Home-Plate Umpires Have Favored Twins Opponents in 2023 Playoffs

[Cody Christie]

Each playoff game can hinge on one pitch that is called a ball or a strike. During the 2023 postseason, umpires have tended to favor Twins opponents. Let's explore the numbers.

Image courtesy of Jeffrey Becker-USA TODAY Sports

Being a major-league umpire is no easy task. It takes years of hard work and dedication to reach the big leagues, where pitchers throw triple-digit fastballs and breaking pitches with significant movement. There are also replays from multiple angles that show whether a pitch is a ball or a strike. Major League Baseball has experimented with automated strike zones and challenge systems in the minor leagues, but the human element is still part of America's Pastime.

Umpires are evaluated throughout the regular season to earn spots on the field in the playoffs. These umps are supposed to be the best of the best, but teams and fans get even more upset with perceived bad calls in October. 

Umpire Scorecard on X (formerly known as Twitter) tracks umpire performance throughout the season. According to their website, "The @UmpScorecards platform relies on three key metrics to analyze umpire performance: accuracy (and expected stats), consistency, and favor. These metrics are calculated in house using algorithms inspired by others in the baseball community and developed by the @UmpScorecards team."

Here's how the home plate umpires have fared so far in Minnesota's 2023 playoff games. 

Wild Card Series: Game 1
Umpire: Andy Fletcher
Overall Favor (Runs): +1.46 Toronto
Umpire Scorecard's model said Fletcher favored the Blue Jays by nearly 1.5 runs, including two of the three most influential calls going against the Twins. Edouard Julien should have drawn a walk with two runners on in the bottom of the second inning. His overall accuracy was slightly below the expected accuracy, but there were rough called strikes on both sides of the zone.

Wild Card Series: Game 2
Umpire: Adam Hamari
Overall Favor (Runs): +0.96 Toronto
In Game 2, all three impactful missed calls went against the Twins, which made a tight game even closer. Sonny Gray was impacted the most by missed calls with two balls that should have been strikes, changing the trajectory of plate appearances. Hamari missed five calls on taken pitches during the game, which hurt the Twins more than the Blue Jays.

ALDS: Game 1
Umpire: Brian Knight
Overall Favor (Runs): +0.43 Houston
Minnesota attempted to mount a late-inning comeback when Justin Verlander was awarded the most prominent missed call in Game 1. Carlos Correa batted with two outs and a runner on first base in the sixth inning. He was rung up on a ball significantly out of the strike zone. Overall, Knight missed four pitches, and the two biggest went against the Twins.

ALDS: Game 2
Umpire: D.J. Reyburn
Overall Favor (Runs): +0.77 Houston
The top three missed calls all went against the Twins for the second time in the playoffs. Willi Castros' at-bat with the bases loaded in the seventh inning could have extended the lead and allowed the Twins to rest some of the club's high-leverage bullpen arms. The bottom of the strike zone was particularly bad for Reyburn, who incorrectly identified 13 pitches during the game.

ALDS: Game 3
Umpire: Ben Miller
Overall Favor (Runs): +0.31 Minnesota
Tuesday's game at Target Field was the only time during the 2023 postseason where the home plate umpire favored the Twins. Even in this game, the most impactful missed call went against the Twins with Lewis' bases loaded at-bat in the fifth inning, starting with a called strike that was a ball. Miller missed most of his calls in the upper part of the zone, but his overall zone was relatively accurate, especially compared to some of the other umpires in the postseason.

It will be interesting to see if this trend continues in however many playoff games remain for the Twins. Will umpires continue to make more calls against Minnesota? Will a bad call eventually cost the Twins a win? Could the Twins have won Game 1 in Houston with better umpiring? One can hope that umpiring will improve as teams move deeper into the playoffs, but the Twins have been on the wrong side of every playoff game so far. 

What are your thoughts on the calls discussed above? Has umpiring impacted any of the Twins' results so far? Leave a COMMENT and start the discussion. 

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[Karbo]

I have said for several years that umps favor veterans over young guys. It just seems that a vet will get the advantage of doubt where the rookie or younger player wont. 

