The Better Letter: Professional Deciders
Baseball and my birthday.
Happy birthday to me. Last year’s birthday TBL is still by far my most-read missive ever. It’s also my most personal. And it’s still true … except it’s nine grandchildren now. You may read it here.
When I was a kid, the World Series was almost always being played on my birthday. There was no interleague play and no playoffs then – just the National League champion against the American League champion. All the games were in the afternoon at that time, so I’d sneak a little 2x2” transistor radio into school, plug an earphone in and run the cord under my shirt, and listen to the first few innings before running home to catch the rest on television.
Today in 2021, both league championship series still need to be played before we can get to the World Series. But more baseball isn’t an altogether bad thing.
This week’s TBL focuses on the national pastime and, more particularly, umpiring. After last night, it seems particularly appropriate.
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Thank you for reading.
Professional Deciders
It seems like a lifetime ago, but I was once a varsity baseball coach. One game, the home plate umpire was having a particularly rough outing. His calls weren’t one-sided. They were just bad.
I held my tongue (mostly), partly because he wasn’t being unfair and partly because I wanted to be a good role model. But when the ump misapplied a rule in a way that hurt my team, I lost it. I’ve umped many, many games and recognize that everybody misses calls. But there is no excuse for being out of position or, even worse, not knowing the rulebook.
I went out to home plate to share my knowledge. I was especially thoughtful in that I explained exactly what the rule was and how it applied in that context. Helpfully, I took out my rulebook and showed him precisely where all this was located.
Sadly, the umpire didn’t take kindly to my helpful spirit. “One more word out of you and you’ll be watching the game from the parking lot,” he said.
“Even from there I’ll see it better than you,” I replied.
Even though there’s no crying in baseball…
…it feels good to vent when you’ve been robbed. Or think you’ve been robbed. It happens more than you might think.
Last night’s winner-take-all playoff match-up between the two best teams in baseball – the Giants and the Dodgers – ended on a bad call. A very bad call. By an otherwise very good umpire.
Umpiring has been a source of controversy for as long as there have been umpires. Umpires are not professional athletes. They are professional deciders. And what they do is crazy-hard – especially behind the plate.
When I was a kid, there were multiple strike zones to consider when watching a Major League game. It starts with the rulebook strike zone (“the area over home plate from the midpoint between a batter's shoulders and the top of the uniform pants – when the batter is in his stance and prepared to swing at a pitched ball – and a point just below the kneecap;” only “part of the ball must cross over part of home plate while in the aforementioned area”), which has changed significantly over time (it was last changed in 1996). Note that each hitter has a unique zone.
At that time, there were also unofficial American and National League strike zones. Both were smaller and much lower than the official zone, top and bottom, and both were expanded away from the hitter both inside and outside – the National League’s went further outside. Lefthanded hitters had a different strike zone from those who batted from the right side. To make things more difficult, each umpire had his own, idiosyncratic strike zone.
“If you know me, you know my strike zone,” umpire Eric Gregg said in 1997, talking about the Livan Hernandez 143-pitch, 15 strikeout (four more than he had in any other game) National League Championship Series game win over Greg Maddux highlighted above. “I’m consistent on both sides of that strike zone. I’ve been that way for 25 years. Next question.”
Many think that game was a crucial motivation for MLB’s eventual installation of pitch-monitoring technology beginning in 2001. The accountability offered by technology has has improved pitch-calling and strike zone consistency, which is an ongoing process. The 2000 merger of the two leagues and the concomitant elimination of separate sets of umpires helped, too.
There were difficult adjustments to be made, for sure, but today, there is much more consistency overall. The high strike has returned and the strike zone has narrowed and moved over the plate.
Umpires are asked to track multiple kinds and shapes of pitches that may be traveling over 100-mph as they explode across a three-dimensional strike zone that varies from hitter to hitter – and to keep doing it over and over, roughly 120 times per game on average.
Umpiring is really hard. Even allowing for that, they make a surprising number of mistakes.
A comprehensive Boston University study using 11 years of Major League data found that in the 2018 season, for example, MLB umpires made 34,246 incorrect ball/strike calls – about 14 per game – and 55 games ended on a blown call. When hitters had two strikes, the error rate for all umpires more than doubled as 29 percent of those calls were wrong. Umpires routinely missed calls at the top of the strike zone and the trend is toward fewer strikes. And older pitchers tended to get the benefit of the doubt – demonstrating familiarity bias.
The consequences are significant. A study this season by The Washington Post found that over the past decade, teams that benefitted from five pitches that are incorrectly called strikes in a game had an 892-801 record (.527). Teams that got 10 more strike calls than expected in a game were 23-8 (.742). Teams with no extra called strikes basically broke even.
The best game of this season from an umpire came from Lance Barksdale, who called 156 of 157 pitches correctly in a 16-4 Dodgers rout of the Brewers in May. John Libka (widely regarded as the best overall umpire) was almost as good six days later, getting 134 of 136 calls right as the Cardinals shut out the Rockies.
