There’s no denying that Major League umpires have an incredibly difficult job. They’re tasked with calling balls and strikes on pitches with an unprecedented combination of velocity and movement. And with the strike zone graphics on every broadcast, fans immediately see when a call is missed.
It’s why some umpires — like Angel Hernandez — are among the most heavily criticized officials in U.S. sports. But for as bad as Hernandez performs on a near nightly basis, Major League Baseball doesn’t see it that way at all.
Just look at what happened last week with Hernandez’s putting up a horrific night behind the plate, leading to a colorful outburst from Kyle Schwarber. Umpire evaluators on Twitter had Hernandez scoring a putrid 85 to 88 percent on the night. It was bad.
So, what did MLB think of Hernandez that night? According to ESPN’s Jeff Passan, the league’s internal evaluation had Hernandez scoring a 96.12 percent on the night.
Why such a discrepancy? Well, according to the report, the league evaluates umpires on such a lenient scale that it makes it nearly impossible to hold any umpire accountable for poor performance. The umpiring union negotiated for such a grading system, and it’s exactly why incompetent umpiring remains an issue for baseball fans.
This is the scale, via ESPN:
MLB employs a team of auditors to assist in its review of each game. The auditors set a unique strike zone for each player based on his setup in the batter’s box. The top of the strike zone is his beltline and the bottom the hollow of his back knee, both determined when he’s loading and preparing to swing. The margin of error is implemented off the corners — 2 inches on each side of the plate.
The rationalization for the margin of error, which was collectively bargained between the league and the umpires’ union — the MLB Umpires Association declined comment — was ostensibly due to the limitations of previous tracking technology but also buys umpires leeway in their grading.
And anyone who watches baseball knows that two inches is a significant margin of error when you’re dealing with balls and strikes. With that buffer zone, only the most blatant of missed calls actually get scored as misses internally.
That gives the league inflated averages with no umpire scoring worse than 96 percent for the 2021 season — the average on that scare was 97.4 percent. That’s a grading curve that would make any college student jealous.
While an automated strike zone (Robot Umps) is something that is being tested at various minor-league levels, it wasn’t among the rule changes included in this most recent CBA. And with such a pro-umpire evaluation method, it’s clear that nothing is going to be done to move away from baseball’s worst umps. Which makes no sense because there are great umpires out there.
It’s a problem that only hurts the game.