[FlyingFinn]

Bring on the robo ump strike/ball calls. In a game of inches and with teams so close, favoring veterans or teams must end. We have the technology now to make the game more fair.

[Schmoeman5]

I don't believe this at all. The automated strike zone in the minor league is set up with cameras and a box that changes batter by batter. A 6' 4" guys strike zone being different than a guy who is 6'. The box on TV which these guys are breaking down the calls is a close proximity but not exact. So how can these umpire scores be taken seriously? And besides. The MLB mandate of Screw the Twins at all costs is as real as the boogeyman and sasquatch.

[Woof Bronzer]

The most egregious missed call in Game 3 was the foul tip strikeout that was missed and gave the Twins a free out.  Could have changed the entire game/series.  I don't think I saw a single poster in the game forum complain about it and screech about robot umps though.  Wonder why.  

Whining about the umpires is such a loser's errand.  

[Hosken Bombo Disco]

24 minutes ago, Woof Bronzer said:

The most egregious missed call in Game 3 was the foul tip strikeout that was missed and gave the Twins a free out. 

What play was that? I missed most of the game. 

I did happen to catch this other missed strike three call, that went in the Twins favor in the bottom of the first. This bad call (if that’s what it was) was not recorded on the Bill Miller umpire scorecard, so you have to wonder. 

[Hosken Bombo Disco]

When it comes to complaining about officiating, it definitely behooves fans to pick their spots carefully…

[Mike Sixel]

Wanting fair umpiring has nothing to do with which side bad umpiring favors..... Give me fair umpiring all day. We have plenty of studies that show how unfair and bad it is, most of which is fixable with robo umps. 

As for comments in game threads, who cares if they are one sided, literally nothing to do with what MLB should do. 

[Schmoeman5]

6 minutes ago, Mike Sixel said:

Wanting fair umpiring has nothing to do with which side bad umpiring favors..... Give me fair umpiring all day. We have plenty of studies that show how unfair and bad it is, most of which is fixable with robo umps. 

As for comments in game threads, who cares if they are one sided, literally nothing to do with what MLB should do. 

We don't need robo umps. If the umpires were hitting .250, maybe. But at 95 or 93% with made up data is great. Replay is good enough.Where are these studies that show how unfair and bad umpiring is? 

[Mike Sixel]

4 minutes ago, Schmoeman5 said:

We don't need robo umps. If the umpires were hitting .250, maybe. But at 95 or 93% with made up data is great. Replay is good enough.Where are these studies that show how unfair and bad umpiring is? 

Did you even try to google about umpiring, because we know some things:

They call terrible pitches strikes when there are 3 balls. They favor veterans. They favor home teams. All of this is known stuff.

We absolutely need robo umps to eliminate unconscious bias (so many studies on this are available with a modicum of effort) in all kinds of things in society, sports is just one of them

[Schmoeman5]

Just now, Mike Sixel said:

Did you even try to google about umpiring, because we know some things:

They call terrible pitches strikes when there are 3 balls. They favor veterans. They favor home teams. All of this is known stuff.

We absolutely need robo umps to eliminate unconscious bias (so many studies on this are available with a modicum of effort) in all kinds of things in society, sports is just one of them

Are you watching the game or are you slamming the table when a ball is centimeters outside the imaginary box that's called a strike on Julien. And then shrug it off when it's called a strike on Abreu. When Rand Corp does an analysis that shows how BAD things are. I might pay some closer attention 🤔 

[Aggies7]

Yesterdays HP umpire did an excellent job outside of the foul tip called a ball, which is nearly impossible to get right. Yesterday was the most consistent of the playoffs. Consistency is at least as important as accuracy 

[Mike Sixel]

13 minutes ago, Schmoeman5 said:

Are you watching the game or are you slamming the table when a ball is centimeters outside the imaginary box that's called a strike on Julien. And then shrug it off when it's called a strike on Abreu. When Rand Corp does an analysis that shows how BAD things are. I might pay some closer attention 🤔 

I think I've stated quite clearly I want fair umps. Did you even read what I said? I'm ok if you don't care if they are fair, but asking what studies exist, then dismissing the idea of them seems, well, not really interested.

