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By Jonathan Hale
One of the things that drives me bonkers about TV broadcasts (other than the buzzing, whirring and booming graphics that seem to be all the rage) is the little strike zone box they’ve introduced lately, which pops up on replays to show you the location of each pitch in the previous at bat. It doesn’t take more than a couple of times seeing it to know that there’s either something massively wrong with the strike zone they use, or else umpires are absolutely terrible, because every called strike on the outer corner looks like it’s half a foot (or half a plate) outside.
Usually there’s an embarrassing silence when the announcers cut to their new toy and it seems to indicate that a called third strike was halfway to the dugout, or the pitch they just called “right down broadway” was actually on the outside corner. They mumble something about it being “too close to take” or the pitcher having “hit his spots all night” as if the umpire has just been hypnotized into giving that call and quickly move on.
But everything that I’ve seen from pitch f/x seems to indicate that umpires are really very accurate and consistent- although they do give an extra inch or two (especially against lefties). Here’s a look at all the calls made by Brian Gorman for Dustin McGowan on April 26th:
I’d say that’s pretty typical- a little shaved off the corners and a very slight grey area a couple of inches off the plate, but otherwise a pretty well defined strike zone.
According to Sportsnet’s strike zone though, he was terrible all night in both pitcher’s favor. So let’s compare the broadcast with pitch f/x for some pitches and see how the story differs.
First Inning Single By Esteban German
As good a place as any to start because this pitch appears to be right on the outside of the plate. But here’s where pitch f/x says it crossed home. (I’ve flipped the normal perspective of pitch f/x to match up with the TV broadcast- this is now the pitches location as seen from the pitcher’s perspective):
That looks to be about halfway to the outside edge of the zone- not right on it. The exact measurement is that the centre of the ball ended up 5.5 inches from the middle of the plate, which is 8.5 inches wide. So almost three inches of discrepancy, and that’s not even taking into account the slightly-wider than rulebook zone that umpires actually call!
The missing three inches is consistent to both sides of the plate. Here’s another sequence of pitches:
Jose Guillen First Inning Strikeout
And now the pitch f/x take:
Again, you can see that a pitch that is a solid strike in anyone’s books appears to be 3-4 inches off the edge of the strike zone. This time, I’ve also used a high pitch to (incredibly unscientifically) show where the top of the TV zone is. It’s a little lower than what the pitch f/x technicians are (manually) measuring, but that’s actually a good thing, because umpires don’t quite call to the very top of the official zone.
So what could be causing this? If you look in my graphs above, you’ll see that I draw in the strike zone just before 1 foot from the middle of the plate (10 inches). That’s because while the plate is 8.5 inches wide, you have to add the width of the ball as well (about 1.5 inches) because if any part of it crosses the plate, it’s a strike. The only thing that I can think of that could have shaved a consistent 3 inches off the width of the plate is that whoever has set this up has gotten this the wrong way around and has subtracted 1.5 inches from the edge of the plate to find the strike zone instead, which would lead to about a 3 inch mistake.
This is not just confined to Sportsnet- the same thing was happening during the playoffs and every game on ESPN I’ve seen this year. I’m pretty shocked really that the announcers haven’t complained about it being useless or the umpires haven’t criticized it for being outright slander. I’m pretty sure Questec is still floating around in some parks so MLB knows that the umpires aren’t as bad as they’re being presented so why it continues to let the fans think they are is beyond me.
So, the next time your hometown slugger goes berserk on a pitch that looks about a foot off the plate in the replay, take a deep breath. The umpire may have been wrong, but he wasn’t THAT wrong.
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