When San Francisco Giants ace Madison Bumgarner threw a complete-game shutout against the Diamondbacks in his team’s final game before the All Star break, around ten of his pitches were called wrongly.
And that’s not a criticism of home plate umpire Mike DiMuro, who was calling balls and strikes.
It’s just a statistical fact that at AT&T Park that day, as at all of the 2,430 games during the MLB regular season, 15 per cent of those calls were made in error.
We know this, thanks to PITCHf/x technology.
This is included in a free MLB.com At Bat app that allows anyone, including fans at the stadium, to know within a couple of seconds when such wrong calls have been made. It is installed in every MLB stadium.
Perhaps it’s no wonder there are some boos directed at “Blue” behind the plate.
Surely, then, it’s only a matter of time until there’s an automated strike zone – so that each pitch is instantly ruled a ball or strike by computer.
There would still be a job for the home plate umpire to do. Not just relaying this verbally and by gesture, but also ruling on things like tags on runners crossing home plate or catcher interference.
Sure, many of them would argue against taking away their ability to call balls and strikes. The Umpires’ Union could well prove a stumbling block to the introduction of automated strike zones.
Mistakes are inherent in sport officiating, they would say, and – quite rightly – no team or player benefits any more than any other.
Similar arguments have been overcome already. Among the sports to have accepted what’s collectively called Hawk Eye technology are tennis, soccer, volleyball and badminton.
Baseball itself has done so since the start of last season. Just about the only thing it can’t currently be used for in a game is to rule on balls and strikes.
Bumgarner, in the July 10 game against Arizona, had a no-hitter going into the eighth inning. He’d lost the chance of a perfect game in the fifth, due to an error.
Not by DiMuro, but by his fielder, Gregor Blanco. And for however long baseball is played, you will never see an end to fielding errors.
They, truly, are part of the game. So, currently, are the errors made by DiMuro and his colleagues.
But do we honestly want to continue with a situation where, every regular season, more than 360 potentially crucial umpiring errors are made that could be eliminated by one signature from MLB commissioner Rob Manfred’s pen?
Yet it’s by no means certain to happen any time soon.
Former MLB outfielder Eric Byrnes, a vocal supporter of automated strike zones since his retirement, told the Toronto Star’s Brendan Kennedy: “Whether or not it happens in our lifetimes, I don’t know.”
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