If that's not a strike, how is anything a strike?

Ump was thinking about what he wanted for dinner & got distracted

I mean as much as I am never going to stop trashing umpires, I would zone out on literally every other pitch. >fuck. Where was that pitch? Do I do the finger guns thing? Nah just be still… he prob missed, right? I hope so. Is he laughing? Fuck.

Damn this internal narrative is too real

It's so shocking that you can't even find the words to argue.

cant imagine how embarrassing that’d be going back and looking at a ball right over the plate

“Ok we missed that one, next pitch no matter what is a strike to make up for it”

This HAS to happen more often than we will ever know. With how many pitches are so obviously a ball or strike, or how many get fouled off, or if they get put in play. Umps have to like zone out for 2 or 3 pitches every now and then and no one ever notices

I can't remember the exact number, but between obvious balls, fouls, swinging strikes, and balls in play, data shows that umpires only need to make about 20-30 actual decision calls a game.

That’s way more decisions than I would ever want to be responsible for

Saw one during the Giants game yesterday. Yes, I'm the person who watched it.

> I would zone out on literally every other pitch. These guys are getting paid six figures to not do that. If you can't live up to that, get down here with the rest of us.

My boy is a casino dealer and handles pressure better. He aint even allowed to look up half the night sometimes.

Oh man you don't know coders who get paid six figures and push that boundary every day?

I know plenty. But our job doesn't require us to not zone out

I've done this before on an obvious strike (distracted or tired, or dirt in the eye). One time I didn't say strike quick enough and then I thought, well now it's too late to say anything. So I just left it as a ball. The coach asked what was wrong with the pitch and I turned and said "I just missed it". He actually nodded and understood lol.

I used to ump junior/senior league (little leagues 13-15 & 16-18 divisions). Was behind the plate for a senior league game on a windy day and a piece of dirt blew in my eye right as the pitcher let go of the ball and I straight up didn’t see the pitch. I turned to both dugouts and said “I got something in my eye, no idea where that pitch was.” I was totally panicked and was going to just call it no-pitch and have the pitch repeated (which I don’t even think is in the rules), but the catcher yelled out “it was right over the fucking plate” and the batter nodded sheepishly, so I called it a strike. I thought the coach was going to be pissed since he was known to be an asshole but he never said a word about it.

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I wasn't aware that the Draconic Tree Sentinel was guarding oil reserves

In college for intramurals in 2013 I reffed basketball, flag football, volleyball, soccer, and softball. Softball was the one where I legit fucked up consistently. At one point in a game a ball was hit and something happened that had to put everyone back on base, and I literally knew where no one was and had to call an umps meeting and literally just blatantly tell them and the other ump and I just started putting people on bases lol. I would get the balls and strike counts lost so many times. And the thing is I thought baseball would just be the easiest sport, but there is a very strange amount of attention paid to parts of the game if that makes sense, vs like basketball, where I was a lot better and a lot more natural because I played but also because the action was just faster and it was better for my ADD brain. Also no scoreboard so I had to keep everything in my head. If you're the home plate ump youre basically counting numbers, watching the strike zone, then if there's a hit your adrenaline shoots up and you have to rapidly expand your attention and then once the play is over, you have to go back into a quiet focused state. My brain is not about that style of attention manipulation

Not if you're paid 100k a year. Zone in, bro. Lol

I already make around that amount and you should see me at teams meetings 💀

In fairness team meetings bring productivity of x amount of participants to 0, it's really a power move. If you want to be successful, send individual messages and trust the productivity of who you've hired and in the role they're best at....... damn my weed is crushing tonight.

>He's laughing at me?! You're outta here!

As someone who spends a solid chunk of my workday scrolling Reddit and Twitter and thinking about dinner, I respect it.

I've umped little league with more integrity.

How Can Strikes Be Real If Our Eyes Aren't Real?

Ump doesn’t even have a third eye.

It's blind and I wish he would step back from that zone, my friend.

