Umpiring: Braves series, Bradley incident, etc. (Latest: game-ending call in NL wild card tiebreaker)

[pretendastronaut]

Wow, for your own sanity, don't watch the MLB highlight on the Brewers home page about the "close calls". They used the TBS broadcast of course, and you'd think every one of those calls was the right call. They don't even replay the Teixeira hit.

 

Has anyone else noticed the Crew is getting a bad wrap as if they were wrong about these calls? The article I read on ESPN last night made it sound as if we didn't have a real beef, and I never saw them even show the Brewers game on 2 hours of Sportscenter last night. Meanwhile they're giving in the locker room interviews with Bradley.

[naivin]

"He said we got them right," said Montague, who said Yost should look in the mirror.

 

This is what really bugs me about the state of umpring today. I have no problem if they want to say they got the calls right, but that's where it should stop. Saying that a manager should look in the mirrir crosses the line in a big way. Earth to umpires...you are not part of the game. You should be invisible. The momenty you becomem noticed, you have failed to do your job properly. Peole aren't paying money to see you, and they certainly don't want to see you impact the outcome of a game in late September. Your opinions are not important once the game is over. Make the calls, stand by them if you must, but quit antagonizing players and managers, commenting on their actions, and impacting outcomes beyond, ball/strike, safe/out.

[SoCal Brew Crew Fan]

I left my house during the 7th and had the game on XM Satellite Radio. They had the Braves announcers on and they felt Ned had a legitimate beef. They felt they got the Francouer play wrong. I got home and replayed it...Billy Schroeder was going off like Ned was. Even Davey Nelson who is Mr. Positive thought they botched it.

[pretendastronaut]

Well its good to know they came around, but if you watch the clip on MLB, its edited without that commentary.

[Invader3K]

I really think the umpires in MLB need to get reigned in a little bit. They've gotten a bit out of control the last couple years, and it needs to end.

[RU Rah Rah]

The Brewers got the short end of the stick in terms of the umpiring --no doubt about that. But I've never been a huge fan of "blame the umps/refs," if only because it shifts responsibility for losing to a third party and away from players (and managers/coaches) themselves. Plus, over the course of 162 games, I imagine that these things probably will even out, more or less.

 

As for Milton Bradley: you reap what you sow. The guy has been antagonizing fellow players, umps, managers, fans -- you name it -- for pretty much his entire career. Now he's going to complain that an ump apparently gave him some of his own medicine?

 

Of course, that doesn't excuse the ump's conduct. I never understood why umps/refs feel as though they have to argue back. They have all the power; they can just ignore things. But I suppose it's (male) human nature to want to fight back.

[MaxJ72]

I hate to say to back the umpires in any way, since they had a terrible series, but the way umpires act can't all be blamed on them. In what other sport can coaches or players complain to the officials of the game the way they do in baseball. Yes other leagues have complaints during the game, but nothing that approaches what happens in baseball. In other sports there are penalties during the game that affect the team, 15 yard penalties or technical fouls, but in baseball there are just ejections. When was the last time you saw a football coach or basketball coach get in the face of an official and scream for several minutes?

[TooLiveBrew]

People aren't paying money to see you, and they certainly don't want to see you impact the outcome of a game in late September.

 

I agree with your post expect for this. Perhaps I can be counted in the vast minority, but I actually do enjoy watching MLB umps work. As a group, they are just impressive to watch, with some obvious exceptions. I do like to see them impact a game, but clearly by making the correct call in high-leverage (heck, or any) situations.

[CSOM]

Without getting onto whether the calls were right or not, one thing that always bugs me is why MLB officials have to argue back to players and coaches, rather than just walking away like in other sports... who really enjoys that crap?

[TooLiveBrew]

This is in no way any attempt to inflate myself or my ego: I've umped beer-league softball for years, and I can tell you how incredibly grating it is to have morons with no look at the play telling you that you got a call wrong when you were right in perfect position, took great care to make the correct call, and got it right. I honestly wonder if I can even imagine how bad it gets in MLB, where the games are the most pressure-packed. Just sitting there and 'taking it' as you get cussed and berated is really, really hard to do for me, and I have no experience having someone's spittle fly into/on my face as they scream at me literally just an inch or two from my face.

