Sep 03 2009
How To Improve MLB Umpiring: Use The Rulebook
With all the problems facing MLB and its umpires, and the problems and criticism have escalated this season, maybe one way to defuse issues is to go back to basics.
When a fielder has throwing yips, or a batter is in a slump, or a pitcher can’t hit his spots, they are told to simplify their game and work on the mechanics and focus on fundamentals.
The umps need to do the same thing. Unlike players, they have it easy. Or, easier. They just need to read the rule book to understand what they need to do and how to call a game.
They can start with the problem that generates the most arguments and disgust among those in uniform and fans — the strike zone. They must start calling the strike zone as it is written in the baseball rule book.
Here it is:
The strike zone is that area over home plate the upper limit of which is a horizontal line at the midpoint between the top of the shoulders and the top of the uniform pants (which I interpret as the “letters” and I think many others interpret it this way), and the lower level is a line at the hollow beneath the knee cap. The strike zone shall be determined from the batter’s stance as the batter is prepared to swing at a pitched ball.
Well, a moving target of a batter coiling and swinging is not easy. But, if umpires focused on the rule book strike zone, less problems would exist.
A strike is, simply, from the knees to the letters. High strikes (at the letters) have not been called for years. Why not? Can anyone at MLB or the umps union give us an answer of when this changed and why? The rulebook strike hasn’t changed, so someone or group of people had to decide to stop calling pitches at the letters as strikes. Let’s see that memo.
Strikes are not a foot inside and they aren’t pitches that cross the inside line of the batter’s box on the opposite side of the plate. Umps have a habit of shrinking the zone from north to south and widening it from east to west. But, if all of them called the same zone, the one in black and white referenced in the rule book, the occasional pitch just off the black of the plate or just below the knee would not generate so much anger. The occasional miss would be more acceptable.
MLB needs to get umps focused on a consistent strike zone. Eliminate squeezing some pitchers, or giving others with sweeping sliders east-west dominance over batters. Give all batters a fair shot to swing at what they perceive are potential strikes instead of having them swing at pitches that they feel the ump might call a strike even though it is “just a bit outside.”
Umps who can’t or refuse to change their ways should be told to work on it in the minors, or told to go home (and we don’t mean having them clean off the plate).