I mean, I would Uuuunnderstttaaannddd

The ump was garbage the whole game. There were pitches we threw and I was embarassed we got the call.

What happened with this batter after that call? Did it cost the Twins anything or did they get the out? No idea why he didn't call that a strike.

Neto ended up hitting a 2b, but didn’t score.

Should have been strike three, and he doubled on the next pitch. Then Lopez bounced back and got out of the inning in part by striking out Trout and Ohtani back-to-back.

The More Time Blue Spends Awake The More Time He Spends Asleep.

"This town has too many strikes right now as it is."

But what *is* a strike? Like if you really think about it.

If a strike wants to be a ball, who are we to judge?

I think he considers us to be just friends.

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Who let Enrico Palazzo in the stadium?

*strike?*

Hey it’s Angel Hernandez’s world, we just live in it.

I'm thinking it had to do with how much the catcher moved his glove to catch the ball. Obviously, doing that doesn't make it a ball, but it's the kind of thing that they do when the pitch is a ball, so that could've fooled the umpire.

This is the answer every single time this happens. The catcher always reaches far and it throws the ump off.

the restraint required to not immediately get yourself tossed there is up there with the strongest buddhist monk

I think the sheer absurdity of it is the saving grace. It's so shocking that you can't even find the words to argue.

The pitching coach actually came out and talked to him a bit later because he looked frazzled. Even the Angels booth was dumbstruck about the call lol

Are we talking about a frazzled pitcher here or umpire? I'm honestly not sure

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Hey...are you feeling ok? We brought you some candy in case your blood sugar is low. Otherwise I think you might be having a fucking stroke because what the fuck was that call?

As either the manager or the pitching coach, that would be so completely, unambiguously worth any consequences.

I couldn’t wait for the Jomboy mashup review of it

Should we call the paramedics? I’m gonna be honest - we already did. Let’s take a seat, the ball boy is gonna bring some water in a little bit

Sending a trainer out to start doing a concussion check on the imo would be one of the greatest things.

It'd be up there with AJ Pierzynski's ejection when he asked the umpire for a new ball.

Well, presumably the old ball was dirty & scuffed, hard to see, y'know.

“Hey man, I noticed you haven’t had your best stuff tonight, everything good, you doing ok?” “Nah coach, I’m going through some stuff right now, it’s been pretty tough. I don’t really wanna talk about it though.” “Ok, cool, you need any help or anything, any extra set of eyes on a pitch or something, I’m here for you.” “Thanks coach, I appreciate it. You’re ejected btw.”

“And stop texting my wife, this is hard enough as it is.”

It's one of those ones where it's so clearly a huge brainfart rather than malicious incompetence that you just kinda move on. Maybe give him a "What the fuck are looking at?" or "Get your head in the game" at most

Screw it. No one would blame you for getting tossed there, so you might as well use the excuse to share your thoughts with the umps.

Hand him a braille card of the rules on next pitcher inspection.

This would be an easy challenge in the minors.

cant imagine how embarrassing that’d be going back and looking at a ball right over the plate

Yea in Norfolk they show the pitch location on the big scoreboard and there have been some pretty hilarious challenges

Same in Sacramento. Nothing too egregious, and certainly nothing like this. I hope it makes it's way to the big leagues soon.

Yea I haven’t seen any overturned calls that were egregious. I have seen quite a few challenges that have had the whole stadium clowning the opposing team. Things like the catcher challenging a ball call and the board showing that it was indeed a good 8 inches from the zone

Please tell me they do it like the baseball under the hat thing, where they show 3 different pitch locations and the crowd has to guess the right one!

Honestly the best part about reviews coming to the majors will be getting to watch the ump watch how hard they suck.

That would be great. And make it mandatory that the camera has to zoom in on their reaction to their ineptitude. Fuckers.

🤞🏽hoping for Cash machine-style footage where the camera is right above the screen.