[Woof Bronzer]

 

33 minutes ago, Mike Sixel said:

Wanting fair umpiring has nothing to do with which side bad umpiring favors..... Give me fair umpiring all day. We have plenty of studies that show how unfair and bad it is, most of which is fixable with robo umps. 

As for comments in game threads, who cares if they are one sided, literally nothing to do with what MLB should do. 

Fans don't want fair umpiring.  They want the bad calls that hurt them to go away, and they want the bad calls that help them to stay.  

Show us these studies that show how umpiring in the long run has benefitted certain teams at the expense of others.  If you think 95-99% accuracy is "bad" please don't look into robo ump technology because it's NOT 100% accurate by any stretch of the imagination.  Maybe it'll get there in time, but it's not there yet.  

The same pattern plays out in every sport:  implement replay "to get the calls right".  When it becomes obvious that replay doesn't actually do this, they open up replay to more and more things.  The problem is never solved, and the game becomes less human - and less interesting - as a result.  

 

[Woof Bronzer]

48 minutes ago, Hosken Bombo Disco said:

What play was that? I missed most of the game. 

I did happen to catch this other missed strike three call, that went in the Twins favor in the bottom of the first. This bad call (if that’s what it was) was not recorded on the Bill Miller umpire scorecard, so you have to wonder. 

 

4th inning I think?  It resulted in a walk to load the bases.  

It's almost like the "umpire scorecards" are not an official thing, and there's more to grading umps than whether the 0-2 pitch that the Twins hitter stared at is a millimeter in or out of the zone.  :)  

[Schmoeman5]

6 minutes ago, Mike Sixel said:

I think I've stated quite clearly I want fair umps. Did you even read what I said? I'm ok if you don't care if they are fair, but asking what studies exist, then dismissing the idea of them seems, well, not really interested.

You keep using the word FAIR. So you believe it's one sided then. Conspiracy to screw the Twins. And What studies? Where are these studies so I can be better informed.

[Mike Sixel]

9 minutes ago, Woof Bronzer said:

 

Fans don't want fair umpiring.  They want the bad calls that hurt them to go away, and they want the bad calls that help them to stay.  

Show us these studies that show how umpiring in the long run has benefitted certain teams at the expense of others.  If you think 95-99% accuracy is "bad" please don't look into robo ump technology because it's NOT 100% accurate by any stretch of the imagination.  Maybe it'll get there in time, but it's not there yet.  

The same pattern plays out in every sport:  implement replay "to get the calls right".  When it becomes obvious that replay doesn't actually do this, they open up replay to more and more things.  The problem is never solved, and the game becomes less human - and less interesting - as a result.  

 

See tennis....

[Mike Sixel]

4 minutes ago, Schmoeman5 said:

You keep using the word FAIR. So you believe it's one sided then. Conspiracy to screw the Twins. And What studies? Where are these studies so I can be better informed.

It literally has zero to do with the Twins for me. I can't say that again and again....because you just aren't interested in what I'm actually saying. I specifically mentioned unconscious bias....for example, which has nothing to do with conspiracy theories.

[Mike Sixel]

18 minutes ago, Aggies7 said:

Yesterdays HP umpire did an excellent job outside of the foul tip called a ball, which is nearly impossible to get right. Yesterday was the most consistent of the playoffs. Consistency is at least as important as accuracy 

100% true. 

[FlyingFinn]

11 minutes ago, Woof Bronzer said:

don't look into robo ump technology because it's NOT 100% accurate by any stretch of the imagination. 

Hmmm..... and no studies shown...................................

[Reptevia]

Unfortunately, the replays in all sports are completely arbitrary. It seems like it has very little to do with what actually happened. 

[Road trip]

If getting calls consistently correct is so unimportant and change is so difficult perhaps baseball never should have abandoned the "good ole days" practice where a single umpire stood behind the pitcher and made all the calls on the field.  I mean, this is a sport where tradition is more important than improving the game, correct?

 

[Riverbrian]

October 4th, 2017 Yankee Stadium. 

The Twins jumped out to 3-0 lead in the 1st inning behind Dozier and Rosario home runs. 

Ervin Santana takes the mound. He is struggling a bit. He walks Brett Gardner and gives up a single to Judge before getting Sanchez to pop out for the first out of the inning. 

