Worth Reading

Dan Turkenkopf goes deep attempting to break down catcher pitch framing.

Comments

[Mark (YF)]

Very, very interesting read - and a topic that's been irksome to me for a while now. Turkenkopf seems suspicious of his own findings because they appear to have a much larger effect on games than he was expecting. Personally I'm not sure he should be so skeptical. I've had the thought from time to time that the home plate umpire is often - very often - the deciding factor in hundreds of ballgames every year (a sobering thought, to be sure). The bottom line is that I think there is every reason to believe that umpires - whether due to their own error or catcher "framing" of pitches - do get quite a bit of ball and strike calls wrong. This undoubtedly has a huge effect on the outcome of at-bats and in turn games themselves - just look at at the leaguewide difference in outcome between a 2-1 count and a 1-2.

That's not necessarily a knock on MLB umpires - I don't think there's anyone else out there who can do their jobs better than them. But, they are human, and we're at the stage now where machines like QuesTec, ESPN's K-Zone, etc, can "call" balls and strikes with far greater accuracy than any human could. Maybe it's time to start considering implementing that in games.