Home-Plate Umpires Have Favored Twins Opponents in 2023 Playoffs

[Woof Bronzer]

 

20 hours ago, IaBeanCounter said:

When will the umpiring even out?  Certainly not this year for the Twins.  When have the Twins benefited of umpiring to even out Cuzzi foul ball call?

 

The Cuzzi foul ball ended up costing the Twins 1 base.  The missed foul tip in this years Game 3 gave the Twins a free baserunner.  I'm sure plenty of other calls have gone the Twins way, but you like those, so it's not a problem.  

If you think umpiring had the slightest thing to do with why Twins lost this series, man, I don't know what to tell you.  

[Woof Bronzer]

13 hours ago, Aerodeliria said:

I saw the pitch and checked with GameDay, which confirmed my belief. The pitch was framed beautifully by Maldonado, so if you want to claim the beauty of the game may be affected, that's fine.

Lol.  Game Day is as official as me drawing a rectangle on a tv screen. If you think the problem is a close call, and not the fact that a man paid millions of dollars to hit a baseball watched the season end with the bat on his shoulder, again, don't know what to tell you.  Robo umps are not going to solve your problems; you'll just blame the robots instead of the umps when your team loses.  

[USAFChief]

1 hour ago, Woof Bronzer said:

 

The Cuzzi foul ball ended up costing the Twins 1 base*.  The missed foul tip in this years Game 3 gave the Twins a free baserunner.  I'm sure plenty of other calls have gone the Twins way, but you like those, so it's not a problem.  

If you think umpiring had the slightest thing to do with why Twins lost this series, man, I don't know what to tell you.  

* nitpic: it cost the Twins 1 base and, since we're assuming everything else stays the same, 1 run.

Had Mauer doubled, rather than singled, he would have scored on the subsequent 2 singles, rather than ending up on 3rd, bases loaded.

[USAFChief]

1 minute ago, USAFChief said:

Nm

 

[FlyingFinn]

12 hours ago, tony&rodney said:

Julien does not seem to possess much talent with making contact on pitches out of the strike zone.

This is exactly what I want every Twins hitter to do - never make contact with any pitch out of the strike zone because they never swing at them. Stop flailing at pitches that are balls.

[Battle ur tail off]

24 minutes ago, FlyingFinn said:

This is exactly what I want every Twins hitter to do - never make contact with any pitch out of the strike zone because they never swing at them. Stop flailing at pitches that are balls.

Correct. And if you do make contact with balls out of the zone, what happen most of the time? Ground out, fly out, soft contact, foul ball, etc OUTS(most of the time)

[Nine of twelve]

23 hours ago, USAFChief said:

As I see it, one of the problems of measuring this data is...measuring it.

How do you go about doing that?

You have robo umps measuring robo umps?

 

Here's how I would do a simple, unbiased, accurate trial. Set up electric eyes and cameras to view the edges of the strike zone. That would enable us to know with certainty whether a pitch moves through any part of the zone. (This could not be done during a game, of course.) Then compare that to the calls made on those pitches, whether by robo umps or by humans. (Professional umpires and any robo ump systems should all be tested.) This would enable us to determine the accuracy of the calls.

I have not done a search of any kind to determine whether this has been done so obviously I don't have a citation for it. But I must believe that I am not the only one who has ever thought of doing this and I would be flabbergasted if this (or something very similar) has not been done. And I would be even more flabbergasted if it has been done and MLB has not been made aware of the results. Hence, I concur with minny505 that it's easy to believe that MLB is suppressing this data. If the data showed that robo umps were less accurate than humans that would be publicized.

 

Edited to add:

This is how all professional umpires could (and, IMHO, should) be evaluated for their ability to call pitches correctly.

[Nine of twelve]

23 hours ago, Woof Bronzer said:

Umpiring all evens out in the long run.  

There would be no long run needed to even out unfair calls with a robo ump system. Every call would be fair.

[Nine of twelve]

16 hours ago, JD-TWINS said:

Let’s try it for the month of April across baseball for the next two years and have all teams to just yield to the results and live with however it goes. That would be a pretty good data set at the highest level!

It's not fair to use one system for one part of the schedule and another system for the rest of the schedule. Plenty of trials have been done already anyway. Just implement robo umps full time now.

