No, ABS is not ’embarrassing’ MLB umpires — it’s making them better

Welcome to Snyder’s Soapbox! Here, I pontificate about matters related to Major League Baseball on a weekly basis. Some of the topics will be pressing matters, some might seem insignificant in the grand scheme of things, and most will be somewhere in between. The good thing about this website is that it’s free, and you are allowed to click away. If you stay, you’ll get smarter, though. That’s a money-back guarantee. Let’s get to it.

This week, for the first time in Major League Baseball history, we’ve seen the ABS (automated ball-strike) system in action. It’s been a great success. A few missed calls have been corrected and fans everywhere are seeing that it only takes a few extra seconds for the review to happen. 

First off, let’s get the negativity out of the way. A former umpire had a doozy of a quote earlier this week…

“I think it’s embarrassing, embarrassing to the umpires that are calling the game. Nobody likes to be humiliated in front of 30,000, 40,000 people,” Richie Garcia, a major-league umpire from 1975 to 1999, told the Associated Press. “What Major League Baseball is saying is: I don’t trust the umpire’s strike zone, so I’m going to use something that’s going to be operated by some computer geek that knows nothing about baseball, and he’s the one that’s going to measure this and measure that because he’s got a Ph.D. in physics or whatever the hell he’s got a degree in.”

To use Richie’s own words, how absolutely, utterly embarrassing. Hilariously so. Let me count the ways.

1. What’s more humiliating? Missing a call by 0.1 inches and getting it immediately fixed or missing a call that costs a team the game and then having it splashed all over social media with your name attached — leading to thousands or more people talking about how much you suck at your job? Ask any Cardinals fan from 1985 which umpire missed a call at first base, and they still know exactly how to spell his name. If there’s a call immediately fixed, everyone moves on. I can’t believe how incredibly off-base this complaint from Garcia is. But there’s more. 

2. No, MLB isn’t saying it doesn’t trust umpires. If this were the case, the strike zone would be fully automated instead of just allowing a few challenges. What MLB is saying is that a human being trying to call a 100-mile-per-hour fastball perfectly by hundredths of an inch just isn’t possible over the course of 162 games per team. It would be unfair to expect such things. We’re all human. There’s nothing wrong with getting a little help to protect against honest, egregious misses. 

3. It always sounds embarrassing when someone does the whole these nerds don’t know our sport routine. They don’t have to. The technology just shows where the ball crosses home plate in relation to the strike zone. Why would someone have to have played baseball to understand this? 

4. This “appeal to authority” thing doesn’t really work here. You know, since Garcia was an MLB umpire, he’s suggesting that a “geek” who didn’t get to the majors doesn’t know what it’s like and therefore can’t be trusted. The funny thing is, Garcia never played in the majors, so couldn’t we use that same argument and say he was never qualified to umpire in it? Someone who never even played in Major League Baseball and therefore knows nothing about it is making balls and strikes calls!?

You see how that works? It’s always a slippery slope when you try this route. 

Anyway, let’s move on. 

Umpires are still great at the strike zone

I’ve been saying for years that MLB umpires are incredible at calling balls and strikes. Think about the velocity at which the pitches are coming to the plate. Next, consider all the movement on these pitches. Further, factor in the way that catchers frame the ball nowadays in that their glove is always moving in an attempt to deceive the umpire instead of trying to present it (Joe Mauer had some complaints on the changes in approach when I spoke with him last year). There are just so many variables involved with the umpires trying to make a split-second decision on a ball or strike and are still supposed to be just about perfect. If you’ve been watching spring training or saw the Opening Day games this week, what you saw was the calls that were fixed were barely — and I mean barely — missed by the umps. 

As an illustration, here’s one from Thursday. The catcher is set up way outside and the pitch misses the catcher badly. It looked awful close to the actual strike zone, though, and the catcher’s glove ends up awfully far away from where the pitch actually missed the zone. The Phillies challenged. 

The umpire got the call right by 0.1 inches!  

As for a miss by the home-plate ump, look how close this is and how quickly it is fixed. 

You think that umpire was all angry and embarrassed that he missed that call by less than ¼ of a baseball? More likely, he’s relieved it was fixed. It was a tie game, after all. 

Contrast this to past generations of umpires. I found this extreme example pretty telling and humorous at the same time. 

That was an NLCS game. 

No MLB umpires miss like that these days. None of them. People will nitpick missing calls by less than an inch because now we have all this technology that shows the actual zone, but now there’s also a way to fix those, nearly in real time. And every time there is a challenge, the call is really close to being correct. These umpires are amazing with the strike zone, generally and collectively. 

Where can this improve? 

The system as is looks pretty streamlined to me. I think any improvement is going to come from the players as they get acclimated to it. 

As an example, the Cubs were trailing 8-4 with two runners on base and one out with Nico Hoerner at the plate. It was the bottom of the seventh. There was a 3-1 pitch called a strike that looked inside. Here’s a still (note the circle where the ball crossed home plate compared to the strike zone box): 

Now, neither the box nor the little circle are official, but I think we could all agree this was worth a challenge, given the game moment. Had Hoerner tapped his helmet, it feels likely enough that the call would’ve been changed and he would’ve walked, meaning the bases were loaded with one out for Carson Kelly, representing the tying run. Instead, Hoerner hit into a double play to end the inning on the ensuing 3-2 pitch. 

We might see a decent number of these examples this season, especially in the early going, as players get used to the new normal with the ABS system. 

For me, I’m seeing zero issues with the umpires or the system itself. Then again, I never umpired or played in The Show, so I guess I’m just a geek whose opinion doesn’t count.