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October 2, 2007

Prospectus Toolbox

The Umpires, Part I

by Derek Jacques

Last night's one-game playoff between the Padres and Rockies was an exciting end to the regular season, made a bit more exciting by shoddy play-calling from the umps. With technology giving us detailed pitch location data, and additional cameras and high-definition television giving us a better view and more angles than ever before (except on TBS, where last night's game was presented with the same level of intensity and production values as a mid-May tilt between the Braves and Pirates), today's umpires work the playoffs under scrutiny bordering on the microscopic. In the view of some commentators, the question isn't if but when the umpires are going to have more embarrassing moments this month, and how disastrous they'll be when they happen.

Today we're going to discuss some of the tools that are used to analyze umpires' performance, and some of the research that's been based on this raw data. We'll start with the Umpires Report, located on our statistics page. The report focuses on calls made by the umpire when he's behind the plate calling balls and strikes, and essentially it gives information on every type of event that occurred in those games, including data that may seem extraneous, such as hits and home runs allowed, hit by pitch, etc. Naturally, the calls that we're going to be interested in are those on which the umpire has a direct effect: balls, strikes, walks, strikeouts, and a few others.

First, let's look at some data that could locate umpires who might have been squeezing the strike zone in 2007, with a minimum 200 innings behind the plate:

Name              G   UBB Rate (%)  Name              G    Ball %
Paul Schrieber   31      9.98       Paul Schrieber   31    40.3
Jerry Layne      19      9.24       Greg Gibson      34    40.2
Gerry Davis      35      9.24       Jerry Layne      19    40.0
Angel Hernandez  36      8.97       Gerry Davis      35    39.6
Greg Gibson      34      8.77       Jim Joyce        34    39.6
Dana DeMuth      34      8.74       Tim Timmons      33    39.4
Lance Barksdale  35      8.68       Ed Montague      31    39.4
Chuck Meriwether 33      8.54       Jerry Crawford   16    39.3
Ed Rapuano       34      8.44       Dana DeMuth      34    39.3
Mike Reilly      34      8.43       Randy Marsh      35    39.2

Some of you might remember unintentional walk rate (UBB Rate, sometimes also referred to as UBBR in our database) from the Non-Contact series. Eagle-eyed readers will note that there's no actual "Ball %" statistic in the Umpire's Report, or in its customizable version. Nonetheless, the raw data to tell us what percentage of the pitches an umpire saw were called balls is available in the report, and making this calculation on a spreadsheet is a relatively simple matter.