C'mon Blue!

By Stefi Kaplan
Posted Monday, September 10, 2007

There will always be questionable calls in baseball as long as the calls are left to human nature. No matter how much umpire training there is, the accuracy of calls will always be questionable. But lately, it seems that egos and personal views have taken on a much greater role in umpiring, to the point where you can predict how large or small a strike zone will be merely by looking up who the home plate umpire will be. And in my opinion, this kind of poor officiating has no place in a sport where so much is left to chance as it is and so much can turn on the swing of a bat.

As much as Larry Jones came off as whiny for complaining about the umpiring this year, I have to admit that he's right. Sure, he was venting frustration at the loss more than anything else, but he's right that umpires should be held accountable for their calls. Umpiring has gotten out of control. The very fact that an announcer will discuss an umpire as being "pro-pitcher" or "pro-hitter" is ludicrous. A strike is a strike and the zone should not enlarge increase or decrease based on who is calling the shots.

It's time for MLB to take some action here, whether it be by installing and improving upon tennis, but that's a whole other issue. Three challenges per team in a game would significantly improve upon the game-calling, and contrary to popular belief, it would not lengthen the games. Just look at tennis: These calls take no more than a minute to review as opposed to the five minutes players and managers spent arguing the calls. Especially for calls where a player is blocking the umpire's view, deferring to video replay would ensure the correct call is made in all circumstances. If the sportscasters can pretty much always review a call and tell us whether the umpire is correct, the official scorer should be able to do the same. Notably, tennis, basketball and football have all enacted some form of video replay, but baseball lags behind.

But back to balls and strikes … I know that for many pitchers, expanding the strike zone is key to their success (Hi Tommy Glavine). But the inconsistency of the strike zone has become, as Larry says, abysmal. A strike in one game needs to be a strike in another. A strike in one inning needs to be a strike in another. When players suffer frustrating losses, you want them to be spewing over the pitches they should have hit and the plays they should have made, not the calls that did not make sense. Frustration is a part of the game, but unfortunately poor umpiring has found its place as well.

I don't care how long these guys have been umpiring, they are not gods (despite what their high salaries seem to indicate). They are not infallible, and they will make mistakes. All I ask is that they are held accountable when these mistakes start to permeate the games. When an umpire arbitrarily decides that nothing is a strike, someone needs to get on his case for it. These guys act like their word is absolute, because there is no one telling them otherwise. The time has come for the system of checks and balances to take control of officiating.

I know MLB insists that they do monitor their umpires. But when your only form of monitoring is a computer system that has been hailed by all as inaccurate and it exists in only a handful of ballparks, MLB is simply not doing enough. Pitchers need to take the mound with confidence that they know what a strike is. Hitters need to come to the plate knowing what they should and should not swing at. And while they are at it, MLB needs to come up with a better system for identifying a checked swing and a balk, because those two calls appear to have become almost imperceptible to the naked eye. The umpires can have a tremendous effect on an outcome of a ballgame and it's time they start accepting responsibility for their actions.

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