[Nine of twelve]

I want to add this comment even though I have said it before on other threads.

I have never heard a good argument in favor of continuing with human pitch calling in MLB.

[IaBeanCounter]

2 hours ago, Woof Bronzer said:

 

The Cuzzi foul ball ended up costing the Twins 1 base.  The missed foul tip in this years Game 3 gave the Twins a free baserunner.  I'm sure plenty of other calls have gone the Twins way, but you like those, so it's not a problem.  

If you think umpiring had the slightest thing to do with why Twins lost this series, man, I don't know what to tell you.  

Yes I believe that umpiring affected this series.  Was it enough to allow the Twins to win the series?  Probably not, but I can't say it is an absolute certainty.  I believe the inside pitch ball/strike call should be the easiest to make as the is where the umpire is setting up.  The top of the zone should also be easy as the umpire should get into position so his eye level is at the top of zone.  Low and away pitches should be the most difficult to call.  I also believe that an incorrect called third strike is the worst error an umpire can make, as the batter can't overcome that error.  I took look at the most impactful pitches in each game for called third strikes.

Game 1 Through six innings against Verlander, the Twins had 2 inside balls called strikes.  Since the Twins hit into 2 double plays their were only 16 at bats ending in outs.  So the umpire took the bats out of the Twins hand 12.5% of the time to that point, which I find as significant.  No Astros had the bats taken out of their hands for the game.

Game 2 Castro had a pitch that umpire scorecard has over the top of the zone for called third strike.

Game 3 No called third strikes made the most impactful pitches.

Game 4 Kepler had an inside pitch called strike 3.  Tucker for the Astros had an outside pitch called strike 3.

We will never know what would have happened if those incorrect calls not be made. 

As an accountant what I find odd is that the Twins had negative scores 5 out 6 games and have 5 of the 7 largest negative scores in 22 games played this postseason.   No team with a negative score is still in the postseason,  Arizona is .38, Philly .43, Texas .69 and Houston 1.37.  As stated above the Twins were -3.79.  

So yes I believe the umpiring has an affect on games.

[Nine of twelve]

35 minutes ago, IaBeanCounter said:

As an accountant what I find odd is that the Twins had negative scores 5 out 6 games and have 5 of the 7 largest negative scores in 22 games played this postseason.   No team with a negative score is still in the postseason,  Arizona is .38, Philly .43, Texas .69 and Houston 1.37.  As stated above the Twins were -3.79.  

So yes I believe the umpiring has an affect on games.

I don't find that odd. It's expected. Unfortunately, human umpiring is inaccurate enough that it would be odd if there were not variations like this over the small sample size of 22 games. 

[Nine of twelve]

1 hour ago, Battle ur tail off said:

Correct. And if you do make contact with balls out of the zone, what happen most of the time? Ground out, fly out, soft contact, foul ball, etc OUTS(most of the time)

In fairness contact with balls in the zone also results in an out most of the time. But the odds are worse on contact with bad pitches.

[Aerodeliria]

On 10/13/2023 at 11:42 PM, Woof Bronzer said:

Lol.  Game Day is as official as me drawing a rectangle on a tv screen. If you think the problem is a close call, and not the fact that a man paid millions of dollars to hit a baseball watched the season end with the bat on his shoulder, again, don't know what to tell you.  Robo umps are not going to solve your problems; you'll just blame the robots instead of the umps when your team loses.  

I guess you don't understand how my brain works. I don't want ANY team to get an advantage over the other. I am not a 'homer' just trying to get the Twins a win...I want balls to be called balls and strikes to be called strikes--nothing more and nothing less. (Bad calls do not even out and that affects the game. The umps favored the Astros in all of the games save one. Even against the Blue Jays, I would complain about the umpiring even though the Twins won.) BTW, I don't even deny that Kepler should have probably swung because the pitch was only about 1/4 of an inch outside; however, when he didn't, the correct call should have been made and wasn't.

[Joey Self]

When I saw the announcement, I wondered if this was Bremer's choice.  The more I read about it, the more I suspect it was not.  

I thought of the Richard and Linda Thompson song "Did She Jump Or Was She Pushed?"