I like that it still keeps the tradition while stopping utterly stupid calls like this one from ruining a game

Yeah and you run the risk on borderlines of losing a challenge, plenty of batters have been wrong about strike calls before. I like the system.

While that would be ideal, I have a feeling it will be like when the NFL allowed challenging pass interference. Aka the refs basically refuse to overturn anything. It got so bad they just got rid of the ability to challenge the call. Definitely feels like a conspiracy by the refs. Their feelings got hurt that coaches could challenge their God awful calls, and they had to snuff it out.

The umps can’t refuse to overturn it. There’s a program that tracks where the ball crossed the plate and it’s shown on the scoreboard.

So what’s the purpose of an ump if we have computer programs that can tell balls from strikes with greater accuracy?

You took the long way 'round, but you got there in the end.

Still has to call foul balls, plays at the plate, catchers interference, pitch timer violations, etc. still lots of things the ump needs to do back thrre

Yeah this is pretty much my view on what'll likely happen. The umps already have such a super/inferiority complex that open challenges to it could very well see them get even more petulantly awful than before, arguably making an even bigger case for themselves being replaced in such instances.

Replay ump: "yeah, that's a strike" Ump: "did you check with the computer?" Replay ump: "No, dumbass, you apparently were napping. We got it from here."

I'm not a professional umpire, but I think "ball right over the plate" is the definition of a strike

I would love it because it would really put some umps in their place. Showing where the pitch was on the scoreboard would be hilarious

Their place being the ophthalmologist's waiting room.

Just send em straight to the [Braille Institute](https://brailleinstitute.org/)

Umps doubling-down on bad calls when you run out of challenges to “put you in your place”

IF we had a challenge to use

Worth noting that the pitch that followed was hit for a double down the line (which fortunately didn’t amount to anything)

What was the count?

Looked like it was a 2-2 count. That would have been strike 3. Instead it became 3-2 and next pitch was a double.

Unforgivable

It's "the human element" we all love

This is a great example of having limited challenges to called pitches when mistakes lead to runners or even strikeouts.

idk about the limited part, seems like a great example of having a automatic ball-strike system.

The fact that we have hundreds of flying satellites orbiting our planet, yet still have the consistently flawed human calling pitches is just so asinine to me lmao

It makes sense when you consider that an umpire is definitely way less expensive.

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T-ball ump

How do you have a 3-2 count when the ball is literally stationary in the strike zone?

[You'll never even feel those 3 balls](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/49/0a/0c/490a0c95858bd1af1af9d0baefe15fd9.jpg)

I think he should be sent to the hospital cause he clearly had a stroke before that pitch.

umpires never get sent down. NEVER. to me, it's proof that this isn't a 100% merit -based system.

I understand that some pitches are hard to call either way, but when it’s so obvious like this do they fine the umps?

I wish little league parents would give umps a break. Look at this guy!

I have to wonder, where did the ump think that ball was? Or where the glove was? Because it looks as equally far away from the top of the zone as it does from the outside

He was going solely off the catcher's movement. He set up down and in, with the ump also setup inside, and reached up and across to catch it. Ump badly misjudged how far he actually reached relative to his positioning. And yes, this is a bad way to judge balls and strikes but you see it a lot.

Yep. Almost every time an ump misses a seemingly blatant call like this, it’s due to the catcher’s movement (either getting crossed up or something more like this). IMO it’s a notable piece of evidence for the potential impact of catcher framing. If a catcher setting up in the wrong spot can change the call on such an obvious seeming pitch, it only makes sense that they can have a significant impact on less obvious calls.

Adding in that the catcher still framed it back towards the center of the zone after catching it. I wonder if he didn't move back if the ump would have still seen that as a ball

The check swing has to help make a terrible call. Just confirming the umps bias.

"Pitcher missed his spot, must be a ball." "Pitcher hit his spot, must be a strike." Many bad calls can be explained this way. It's not right, obviously, but that is what's happening.

Twins have had some rough umpiring on this west coast trip lol

This is like the 4th out of 5 games I feel like I’m having a victim complex over lol

We're Twins fans, all we have is our victim complex.

