Williams: MLB umpires missed 34,294 ball-strike calls in 2018

From Mark T. Williams at Boston University on April 9, 2019:

Baseball is here, another season of amazing catches, overpowering pitching, tape-measure home runs, overpriced beers, and, yes, television replays of every missed call by umpires, revealed in painful, high-definition slow motion.

It’s time for Major League Baseball to put an end to the agony caused by at least some of those blown calls—the balls and strikes.

Each season, MLB home plate umpires make tens of thousands of incorrect calls (read on for evidence backing up that assertion). These controllable errors impact players, managers, batters, pitchers, performance statistics, game outcomes, and even the big business of fantasy baseball. They shorten careers and diminish fan experience. Pace of play is also impeded.

In 2018, umpires made 34,294 incorrect ball and strike calls. That’s 14 per game.

But throughout its history, MLB has protected its error-prone umpires, resisted adopting strong performance measurements, and not taken advantage of available technology that could better the game. At a time of autonomous cars and machine learning, MLB needs to embrace useful change.

Read the full article here: https://www.bu.edu/today/2019/mlb-umpires-strike-zone-accuracy/