Umpire Joe West did not have a good year behind the plate
Which umpires this season were the best and worst when it comes to calling balls and strikes? Let's find out.
By
Dayn Perry
•
1 min read
Over at BloombergBusinessweek, which is three words turned into one word with two capital letters, they've got a very illuminating rundown of how all major-league umpires fared in 2014 when it comes to calling balls and strikes.
Executive summary? Veteran blue Joe West ranks at the bottom of the list among those who have called at least 2,500 pitches this season. Just 83.91 percent of his ball-strike calls were correct, and he also racked up the most incorrect calls -- 460 of them -- of any ump in 2014. As Rob Neyer notes on Twitter, West is crew chief for the ALCS.
On the more pleasing end of the continuum, there's Paul Schreiber, who, again among umpires calling at least 2,500 pitches this year, got 88.46 percent of his calls correct. That's good, but even in the case of the best umpire -- i.e., Schreiber, at least this season -- we're talking about more than 300 missed calls behind the plate.
You see, it's simply beyond the capabilities of the human eye to call pitches correctly, especially at contemporary speeds and movement. That's part of why I strongly advocate automating the strike zone as soon as feasible.
In Joe West's defense, he has an album.
