Brian O'Nora's Strike Zone Last Night

if the Royals use heat map data like this in preparing both pitchers and hitters. It seems like when the umpire takes away the lower part of the zone on any given night, it is a total surprise to the pitchers.

It would not surprise me at all to learn that they mostly reconstruct umpire tendencies from advance scout reports, and as a result, put themselves at a disadvantage. How can the naked eye see a 10-20% bias on any given night?

I have happened to notice that the outside strike gets called a lot on LHH. This type of graph, normed to average umpire calls, would not show it. however, I have wondered if there is any data to support that, on average, the outside strike is called more often against LHH than RHH. If so, could it be a function of umpire stance?

zone was considered by another blogger, who was informed that the ump tended to set up on the inside edge of the plate, the outside blocked by the catcher’s head on low pitches, and he would call a strike based on the mitt being between the catcher’s knees, watching the glove rather than the ball.

Good information on the maps. Thanks.

1) Royals did seem more surprised by this ump’s tendencies than the Sox did

2) Calls into question whether MLB is using data like this to evaluate (and replace, when necessary) umpires. Apparently, the answer is a big fat no.

3) I was sorta ambivalent before about using the pitch fx data to call balls and strikes for the umps – but a night like this makes me less ambivalent. My opinion now: MLB should either be more aggressive to DEMOTE crappy umpires like this – or go the technology route and improve the umpiring that way.

(Note – I don’t think this guy favored either team, or either pitchers or batters, for that matter. He was simply AWFUL at his job)

It seems to me that he missed a lot of calls. By my count, he missed 27 over the course of the night. What is normal?