The Umpires Are the Problem

by EJ Fagan

April 26, 2024

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NOTE: The following comes from EJ Fagan's substack page and is shared with permission.

Please check out EJ's substack page for more great articles.

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The other night, Juan Soto struck out looking. All three strikes called against him were off the plate:

It was brutal to watch. Soto started walking to first place twice. The 5th pitch was particularly egregious, as it was both farther out and borderline low.

The Soto at bat wasn’t unique. Umpires get a lot more borderline calls wrong than you might think. In 2024, they have so far called 46% of all balls that were just outside the zone as strikes. It gets even worse when we’re not talking about pitches that are both off the plate and high or low:

67% of pitches just off the plate to the umpire’s right side (outside to righties, inside to lefties) are called strikes. 59% on the opposite side are called strikes. Pitchers know that they can expand the zone, and aim for the area just outside. Batters know that they can’t

Statcast doesn’t easily allow me to check for pitches just inside the zone that are called as balls, but my impression is that there are way fewer. The tie goes to the pitcher almost every time.

To be clear, this problem hasn’t gotten a lot worse over the Statcast era. Since 2015, umpires have been in the high-40s on average each year. If anything, they are a point or two better in 2024 than the previous decade.

It also isn’t a problem that uniquely has hurt the Yankees. Austin Wells, Jose Trevino and Kyle Higashioka are three of the MLB’s best framers. Even Aaron Judge, who sees a lot of low pitches called against him, is hurt about as much as league average overall.

But it is a problem for baseball as a whole. Pitchers are winning the arms race against hitters. The average MLB fastball is now north of 94 mph. Spin is off the charts. Pitchers are engineering their pitches to tunnel better than ever. The average 2024 batter is hitting just .240/.314/.382 right now, with a 23% strikeout rate and 9% walk rate.

That’s really bad, and boring to watch for anyone other than the biggest baseball fanatic. And it’s probably going to get worse. Pitchers are going to continue to optimize themselves. Hitters can only improve themselves so much before running up against the human limitations of some much velocity and spin.

Of course, it’s really hard to make pitchers throw worse. The pitch timer hasn’t helped batters. MLB tried moving the mound back in the minors, but with mixed results and a lot of player pushback. Maybe you could lower the mound, but MLB hasn’t tried that yet.

The obvious option that MLB hasn’t tried yet is to make the plate smaller. A smaller plate would make it more difficult for pitchers to aim for the edges. Batters could take a nasty slider or cutter with more confidence that it will be called a ball. I suspect that we’d see more fastballs in the zone and more early contact.

And here’s the thing: they don’t need to make the actual plate smaller. They could effectively do the same thing by enforcing the rulebook strike zone. Call the plate. Don’t give the tie to the pitcher. Heck, why not give the tie to the batter?

The problem is the umpires. They aren’t going to fix themselves. They aren’t going to cooperate with MLB to try and improve the sport. We can’t even get the umpires to allow MLB to sanction their own worst colleagues. I don’t think it’s even worth trying. Bring on the robo-umpires.