FanPost

Umpire Evaluation Project

Welkebadcall1_medium

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Are these guys really just bad at their jobs, or is there an underlying conspiracy in Major League Baseball? My guess is the latter - that major league baseball directs umpires to help big market/payroll teams and hurt low payroll teams to keep them from the playoffs thus increasing their postseason TV ratings, revenue, etc., but I need more evidence to prove it. What I am asking here is for 2-3 volunteers who are already watching all of the Royals games to just keep track of the missed calls both for and against the Royals. Just post in the comments if you're interested in helping.

There's not a ton of missed calls, I would say roughly two per week in games your team plays (roughly 30 across baseball), so this wouldn't take much time at all if you're already watching the games and noticing these things. I will provide all data and analysis at the end of the season to anyone who wants it.

Ideally I would like to be able to do this for all 30 teams over a full season, but at least I am going to try to get volunteers from 5-8 teams this year, then maybe expand to 30 next year. I'm already tracking it for the Rays since I see every game. So far, we are at 8 missed calls against and 1 for.

This would be an example of what I'm looking for:

OAK at CLE

5/8 - Rosales bats in top 9th with 2 outs, bases empty, OAK trails 4-3. Rosales hits HR about 2 feet above yellow line off railing to tie the game, ball bounces back onto field, initially ruled a double. Umpires use video replay, determine inconclusive.

Umpires involved: HP--John Tumpane. 1B--Paul Nauert. 2B--Angel Hernandez. 3B--Doug Eddings.

Other examples of incorrect calls would include: all safe/out calls, fair/foul calls down the line, tagging/re-tagging bases on fly balls, bases awarded when the pitch did not hit the batter (i.e. Jeter faking his hand hurting from pitch), balks, etc. As a rule of thumb, if you're unsure, mark it down. I should stress that we need to track both calls for and against your team to determine the balance, so you have to be unbiased as far as admitting that they got a call wrong that helped you as well as all the ones they get wrong that go against you (those are the easy ones!).

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