Fuck the Human Element
Robot umps are long overdue, and 2020’s unnecessary season is more proof than ever.
Allow me to get upset via an anecdote, before delving into stats that show umps have been wrong 20% of the time over the last ten years.
Take a look at Will Little’s strike zone from Tuesday night’s Twins vs. White Sox game. It mimics a first-year nursing student sticking my arm who swears he’s “almost got it.”
In the 7th, Nelson Cruz and manager Rocco Baldelli were ejected for arguing this called strike three against Ryan Jeffers (shown in the image as pitch 4).
Ah, the fabled “human element” at its finest. A cursory search of the phrase will reward you with dozens of sports columnists gushing over it, and lamenting the end of baseball as we know it were robots to take over. The computers have won. Umps will be jobless! The future that libs want!
“Baseball can’t afford to become even more sterile than it is already,” columnist Sonny Jones wrote for the Fayetteville Observer last year. “It can’t become a robotic game where every call is correct. Baseball needs to be entertaining. Part of that entertainment is the human element.”
One - I have no earthly idea what a sport being “sterile” means.
Two - I’m uncertain why fans and players shouldn’t aspire for every call to be correct.
Curmudgeons like Jones whine about baseball losing its fan base, and often they cite long games as a main offender. Sure, let’s follow that argument. What could possibly be more disengaging than watching an umpire blow a strikeout with the bases loaded bottom of the fucking fifteenth? I’ve invested seven hours of my life into this game, and Angel Hernandez calls strike three because he wants to go home.
In baseball, as in any sport, my team playing poorly should be the only thing that puts me on tilt, not the umpire fucking up then later admitting they fucked up, as Jim Joyce did after infamously ruining a perfect game for otherwise forgotten Tigers hurler Armando Galarraga. (By the way, after that game, actress Alyssa Milano felt the need to tweet that “part of the game is human error,” a stupid comment from a truly bewildering source.)
20 Percent Error Rate
Last year, Boston University did God’s work by studying 4 million pitches over 10 years (2008-2018), then rated each umpire based on how they called the zone and assigned each a Bad Call Rating (or BCR). What they found was stunning, frustrating, but honestly expected: MLB umpires make certain incorrect calls at least 20 percent of the time. In 2018 alone, they missed over 34,000 ball-strike calls — an average of 14 per game.
Imagine a pilot making fourteen mistakes on a routine New York to Chicago flight. You’re fucking dead right now. That pilot killed you.
To summarize some of the more upsetting findings of the study (and you should really read it in its entirety):
In a two-strike count, umpires were twice as likely to call a ball a strike than when the count was lower.
Umps had a significant blind spot in the upper half of the zone. Pitches thrown there were called incorrectly almost 27 percent of the time.
Less-experienced and younger umps are better at calling balls and strikes, but MLB favors tenure when assigning umps to big games. In 2018, Ted Barrett had a BCR of 11.5%, ranking him in the bottom ten of all umpires studied, and yet he was given the World Series. Comparatively, John Libka, aged 32 with only 1.5 years of experience in the majors, had a BCR of 7.59%.
Joe West is universally derided as one of MLB’s worst - even fans within the most heated of rivalries can band together to spit venom at West. Finally we can say unequivocally the data backs this up. West (from 2008-2018) averaged 21 incorrect calls a game, or about 2.3 per inning. Next up on Fox Sports, everyone’s favorite game — What the Fuck Is Joe West Doing Back There?
(I cannot mention Joe West without bringing up that he once sued a player for defamation after being accused of expanding the strike zone so he could take that player’s 1957 Chevy for a joyride. He didn’t even negotiate to keep the car. He just wanted to drive it around the block. Man, that guy sucks so hard.)
What about everybody’s favorite Angel Hernandez?
In fairness, he once tried to own his utter shittiness. In 2019, after tossing a manager for arguing calls, Hernandez later admitted to blowing only four calls per game. Glad we can all laugh about it! It’s important to critique yourself. *Holds earpiece.* Wait, I’m receiving word that the BU study found his actual error rate was FIVE TIMES WORSE. Imagine the bravery it takes to brag about getting four calls wrong a game, then to be so wrong about it. S-tier level stupidity. His brain is a peanut.
Dragged kicking and screaming into the future, MLB finally expanded replay rules in 2014 — they were the last of the four major American sports to do so. The following year, the Denver Post studied more than 1,300 replays. They found that 49% of umpire calls on the field were overturned after replay.
Umpire Ben May had 92 percent of his calls (12 of 13) overturned. And yet, when managers leave the dugout to argue, they’re sent packing. Umpires have unilateral control over the game, despite the blistering data that so many of them are utterly dogshit at their job.
Still, robophobics continue to lament the end of baseball as we know it.
Columnist Joe Rivera in 2017 swooned: “Baseball isn't just about the highlights or the hot takes. It's about the heart.”
As if EVERY OTHER SPORT ISN’T THE EXACT FUCKING SAME.
“What draws some — and hopefully most — to baseball is that human side of sport,” Rivera continues. “Advanced stats and sabermetrics are overtaking the sport (and with good reason on a performance level), but numbers seldom paint pictures of a player's struggles, road to redemption or elation of victory.”
He then cites how Tod Frazier once hugged teammate Masahiro Tanaka, sharing a “hearty laugh” after Tanaka pitched well in a playoff match. “These are typically moments you don't see in other sports,” Rivera gushed.
Joe, I’ve seen high-fives and hearty laughs in the World Series of Goddamn Poker. The notion that the “human element” is somehow limited to Major League Baseball is so laughable, like arguing that comically slapping your tummy after a delicious meal is limited to Italian restaurants. It’s unfortunate I can’t display my love for this roast beef sandwich through some kind of physical comedy, Joe thinks to himself at his neighborhood Arby’s. I wonder if they have spaghetti here.
If umps fuck up a major game, Jones, the Fayetteville columnist, won’t lose sleep: “Sure, umpires are going to blow calls just like shortstops are going to let baseballs go between their legs and outfielders are going to fire baseballs all the way to the backstop. It gets folks talking about the game.”
Ironically, his dumbass comment has a point. Baseball already has a human element — it’s called the players.
Shortstops missing routine grounders is necessarily part of playing the game - some athletes are bad, some are good but make mistakes. Officials trained and sworn to uphold the rules must be held to a higher standard. They aren’t playing the game; they’re officiating. They are the rulebook incarnate, and right now, too many of them are fucking up too often.
In 2020, there is zero reason an umpire’s blown call makes headlines. The MLB showed promise in allowing robot umps this year during spring training. We can only hope this continues next year. Until then — say it with me — fuck Joe West.
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Main image: Brett Davis / USA Today Sports