With one out, runners on 1st and 3rd. Didi Gregorius steps to the plate. Foul, Ball, Ball, Foul for a 2-2 count.

Pitch number 5 was a strike. The ump calls it a ball for a full count.

Pitch 6... 3 run home run. Tie game. When he should have struck out for out number two. 

That missed call was huge. If that missed call can be prevented... it needs to be prevented. 

No it didn't decide the game. There were 8 innings left to play... but it was a 3 run blown call. I have been an advocate for automation ever since. 

If you'd like to walk down memory lane. Here ya go. 

https://www.espn.com/mlb/playbyplay/_/gameId/371003110

[Rod Carews Birthday]

I’m not sure that the umpiring is really that bad.  I think there have certainly been a few poor umps, but I think that the rest are professional and try to be as accurate as possible.  With regard to favoring one side or the other, individual perceptions are going to cloud judgement.  It’s the same thing with results of a ballgame. If Player A hits a homerun off of Pitcher B, Player A fans talk about the incredible hitting job and Player B fans talk about the bad pitch.  In the same way, the losing team’s fans are likely to be frustrated by individual and collective calls during the game because they have very little to be joyful about.  

Objectively, calls will certainly favor one team over the other by some margin in every game (and every sport).  However, over the course of a larger sample size, those numbers should equalize so that there isn’t an overall benefit in one direction.  In these cases, the umpires’ overall rates of accuracy were substantially better than expected in three games, and a little bit worse in two.  Perfection, while desirable, isn’t actually achievable - whether by a person or machine.  None of that means that we shouldn’t try, but I don’t believe that the umpiring has been egregious enough against the Twins to rail against it.  

[Woof Bronzer]

9 minutes ago, Riverbrian said:

 

If you'd like to walk down memory lane. Here ya go. 

https://www.espn.com/mlb/playbyplay/_/gameId/371003110

I took that walk :)  Looks like pitch 2 to Dozier in the 1st was a strike but called a ball, and he also went on to hit a HR.  But you don't remember that one of course....:) 

We can do this all day, and I guarantee you we'll continue do this with robo umps.  "The strike zone the system gave Hitter X was a quarter inch too high" etc.  And then we'll hear calls for, I don't know, lasers to scan players before every single pitch to assign them a "fair" strike zone.  "We have the technology, why wouldn't we do it?"  And on and on.  It will never end, because arguing about officiating is part of sports and fans/teams will never stop looking for scapegoats.

[Riverbrian]

17 minutes ago, Riverbrian said:

October 4th, 2017 Yankee Stadium. 

The Twins jumped out to 3-0 lead in the 1st inning behind Dozier and Rosario home runs. 

Ervin Santana takes the mound. He is struggling a bit. He walks Brett Gardner and gives up a single to Judge before getting Sanchez to pop out for the first out of the inning. 

With one out, runners on 1st and 3rd. Didi Gregorius steps to the plate. Foul, Ball, Ball, Foul for a 2-2 count.

Pitch number 5 was a strike. The ump calls it a ball for a full count.

Pitch 6... 3 run home run. Tie game. When he should have struck out for out number two. 

That missed call was huge. If that missed call can be prevented... it needs to be prevented. 

No it didn't decide the game. There were 8 innings left to play... but it was a 3 run blown call. I have been an advocate for automation ever since. 

If you'd like to walk down memory lane. Here ya go. 

https://www.espn.com/mlb/playbyplay/_/gameId/371003110

I got a thumbs down for this.

From RpR who tends to do that. 

It happened. I remember it clearly.  

For the record... I think umps do an exceptional job but the job is impossible to perfect. 

For those who are against automation... that's fine if you like your baseball that way. However...  I really see no difference between the random missed ump call and purposely leaving big rocks on the field for the crazy hop that will randomly happen. 

 

[RickOShea]

2 hours ago, Schmoeman5 said:

I don't believe this at all. The automated strike zone in the minor league is set up with cameras and a box that changes batter by batter. A 6' 4" guys strike zone being different than a guy who is 6'. The box on TV which these guys are breaking down the calls is a close proximity but not exact. So how can these umpire scores be taken seriously? And besides. The MLB mandate of Screw the Twins at all costs is as real as the boogeyman and sasquatch.