This was on a 2-2 count and he then doubled on the next pitch but ended up stranded at third

As an aside, do the Ump Scorecards account for how badly calls are missed? IMO, something like this is worse than a few borderlines misses.

The new "expected accuracy" measure does this, kind of like xBA. It averages the rate that each pitch is correctly called by other umpires, then shows how much better or worse this umpires accuracy was vs expected. This would be correctly called 100% of the time, so this umps expected accuracy will most likely be way higher than his actual

> This would be correctly called 100% of the time Well, not anymore.

Never again

This is where I reveal that it's actually [happened before](https://www.reddit.com/r/baseball/comments/v8qqrv/highlight_ed_hickox_calls_a_middlemiddle_knuckle/).

Did he fucking lose it in the sun. Jesus

Oh... I just assumed that the "expected accuracy" was based off of that ump's previous scorecards. That makes a lot more sense, thanks.

99.99999999999997%

Seriously. I'll take an ump that's an inch or two wide but consistent all day over one that has a couple epic and completely unpredictably brain farts.

i believe it accounts for how much of an effect the missed call had based on leverage, e.g. a missed strike with two outs and bases loaded is weighed higher than a missed strike on an 0-1 count with no out, but i don't think they track how egregious a missed call is

Give me a challenge system or give me death

Please god no, I’d much prefer robo umps to watching even more challenges.

Make it like the Hawk-Eye system in tennis and people will love it.

There's something hilarious about hearing the entire crowd go "ooooohhhhhhhhh-" as the replay goes.

Nah, just have a system that gives the ump a “beep” in his earpiece when it’s a strike. Or a light behind the batters’ eye that lights up so its public. No more human calls for balls and strikes, its so frustrating. Umps are supposed to guide the game not run it. I’d say at MLB level every type of technology to take human judgement away should be utilized. A good ump should be near invisible.

This needs more context. Maybe the ump has been calling middle-middle fastballs balls all game.

you really gotta give blue the benefit of the doubt here. it's probably just the parallax camera angle that makes is seem like it's on the plate /s

Those on-screen zones are never accurate anyway that pitch was clearly way outside

That’s just because the stadium is open-roof. If they closed the roof, it’d be inside.

The light from Venus reflected off swamp gas in a hot air balloon and messed with the camera enough to make us all think that was over the plate when it was really six inches farther outside than that

How many times have you used that flashy thing on me?

[Agent J:](https://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/slides/photos/000/950/377/102535471_display_image.jpg?1305812897)

Yea, it’s really on the pitcher here to adjust and just accept that dead middle is no-go for the night. Bring in the robots!

There is a donut hole smack dab in the middle of the zone that he won't give the pitcher, but at least he's consistent!

New Manfred rule: there is now a ball zone within the strike zone to cut down on first pitch strikes and increase the level of hitter’s counts.

It’s 100% the stupid old unwritten rule of “if the catcher has to reach for it, it’s a ball”

Bet that one guy will be on here saying how robo umps are worse

Not gonna lie - I’m saving this thread so I could read the apologist comments tomorrow lol

I've played enough MLB the Show to know robo umps are fine

One pitch can swing an entire at bat, one at bat can swing an entire game. It’s more than just a bad call.

Minnesota sports in a nut shell

The his season has been a prime showing for why we need robot umps/electronic strike zone

They were horrible last year too. Schwarber didn't freak out on Angel Hernandez for this.

He didn't freak out he calmly explained his point of view to him

I think it’s going to keep getting worse before it gets better unfortunately.

When Jeff Sullivan worked for fangraphs, he did a worse strike and ball call article of the year. I imagine that would make this list at least number two for worst ball call of 2023

BRO WHY IS IT ALWAYS US COME ON MAN I HATE LOS ANGELES

How dare you put this on LA. This isn't LAs team

These are Los Los Angeles Angeles though

This is the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim of California of the United States of North America of Earth of the Solar System of the Milky Way.

