Pater Familias

Theories, observations, and articles, by Philip Schaefer · All posts · Categories

IMPROVING UMPIRE PERFORMANCE.

March 29, 2009 at 10:58 AM · Baseball, Sports

IMPROVING UMPIRE PERFORMANCE. I posted here in 2007 on umpire ratings for balls and strikes. An article in Baseball America (March 23 to April 5) says that major league baseball is going to install a new computerized camera system to evaluate how umpires call balls and strikes in all 30 major league parks this year. Up to now, a different system, called Questec, had been installed in 11 parks. Although there have been complaints—Curt Schilling once smashed a Questec camera with a bat–umpires have been doing a better job on balls and strikes and Questec probably deserves the credit. Before Questec, umpires were correct about 91.5% of the time. Last year they were correct 95.4% of the time. Apparently, the error rate is highest now in calling the high strike—but the definition of the high stike in the rules is pretty subjective.