 

Another problem - many umps do turn to walk away after explaining (or attempting to explain) their calls, and the coach/player will go out of his way to not only follow said umpire, but get back in front of the ump and back face-to-face. I understand your point, CSOM, but MLB is strangely unique in allowing these kinds (extended berating) of confrontations without them being grounds for immediate ejection regardless of situation.

[RU Rah Rah]

Just sitting there and 'taking it' as you get cussed and berated is really, really hard to do for me, and I have no experience having someone's spittle fly into/on my face as they scream at me literally just an inch or two from my face.

Oh, I totally agree. I'd probably bark back, too.

 

[Paul77]

People aren't paying money to see you, and they certainly don't want to see you impact the outcome of a game in late September.

 

I agree with your post expect for this. Perhaps I can be counted in the vast minority, but I actually do enjoy watching MLB umps work. As a group, they are just impressive to watch, with some obvious exceptions. I do like to see them impact a game, but clearly by making the correct call in high-leverage (heck, or any) situations.

I will say this. Umpires on the whole are very good. Try watching minor league, college or high school baseball. As hard as they try it becomes painfully obvious real quick how difficult the job is. And truthfully, you need to have nerves of steel and years of experience to build a special kind of confidence to be MLB umpire. They need to make quick decisive calls and that call has to have some weight behind it. I guess my point is it's a tough job.

That said, they get paid very well and I think it's only fair to hold them to a gold standard, this is the Major Leagues after all. I talked to an umpire once (a minor league umpire) and he told me that he NEVER watches a replay of a close call. He said it would just make him second guess himself the next time he's out there. He said he needed to be able to believe in his calls. I understand that and I certainly don't want to get to the point where we see reversed calls on a regular basis. All I'm asking is that they try to get the call right to the best of their abilities and stop with all the "egging on" of players and coaches (like that Milton Bradley incident Sunday). I can live with bad calls if I believe he's truly attempting to get it right.

 

It almost seems like they (generalization) just don't care if they get it right. They know that there is no (public) disciplinary system in place. They know they won't be fired. They know that the managers and players are in a vulnerable position - facing ejection/suspension/fines. They might even feel like baseball undervalues them. I don't have any evidence to support this but I've got to believe the horribly failed "mass resignation" stunt the umpires tried pulling off a few years ago (8) still lingers in the minds of a few of theses guys.

 

[TheBrewer]

Instant Replay is something thats been talked about for a while, but you still wana preserve the game and it's traditions. You could set something up like football where they have something like 1-2-or 3 replays they can take per game if a team wants too. But its not like if they lose the call they can take a timeout away like FB. Would you allow instant replays on the strikes and balls aspect part of the game?

 

I think they should have something like where maybe one person at each games rates each umps' call during the game, and the MLB compiles rankings on who the top umps are and who are the ones that blow calls, and do that in the minor leagues too, and keep those rankings private from the public, but then have the best set of umps on the field of MLB games. Have it where MLB can demote/promote umps based upon those rankings of how they perform.

[jeffy]

I hate to say to back the umpires in any way, since they had a terrible series, but the way umpires act can't all be blamed on them. In what other sport can coaches or players complain to the officials of the game the way they do in baseball. Yes other leagues have complaints during the game, but nothing that approaches what happens in baseball. In other sports there are penalties during the game that affect the team, 15 yard penalties or technical fouls, but in baseball there are just ejections. When was the last time you saw a football coach or basketball coach get in the face of an official and scream for several minutes?

 

Good point. Maybe they should create a technical foul, where the umpires can put balls/strikes on the current/next batter as a penalty for excessive arguing.

[Paul77]

Baseball has "tried" to implement various rating systems in recent years. As it stands now umpires needing to make the right call 90% of the time or face termination. How exactly they figure that out is beyond me but it seems like even a "bad" ump will make the right call more often than that, just by the sheer volume of calls he makes. It seems that each attempt to improve the game calling has been met with resistance and resentment by the umpires and has resulted in several resignations by so called top officials. But who knows, this is another area that MLB is very secretive with.

[TooLiveBrew]

No offense, the Brewer, but that kind of evaluation system (though perhaps not word-for-word) is already in place from what I understand. What's unclear to me is how difficult it is for an umpire to lose his/her MLB job / get demoted.

 

I like the notion of teams having one (at the absolute most, two) 'replay challenges' per game. However, I think there's almost no way it could be used on balls/strikes, since a strike zone is a subjective creation of an umpire literally every single game, and thus it would be an incredible challenge to apply in a replay.

