a full game may be too taxing for some of these guys. But it is to quibble.

Now if they could only do something with Chris Berman, but unfortunately, the NFL Europe is on FOX.

about the author

Michael Cox has an idea to track pitches with "lasers." Let him know that referring to the Auto Batter Ball Appliance by its acronym might get him ridiculed by Scott Evil at mc@strikethree.com.