I believe the strike zone is calibrated by the stance the batter uses, not solely on his height.

[Riverbrian]

17 minutes ago, Woof Bronzer said:

I took that walk :)  Looks like pitch 2 to Dozier in the 1st was a strike but called a ball, and he also went on to hit a HR.  But you don't remember that one of course....:) 

We can do this all day, and I guarantee you we'll continue do this with robo umps.  "The strike zone the system gave Hitter X was a quarter inch too high" etc.  And then we'll hear calls for, I don't know, lasers to scan players before every single pitch to assign them a "fair" strike zone.  "We have the technology, why wouldn't we do it?"  And on and on.  It will never end, because arguing about officiating is part of sports and fans/teams will never stop looking for scapegoats.

You are right... I didn't recall the 2nd pitch of Dozier's AB... because it didn't hurt me. I'm sure I loved it at the time after being concerned with the first pitch being called a strike when it was high out of the strike zone. You are right... Fans will always tend to be happy when a call goes your way and upset when it goes the other way. You and I have been watching all sports for a long time now and singing the same song.    

However, pitch number two to Dozier made the count 1-1. It didn't end the AB. Which is what should have happened to Didi. 

You are right... we can do this all day. And that's the point. It takes a lot of moments to do this all day and that's the problem.

Some missed calls have very little influence on the outcome and some do massive damage and that's why I bring up Didi... A crooked number is massive damage. Yes... I understand that Ervin just has to overcome these things but it's still better to get the call right.   

I am not skilled enough to assess the current technology. Very few things in life work perfectly right out of the box. Most things that are implemented will require adjustment shortly. 

Sometimes the lane assist radar in your car has to be adjusted because it pulls you to the left when you are plenty distance off the white line. That doesn't mean the idea of lane assist should be dismissed. You fix it. Improve it... make it better... In the meantime... there are less people drifting out of their lane heading toward an 80 year old guy with slow reflexes. 😎 

 

[jorgenswest]

The Athletic reported this summer that the robo umps used in AAA had a lot of problems. It wasn’t consistent between ballparks. It didn’t adjust hitter to hitter well. It was too small and overly favored the hitters according to Royce Lewis.

The 2d box we get on tv has to be worse. I look at an ump score card and wonder how it adjusts for the different strike zone of each hitter. I wonder how it deals with a 3d pentagonal prism zone with the 2d imaging. Look at the game 2 win this week. I wonder whether those two center high called strikes were from the front of the zone. Where is the ball as it exits the back of the pentagon shaped plate? Did it catch the strike zone? Reyburn also seemed very consistent in how he “missed” pitches.

I wondered so I went to their site and looked. Here is their brief description.

Quote

Our algorithm for estimating an EUZ leverages a smoothing technique known as kernel density estimation (KDE), which you can read more about here. In general, KDE lets us make inferences about a population based on a finite data sample. For our purposes, we begin by generating a 3 dimensional KDE of all taken pitches in a game; we can call this function pitch(x, z). pitch(x, z) allows us to compute the probability that a taken pitch of any kind – either a called strike or a called ball – exists at any point in (x, z) space, where x is the horizontal axis and z is the vertical axis. We then generate another 3 dimensional KDE, this time only considering pitches in a game that are called strikes; we can call this function strike(x, z). strike(x, z) allows us to compute the probability that a called strike exists at any point in (x, z) space. Finally, using Bayes’ Theorem, along with our KDE’s, we can compute the likelihood that a pitch at any given location in (x, z) space would be called a strike; we can call this function prob_strike(x, z).

Once we determine this probability space, finding the EUZ for a particular game is simply a matter of finding the contiguous 50% contour line of prob_strike(x, z). Here, the 50% contour line represents the boundary across which an umpire should change his mind between a strike and ball call – pitches inside the contour line have a greater than 50% chance of being called a strike, and pitches outside the contour line have a less than 50% chance of being called a strike.

I am mathematician and love this stuff but I still strongly prefer the human zone over the automated zone.  I think it will be a while before it is ready and I think they learned that in AAA this year.

[Aggies7]

Here come the robots!