One Last Thought On Today's Game And The Strike Zone

by Kyle Lobner on Jul 24, 2011 7:15 PM CDT in Conversation Starters

The Brewers had another anemic offensive performance today, but they had some help in the ninth inning. Via Brooks Baseball, here's a look at Brian Wilson's pitch location:

via www.brooksbaseball.net

Wilson threw 15 pitches in the ninth, and three of them (20%!) were called strikes outside of the zone. All three pitches were fastballs. That's pretty incredible. Today's home plate umpire was Paul Schrieber.

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8 inches outside the strikezone? No problem there.

"PLUSH ALERT: THERE WAS AN UNTUCKING AT FENWAY!"

by SRB on Jul 24, 2011 7:30 PM CDT reply actions

The zone was pretty awful in the Friday game for Marcum as well.

by backtocali on Jul 24, 2011 7:32 PM CDT reply actions

It was for both teams.

And it wasn’t this bad.

by Zorakathura on Jul 24, 2011 7:41 PM CDT up reply actions

Unfortunately, the data disagrees with you.

Not gonna flood the comments section with graphs, so here are the links to Marcum‘s and Cain’s strike zone plots.

Marcum got 7 strike calls outside the zone (and about three of those were truly borderline), and 0 ball calls inside it.
Cain got 4 strike calls outside the zone and 2 ball calls inside it. That’s 13 missed calls in 13 innings, a net of 5 of which favored the Brewers. OK, pretty bad.

But look at tonight’s Wilson plot, plus this one with Saito:

That’s 3 strike calls outside the zone for Wilson, and 3 ball calls inside the zone for Saito. That’s six missed calls in one inning! What’s more, almost every single one of them was a worse miss than even the worst miss on Friday, and every one of them favored the Giants.

Your false equivalency is, well, false.

by Cheeseandcorn on Jul 24, 2011 8:13 PM CDT up reply actions

Just realized I counted the innings wrong.

13 missed calls in 6.5 innings Friday, not 13. Anyway, point stands.

by Cheeseandcorn on Jul 24, 2011 8:15 PM CDT up reply actions

I counted at least 10% of Marcum's pitches being called strikes

That were outside the strike zone

by backtocali on Jul 24, 2011 8:43 PM CDT up reply actions

8/90 = 8.8% (I missed one strike outside the zone the first time)

But 20% of Wilson’s pitches were called incorrectly, as were 14% of Saito’s, so what’s your point?

Here’s my point: The umps gave the Giants as many net bad ball/strike calls today in a single inning as they gave the Brewers over the entirety of Marcum and Cain’s starts. And they were worse misses and in higher-leverage situations to boot, so it stands to reason that the umps did more damage to the Brewers in that one inning than they did to the Giants over Marcum and Cain’s whole starts.

The two strike zones were not equally bad, nor were they equally damaging.

by Cheeseandcorn on Jul 24, 2011 9:04 PM CDT up reply actions

Stop using facts

Get a ife broseph

by Supertramp on Jul 24, 2011 10:23 PM CDT up reply actions 2 recs

The precise timing also magnifies the problem

Three horrible called strikes in a row to strike out Prince Fielder in the 9th inning with the Brewers down by one.

"PLUSH ALERT: THERE WAS AN UNTUCKING AT FENWAY!"

by SRB on Jul 24, 2011 9:03 PM CDT up reply actions

If it were any worse

I’d say the ump threw the game

by nullacct on Jul 24, 2011 10:44 PM CDT up reply actions

...and I think we all know how Haudricourt felt about Holbrook yesterday.

Grillax people

by jmeks23 on Jul 24, 2011 7:36 PM CDT reply actions

"He hasn't been good since 'Evening Shade'!"

"I will agree that the attitude [at BCB] is ridiculous and they have done so much to instigate animosity and then block us from responding. Real mature!"

by roguejim on Jul 24, 2011 8:16 PM CDT up reply actions

Follow the money, roguejim

Follow the money.

by Cheeseandcorn on Jul 24, 2011 8:19 PM CDT up reply actions

holbrook got to get got.

i'm fighting all the french people i can find. happy cinco de mayo!

by sowingwildoats on Jul 25, 2011 8:17 AM CDT up reply actions

Now we all know how NBA fan feel

Why do they still watch games?

Founder of the BCBCU - Est. 2011

by ecocd on Jul 24, 2011 8:41 PM CDT reply actions

(Insert joke about pink eye here.)

Now that's great tasting chicken!

by Kyle Lobner on Jul 24, 2011 8:45 PM CDT up reply actions

You've clearly never watched a regular season NBA game

if you think that’s a pink eye statement. Many NBA refs are truly awful at what they do and the NBA is very much to blame. The MLB umpires union has a lot to do with their subpar performances.

Founder of the BCBCU - Est. 2011

by ecocd on Jul 24, 2011 8:54 PM CDT up reply actions

I had free tickets to a BUCKS game last season, so I went and ended up spending half of the time heckling the refs

and yelling ‘Tim Donaghey’ at every opportunity.

http://www.mlbsoup.com

by tcyoung on Jul 24, 2011 10:08 PM CDT up reply actions

Yuck

"If we want to sign a Type A free agent, we would lose a second-round pick, but we don't have a way to get picks back. Our whole Draft process needs to be redone."

~Doug Melvin

by Charlie Marlow on Jul 24, 2011 9:40 PM CDT reply actions

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