According to the BU study, the best umpires miss about eight percent of the time. For the worst, it’s more than 14 percent. According to @UmpScorecards*, the average accuracy of all called pitches in 2021 ranged from 91.3 percent (Ed Hickox) to 95.6 percent (Libka). Other studies get somewhat different results, such as a range between 92 and 97 percent. Still, when the technology was implemented, a 92 grade would have been elite. More than 89 percent of pitches with a predicted strike probability of at least 0.5 were called strikes in 2021 — up more than 2 percent over the past six seasons and likely the best ever.
In other words, we’ve seen overall improvement with individual variability. The error rate can vary as much as 56 percent between the bottom and top performing umpires.
It’s no wonder there are major disputes. Especially given all that is at stake, they are inevitable.
Although a replay system has been implemented beginning in 2014 to review certain umpire calls, MLB has thus far resisted deploying the available technology to assist with or to call balls and strikes. MLB insists on protecting its error-prone umpires, resists adopting strong and transparent performance measurements, and has not taken advantage of available technology that could better the game.
For example, Ángel Hernández – widely regarded as a lousy umpire – claimed he gets four calls wrong per game behind the plate. The data says he’s poor but not in the bottom ten and not as bad as you might think, but he still missed 19 calls per game over the course of the BU study. He has improved, though.
On the last day of this year’s regular season, Hernández was the home-plate umpire for the Yankees’ important 1-0 walk-off win over the Rays and graded out very well. Game-to-game consistency still remains a problem, however. As Warner Wolf used to say, “let’s go to the videotape.”
And he’s working the postseason again this year.
Indeed, the BU study found that the best umpires don’t typically get the biggest assignments. Last night’s big playoff match-up had a very poorly rated umpire behind the plate.
Only four of the top ten umpires have worked in the postseason so far this year.
Besides moving to robo or robo-assisted umpires, things would be better if umpires paid better attention.
Attention requires effort. Accordingly, people generally allocate their attention to the more important decisions among the 2,000 or so we make every waking hour, relying upon experience, habit, and routine for the others. In other words, attention is depletable and may be strategically managed.
Maybe Michael Kitces wears the same color blue shirt every day as a matter of branding, but maybe he does it to conserve his attention budget.
If the importance of a decision increases the value of paying attention, and umpires allocate attention strategically, they should make more correct calls in high leverage situations. An interesting new paper tested this hypothesis by looking at millions of umpire calls in Major League Baseball over an 11-year period – the same data set as the BU study.
According to this research, high effort applied early in a sequence of decisions reduces effort applied later in the series. Too, umpires act as if they anticipate high stakes decisions to come later, and conserve cognitive effort. Both sets of results fit closely to the predictions from a model in which the umpire has a depletable stock of attention. These dynamics make decisions that are otherwise separable into inter-dependent problems. The short break that the umpire receives between half-innings seems sufficient to replenish his stock of attention, since there is no evidence of inter-dependence across those breaks.
Using technology to assist umpires with ball-strike calls appears to be an obvious corrective for bad calls. Fewer decisions means fewer bad decisions. Unless and until MLB decides to take that step, we’ll be left trying to coax out a bit more incremental improvement.
Umpiring has improved significantly over the past two decades. Accountability and transparency will do that. Adding further accountability mechanisms, such as merit pay and post-season appearances going solely to the best umpires, could allow for still further improvements.
Please, God, and I’m not even a Giants fan.
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* A current Boston University computer student maintains the @UmpScorecards bot, which uses MLB data to provide scorecards for every MLB game the following morning. The data is collated here.
Totally Worth It
Even at just 17, Karen Carpenter’s voice was a marvel.
This is the best thing I saw or read this week. The most important. The most terrifying. The most interesting. The most prophetic. The most predictable. The most disappointing. The most sickening. The funniest. The saddest. The smartest. The most remarkable. The least surprising. The most useful. Big if true. They aren’t making mobsters like they used to. Everybody hates Cats. Rogue grandma. Yowzah. Yikes. Of course. Double standard. DNC propaganda. What could go wrong? “I’ve had the soft, leathery caress of a bat’s wing against my buttocks while having a poo.”
Feel free to contact me via rpseawright [at] gmail [dot] com or on Twitter (@rpseawright) and let me know what you like, what you don’t like, what you’d like to see changed, and what you’d add. Don’t forget to subscribe and share.
Of course, the easiest way to share TBL is simply to forward it to a few dozen of your closest friends.
Please send me your nominees for this space to rpseawright [at] gmail [dot] com or via Twitter (@rpseawright).
I’ll be seeing an Eagles concert this weekend for my birthday. They have so many great songs.
Benediction
Billy Bragg provides this week’s benediction.
If you want to make the weather | Then you have to take the blame. | If sometimes dark clouds fill the sky | And it starts to rain, | Folks complain.
The Spotify play list of TBL benedictions and more now includes more than 175 songs and exceeds 12 hours of great music. I urge you to listen … and turn the volume up. Way up.
To those of us prone to wander, to those who are broken, to those who flee and fight in fear – which is every last lost one of us – there is a faith that offers hope. And may love have the last word. Now and forever. Amen.
Thanks for reading.
Issue 84 (October 15, 2021)