Joey Votto and the Idiocy of Umpires

With limited instant replay reviews, baseball now has a formula for overturning all kinds of missed umpire calls on the field. Managers can challenge whether fouls balls were called fair, runners were safe, catches were made, and fly balls cleared the fence.

Every case contains within it the implicit recognition that umpires make mistakes, and that getting the call correct is paramount.

Calls cannot be challenged that involve judgment, or that if overturned would cause havoc. For example, if a ball was originally ruled foul, there is no going back and re-running the play if the videotape reveals that it was actually fair (except in the case of a home run.)

There is one glaring and utterly indefensible exception: balls and strikes. The most common and impactful missed call of all is the ball-strike because it alters the tenor of games. Research shows that the strike zone has been expanding over the past few years -- mostly at the lower end -- and with it scoring has contracted. Batters must now defend a larger zone than ever, and must adjust their calculations depending on the whim and idiosyncrasies of the given arbiter on the given day.

What's more, the ball-strike call is not simply a judgment; it appears to be a personal statement. Some umpires are known to have low strike zones, others like the outside pitch, etc., as if strike zones are just a matter of style and preference.

All of which led to this recent outrage by umpire Tim Welke, who chafed at Joey Votto's constant chirping about ball-strike calls, refused to grant him time, and then ran Votto when he complained to his dugout. In fact, replays showed that Votto had reason to gripe about several strike calls that were clearly out of the zone. What made matters worse in this case is that Welke escalated the dispute with his unjustifiable refusal to allow Votto to take time and blow off steam.

All this could be cured with existing technology that can accurately pinpoint the swing-worthiness of every pitch. It is available to television broadcasts, so that everyone watching the game at home knows how embarrassingly often home plate umpires gack up the call, or has imposed his personal preferences over the rule book.

Calling pitches correctly is unfathomably difficult. The ball is small and the strike zone dependent on the size of the batter. Pitches are spinning, moving at 90 mph or more and changing planes often in two directions at once. Research by Scott Lindholm of SB Nation shows that umpires miss the pitch call about 15% of the time, or about 40 times per game. How is that acceptable?

It's long past time to replace umpire decisions with existing technology that that can accurately, definitively and instantaneously determine balls and strikes. It would eliminate the griping that led Joey Votto to request time, Tim Welke to pout and both of them to engage in juvenile pyrotechnics. Not to mention a wholly unwarranted two-game suspension for the Cincinnati star.
 

We Interrupt This Program for Mike Trout

That Albert Einstein feller was good at physics. The world was aware of this before the Nobel Prize committee tapped him in 1921. Likewise, this Mike Trout dude can play baseball. You probably noticed before the 2014 MVP was bestowed, unanimously, upon him.

Trout is 23. He's three years younger than Jacob deGrom, whose Rookie of the Year trophy still looks nice on his mantle. deGrom's three wins against replacement place him just 25 short of Trout's 28.

Here is a list of Major League Baseball performers with fewer career WAR than Mike Trout:

• Paul Konerko
• Hal McRae
• Billy Wagner
• Alfonso Soriano
• Mo Vaughn
• Clete Boyer
• Prince Fielder
• Chris Chambliss
• Mike Cuellar
• Benito Santiago

Here's the fun part: 2014 was Trout's worst season. In his worst season, he led the league in runs, RBIs and total bases, slugged 36 homers, batted 35 points above league average, ran the bases like a fiend and leaped tall buildings in a single bound.

2014 lagged offensively. Teams averaged a meager 4.18 runs per game. In 2007, teams averaged 4.95 runs. According to Grant Bisbee of SB Nation, converting Trout's season to 2007 terms gives us the following:

• Trout pounds out a 42-143-.321 Triple Crown line.
• He smacks 46 doubles and 11 triples.
• He scores 148 times.
• He posts a 1.044 OPS.
• In the worst year of his career.
• Wait 'til he improves.

This concludes this test of the Mike Trout broadcasting system. If Mike Trout had actually improved in 2014, you would have been instructed where to tune in your area for news and official information. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming...

Didn't He Pitch for the Yankees?

Great insight from Jeff Sullivan, MLB Editor at SB Nation...

A few guys have debuted this week. There was Strasburg, of course. There was Jose Tabata with Pittsburgh. There was Brad Lincoln with Pittsburgh. There were probably some other guys, too. And there was Mike Lincoln with Florida.

In any other year - in any other Strasburg and Heywardless year - Mike Stanton might be all the rage. Mike Stanton is 20 years old. He got promoted to the Marlins from AA after slugging .726 over 240 trips to the plate. Mike Stanton is an absolute beast, as promising a power prospect as any we've seen in years, if not decades.

I'm not here to give you any sort of obscure numerical insight on Stanton. He's coming from AA. Not only are the numbers there more limited and harder to find - they also mean a lot less. The competition is worse, the environments are more poorly understood, and the scorekeepers are bad. No, I'm just here to point out what I find to be perhaps the most amazing of Stanton's statistical exploits.

It isn't the 1.167 OPS or the 21 homers he hit in AA Jacksonville. No, it's the 39 homers he hit in single-A Greensboro in 2008, at the tender age of 18.

18. Jason Heyward was in the same league in the same year, and he was also 18. Heyward hit 11 balls out of the park. 18 year old Matt Dominguez hit 18. So did 18 year old Freddie Freeman. Jesus Montero hit 17. Mike Stanton finished with a 13-homer lead over second place Cody Johnson, who was a year older.

When Miguel Cabrera was 18, he played in A-ball. He hit seven homers. Adrian Beltre was one of the best teenage prospects baseball had ever seen, and when he was 18, he hit 26. Albert Pujols only hit 19 after being drafted at 20. And so on and so forth.

When Mike Stanton was 18, he hit 39 home runs.

And he's barely slowed down as he's climbed the ladder. His numbers suffered a little bit upon his first promotion to Jacksonville a year ago, but he very clearly figured things out in 2010, and while I imagine he'll face some obstacles after skipping AAA and jumping straight to the bigs, it's impossible not to get excited. Mike Stanton can't drink, and he's already accomplished some things in the professional ranks that few ever have.

Stephen Strasburg in Washington. Jason Heyward in Atlanta. Mike Stanton in Florida. The NL East is the new center of baseball.

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