 

You'd either have an umpire having to explain how a ball that appears out of the standardized strike zone is in fact a strike, or a pitch getting called differently from the way the rest of the game has been. That's a recipe for disaster imo, even though there are calls as blatantly bad as the infamous 'Corey Hart call.' The NFL has similar exceptions on replay challenges, and although they can creat some 'Hart-ish' situations, on the whole the replay system has been great for the NFL and its officials.

[Paul77]

MLB will never (well maybe not never) implement any form of instant replay. And as much as people point to tradition, it really has everything to do with time and money. MLB has been trying for years to reduce game lengths. A few years ago the idea of mic'd umps was seriously discussed. The idea was that the umps could explain certain calls and any specific rule that maybe Joe Fan might not understand. (Balls, strike or putouts would have been forbidden from on mic explanations). The idea was scrapped with the fear that game times would be increased. Instant replay? I think it's a long shot - for a whole host of reasons - but MLB's fear of a ticking clock is chief among them.

[TooLiveBrew]

Yea, true - and another reason is the complexities involved in certain situations. Sometimes a player being safe/out can affect another player's decision-making on the basepaths or with the baseball in glove/hand - or fair/foul calls. If a call is reversed, and a ball was found to be fair - do you default to a ground-rule double outcome for any runners on base? Might the play have gone for a triple, or been held to a single? There are certainly choices that can be made in this regard, but it seems that 20fry is correct in forecasting a 'sim to none' chance of IR ever coming to MLB. Plus, any system would undoubtedly be test-run in the minors, first.

[Jimbo]

I would absolutely laugh if this umpiring crew was asigned to the Cubs' playoff series, only to see them job the Cubs like they did the Brewers.

 

[hawing]

I thought their goal was to job whoever's playing the cubs.

[giffted1]

I can see the case for shorter games, but wouldn't looking at a replay take less time than an arguing match between the coach and umpires?

[zurch1818]

Wouldn't making the correct call in some cases shorten the game (like Vargas's seventh inning)? Obviously, sometimes it might lengthen the inning longer, but at least it will be a correct call.

[don1481]

There wer a lot of close calls in this series and some bad calls in this series but the thing that got me the most was when they showed the ump laughing at Ned when he got ran today. That was completely unprofessional.

 

You forgot to mention that the ump that tossed Ned lightly PUSHED Ned after running him. Now... if Prince Fielder gets a 3 game suspension for basically "inadvertent contact" shouldn't an umpire that makes contact with a player or coach be suspended as well...?

[PeaveyFury]

Every single close call has gone against the Brewers since about mid-June, and quite a few recently haven't even been close to being correct. With the umpires tonight clearly giving the Cardinals a different strikezone than the Brewers, and a blown call at home because the umpire was completely out of position, I've got to say, it sure looks like we're being screwed over, and MLB should be absolutely ashamed of their umpires' performance.

 

Maybe these umps are just terrible at their jobs?

[TheBrewer]

You know to come to that to say that Umps are screwing us over sounds crazy. It really does if you were to throw that out there. BUT, I mean what is it? Seriously.. As Uecker and Powell were saying were all humans. It happened in Basketball so why not here? How do we know that they arnt' out trying to screw the Brewers over. Is a Crew Chief peaved at a certain player and he tells his fellow umps under him "be extra hard" on so and so etc or a team. Who really knows.

 

At the same time.. ya we can say all these things, and MAYBE it results in some losses etc and it hurts in the stretch run here, I know we don't wana hear this, but in reality, look at us tonight up 12-2 or w/e with "bad" umping tonight. You can blame the season etc on the umps to a CERTAIN EXTENT but any more than that, is crazy. We put ourselves in this position right now in reality here, its not like the Umping resulted in 30 losses etc.. I realize it's the stretch run and maybe a couple games were lost that way with Umping but... only to a certain extent.... if we didn't bomb in July and August those calls, or these games may not have mattered so much... again I realize thats harder to grasp, but thats reality. Again I'm not saying I'm not caring about this situation because I most certainly do care alot, and it's crazy with them, but....

 

As far as "Replays" etc, why not just consult with their fellow umps on the field to talk about an issue or a call etc. Obviously thats been done to an extent already, but maybe make it a little larger part, and again that might be difficult if say the bases are loaded and theres a questionable call at say 3B where the others may not catch any of it obviously.. but maybe explore to use that a little bit more .