Phillies Screwed by Umps, Giants Screwed by Umps; Everybody Yearning for Robo Umps

Tweet

The calling of balls and strikes has left a lot to be desired. It is so bad that both teams have at times been equally upset over pitches that cross that plate but are called balls and by phantom strikes 5 inches off the plate.

I understand the difficulty of calling balls and strikes, the pressure of making decisions on a ball that is traveling at 90 plus mph where you have less then half a second to see the path of the ball and determine where it crossed the plate but this is a pivotal part of the game.

If you look at the plot above there is a whole lot of green inside the box and if you look at the outside corner it seems to have grown by 3 inches on both sides (but only sometimes). What makes things worse is that if you look at the plot from Saturday's game you get a completely different picture as well.

So in the course of two games there have been two different interpretations of the same strike zone and each has been implemented inconsistently. This is getting a little crazy and there has to be something that can be done about it.

Major League Baseball needs to reel in these umpires that have their own idea about what is a ball and what is a strike and go by what is written in the rule book, what if foul balls were judged the same way? With some umpires giving you a couple inches here and there if would get them fired but with balls and strikes it is no problem.

To address at least the different interpretations that can be seen in a series let's start with the same guy behind the plate for each game. No more figuring out the umpire and guessing game.

Then in the off season MLB needs to get tough in making sure that umpires are calling the rule book zone. We have the ability now to see every pitch and track what was called a strike or ball, this needs to be reviewed and graded. If an umpire isn't calling the zone like it is supposed to he needs to be sent packing.

I look forward to the day when we have robo umpire acting as a impartial arbiter of the rule book strike zone.

---

If your on Twitter you should definitely follow the The Crazy Crabbers. If you're not you should really consider joining, lots of good stuff going on there.

Did the Giants’ Front Office Make the NL West Race Closer Than it Needed to Be?

Did the Giants' Front Office Make the NL West Race Closer Than it Needed to Be? This is the question that Neil Paine asks at Baseball-Reference.

His argument is that the Giants cost themselves wins by not bringing up Buster Posey earlier and that the at bats given to Bengie Molina have hurt the team. The Giants could have a much more comfortable lead instead of figthing for every game.

Here is his argument:

You see, while Posey was spending 47 games in Fresno, the Giants gave the majority of their starts -- and 221 plate appearances -- to Bengie Molina in his stead. While he was keeping the seat warm for Posey's eventual arrival, the since-departed Molina turned in a truly terrible performance, producing a .644 OPS (well below the NL average of .715 for catchers) and registering -5 fielding runs above avg. behind the plate. Add it up, and Molina's 221 PA gave the Giants -0.4 Wins Above Replacement (WAR).

Needless to say, after Posey assumed the starting job, San Francisco's production at catcher skyrocketed. His 134 OPS+ is second only to Joe Mauer among ML catchers, and his overall performance has been worth 2.6 WAR in just 372 PA. If you assume he would have maintained the same pace had he been starting all season long, and you give Molina's early-season PA to Posey instead, you find that playing Posey all season would have increased San Francisco's win total by 1.9 wins, which would give the Giants a far more comfortable 2½-game cushion in the West, as opposed to their current ½-game lead over the Padres. If San Diego comes back and wins by fewer than 3 games, you can point to Brian Sabean's decision to delay Posey's arbitration as a big factor in their losing the division.

It looks like in hindsight that this may have cost the team wins but things don't always turn out this way with "can't miss" prospects. Look at what happened with Matt Wieters in Baltimore. He was supposed to be the savior and his first experience in the big leagues was full of growing pains after destroying AAA like Posey had.

That being said I had some trouble just extrapolating Posey's Big league numbers backward like was done in the Baseball-Reference case but even using the actual minor league numbers and scaling them to the major league equivalent the analysis is the same. Using Posey's actual performance he could have been worth about 2.09 wins above replacement.(the math: wRAA = 10.38, Positional Adjustment = 3.626, Fielding = 0, Replacement = 6.933, total = 20.939 runs above replacement)

Those wins could come back to bight the Giants but for now with the information that was available at the time it was a borderline call and the Giants played it conservative hoping to save some future arbitration money and hope that Molina could hold his own and be somewhat valuable.

In hindsight it was probably the wrong call but when dealing in prospects it could have just as easily gone the other way. Let's just hope that those 2 wins don't kill the Giants.

Pulling Lincecum Correct Move

I have had plenty of time to digest and get over the heart breaking loss to the Phillies, but I still want to go back and examine the move to pull Tim Lincecum after walking the first batter he faced in the 9th inning. At the time I thought it was the correct call but many other have disagreed.

I have had sometime to go over everything and I still stand by the call by Bruce Bochy and think that it was correct and that this was a 1 in 100 type of outcome that was simply bad luck.

Here you see the plot of Tim Lincecum's fastball from the 4/28/2010 Phillies game. Each line represents the range of speed and the gray dot is the average for each inning he pitched.