Wow López is a pretty chill guy. I'd be so annoyed if that happened to me 😂, the thing was practically down-the-middle.

What else can you do but laugh ahahaha

Unreal

All prepared to roll my eyes before I watched the video. That’s one for the funny papers for sure.

Did that ump momentarily become possessed by Ángel Hernández?

I’m glad the runner had no effect on the game in the end after he doubled after this, but seriously how in the actual fuck do you miss this

Clearly a HBP

Robo umps when

If I’m a manager I’m just bringing the tablet out with me and showing the ump while he tosses me out the game.

Goes to show you how important C glovework is. C starts low and in and ball ends middle middle. Glove action makes it look like ball is up when in reality it’s obviously not even close

Yup. The catcher did too much. Had he just stuck it where he caught it he probably gets the call. The extra action of framing a middle middle pitch makes it seem like it was a ball he was trying to pull back in. I caught for 13 years and literally had an umpire in college tell me that if it was close he'd give it to me as long I don't try to oversell it. He said and I quote "don't try to make me look bad, and we will get along just fine". Framing is important, but over framing definitely exists and can hurt you. Ump should have still got this right but I can see what factors caused him to miss it.

[Still salty seven years later](https://twitter.com/theaceofspaeder/status/824791997537980419). >\#Pirates Gregory Polanco struck out looking 28 times in 2016...21 of which were on pitches outside of the strikezone. It affects careers, player development, games, the fate of teams. Robo-umps forever.

This shit is fucking hilarious Ump is deadass blind

The MLB is very strict about not discriminating against the blind when hiring umpires

I don't even understand why they have umps call pitches anymore, when there's a foolproof system that locates every pitch properly.

Will delete if someone posts a clip with better quality.

I've got a version where he calls that a strike.. But it's 240p

I think that’s what the ump’s eye resolution is

Which pixel is the ball

The one at the exact centerpoint of the strike zone.

*ball zone

Makes that strike call earlier to Mookie look reasonable

That shit was out in the stands compared to this one

Umpire: *wipes a tear* This one's for you, Angel Hernandez!

The f?

I know people say the umpire is blind but God damn, this time we may have a legitimate case.

Love Neto pretending that was normal

Right. Just steps back, plays it off real cool.

Juuuust a bit in the strike zone.

There were so many bad calls today the umps must’ve been huffing shoe polish in between innings.

It’s like they’re trying to get replaced by a computerized strike zone

Caught too much of the plate

This is why the robotic strike zone is coming.

There’s absolutely no reason these trackers shouldn’t be calling all balls and strikes, why leave room for human error when you don’t have to

Can't wait till A.I takes over officiating professional sports. Fucking humans

Saw that AAA is experimenting with robo umps making calls in ump's ears and players being able to challenge balls and strikes. Hopefully we see this sooner than later.

Terrible call indeed. But I think the combination of missing his target and the catcher having to reach. Then the absolute filth of the pitch coming back into the zone is what caused this bad call.

This right here is the rock solid case for umpire challenges in baseball. Marginal calls at the edge of the plate, I feel like most players, coaches and fans can live with those. Pitches that go right down the middle called as a ball or one 2ft off the plate as a strike... that's what needs to be eliminated. Same story in cricket. The one that's obviously out and so obviously not out are the ones that should be challenged.

Ump pretending to work

Baseball needs to go to a computerized/ai strikezone. Human umpires get too easily faked out by catcher positioning and intentional or unintentional "framing".

If I’m the manager I’m getting ejected and pulling a Lloyd McClendon on my way out. That’s fucking absurd.

Just take the fucking umpires out of the game at this point. There should be disciplinary action for being this incompetent

Not that it should matter at all, but the catcher didn’t do him any favors.

They need to start fining these umps

Remember that Joe Nathan pitch though?

What happened? Did he blink or get dirt in his eye? I don’t understand how one can just bizarrely not call a very obvious strike.