Balls and Strikes

[Jim3k]

From the NYT's Sunday Review: What Umpires Get Wrong

In research soon to be published in the journal Management Science, we studied umpires’ strike-zone calls using pitch-location data compiled by the high-speed cameras introduced by Major League Baseball several years ago in an effort to measure, monitor and reward umpires’ accuracy. After analyzing more than 700,000 pitches thrown during the 2008 and 2009 seasons, we found that umpires frequently made errors behind the plate — about 14 percent of non-swinging pitches were called erroneously.

Have at it, stat heads!

[Reilly]

Thanks. Interesting. So they're getting 14% wrong here in this study of somewhat recent years ... I wonder what the percentage wrong was in the bad old days when they seemingly refused to call a strike at the knees, or anything above the belt a strike -- 25% or more? Sure felt that way. If we have the technology, replace them. Let them still stand back there to keep the peace, hold on to balls for the pitcher, whatever, but put balls and strikes calls in the hands of technology.

[kmspeaks]

Interesting. With the average number of pitches in a game somewhere around 280-290 that's 40 pitches a game missed. That number seems really high to me. In the comments section they actually posted the full study, I haven't had time to read through the 58 page pdf yet but I'm curious to look into their methodology.