On the plane to Cooperstown for what looks to be a super-fun weekend around the unveiling of the new exhibit, “The Souls of the Game: Voices of Black Baseball.” Will give you a full report… I’m expecting it to be amazing. Oh, and hey, if you’re going to be in Cooperstown this weekend for the event—I’ve already met a couple of people on the plane who are going up for it—I’ll be at the game on Saturday. I’m not doing anything official, but I’ll be there with Bob Kendrick, so if you want to come up and say hi, please do.
I looked up my childhood hero, Fergie Jenkins. First I sorted the umpires by Plate Appearances called. I set a cut-off at 300 -- arbitrary, perhaps, but everyone in that group called Fergie for at least 10 games. I then looked at SO/W ratio, figuring that's the area where the umpire would have the most impact.
Fergie's favorite would have been Tony Venzon at 9.44, almost double the runners-up (Andy Olsen 5.85, Lee Weyer 5.56, Chris Pelekoudas 5.50). His least-favorites would have been Al Cark 1.83 and George Maloney1.96. The sample size on all of these is big enough that these probably aren't flukes. Yet the best is more than 5x greater than the worst.
I guess the next question would be: was Venzon (as an example) lenient with all pitchers? Or was he lenient with pitchers who had Fergie's style, and more stringent with others? (Insert your own favorite pitcher, and similar questions would hold.)
Took a quick glance at Fergie's rough-contemporary Bob Gibson. Gibson spent his entire career in the NL, and so saw fewer umpires, and many of them quite a bit more frequently. His range (for umps w/ 300+ PAs) is much narrower: from 1.54 (Ed Vargo) to 3.78 (Harry Wendlestedt). FWIW, Venzon was 2.83 with Gibson.
I was a year out of college and a friend of mine worked for a radio station in Chicago. The Yankees were in town, my favorite favorite team and he gave me his press pass to go into the Yankees locker room after the game. I was a little intimidated, but I still have the courage to go approach Dave Winfield and Reggie Jackson with questions.
I’m not surprised pitchers have fav & least fav umpires and I’m pretty confident it’s not about umpires personal line or dislike but style
I’ve long had this theory that you could make money bettering baseball over/unders based purely on the home plate umpire based on umps with bigger or smaller strikezones
One time when Greg Maddux was not so cheery about Eric Gregg being home plate was Game 5 of the 1997 NLCS when Gregg presented Liván Hernández with a home plate about two feet wide.
I would dearly love to know the BBWAA member that waived his membership card in your face, Joe, if only to avoid them if I ever find myself in the same place as them.
great Glavine story! speaking of umps, how about a piece about the very worst (by general consensus) umpires of each decade? w/special emphasis on Angel Hernandez
Wow!!!! What a great feature to find in BR. I did look at one pitcher and found the breakdown to be fascinating. Did not see anything showing the named best and worst in the opinion of the pitcher but the raw data was there. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Would be interesting, at least to me, to know if pitchers are aware of who is behind the plate beforehand, and if they know they have to change their game plan a bit because of it.
What...is...this? I mean, the match between pitcher and umpire could account for at most, what, 0.2% of a pitcher's performance? So I think it's really just a study of discrepancies that you get with random small samples. I suppose the additional element is that the expected E.R.A. with every umpire isn't equivalent; some are pitchers' umpires, some hitters. That's true for everybody who works with them/\. But around that mean discrepancy, the deviation should be assumed to be random. The other point would be that particular umpires who only called games for a pitcher at the height of his powers or when he was in decline, depending on when the umpires entered or exited MLB, would have different expected results. But overall, for me, there is NO underlying point here, and this post is on the lazy side.
"Lazy" is the wrong word to use here, based on the number of pitcher-umpire match-ups that Joe searched, reviewed, and cited and the 1,400+ words Joe banged out on a plane when most people would be drinking bad beer/wine and watching Top Gun Maverick for the tenth time.
You can’t use the “most people” standard. I and a lot of other people pay money for this blog. It’s Joe’s job to produce good articles. I don’t think this one was great, but Joe’s not doing me a favor by writing a blog on a plane, he’s fulfilling a contract.
So, I checked if newspapers.com had the Augusta Chronicle but it did not, and some searching for the Glavine-extended quote piece did not pan out. If Joe or anybody has a bead on where it might be hiding these days, please share--it would be fun to read it afresh given the story behind it.
A lot of this is small sample size and particularly with Randy Johnson may depend if they had the ump at the peak of their career or the downside. But I suspect there's a lot more than random variance going on here and it really shouldn't depend on who is umpiring.
This is great. Would love to see how catchers faired with specific umpires.
Angel Hernandez didn’t appear in than article anywhere? lol
Busy weekend, so just a quick response...
I looked up my childhood hero, Fergie Jenkins. First I sorted the umpires by Plate Appearances called. I set a cut-off at 300 -- arbitrary, perhaps, but everyone in that group called Fergie for at least 10 games. I then looked at SO/W ratio, figuring that's the area where the umpire would have the most impact.
Fergie's favorite would have been Tony Venzon at 9.44, almost double the runners-up (Andy Olsen 5.85, Lee Weyer 5.56, Chris Pelekoudas 5.50). His least-favorites would have been Al Cark 1.83 and George Maloney1.96. The sample size on all of these is big enough that these probably aren't flukes. Yet the best is more than 5x greater than the worst.
I guess the next question would be: was Venzon (as an example) lenient with all pitchers? Or was he lenient with pitchers who had Fergie's style, and more stringent with others? (Insert your own favorite pitcher, and similar questions would hold.)
Took a quick glance at Fergie's rough-contemporary Bob Gibson. Gibson spent his entire career in the NL, and so saw fewer umpires, and many of them quite a bit more frequently. His range (for umps w/ 300+ PAs) is much narrower: from 1.54 (Ed Vargo) to 3.78 (Harry Wendlestedt). FWIW, Venzon was 2.83 with Gibson.
I was a year out of college and a friend of mine worked for a radio station in Chicago. The Yankees were in town, my favorite favorite team and he gave me his press pass to go into the Yankees locker room after the game. I was a little intimidated, but I still have the courage to go approach Dave Winfield and Reggie Jackson with questions.
I’m not surprised pitchers have fav & least fav umpires and I’m pretty confident it’s not about umpires personal line or dislike but style
I’ve long had this theory that you could make money bettering baseball over/unders based purely on the home plate umpire based on umps with bigger or smaller strikezones
One time when Greg Maddux was not so cheery about Eric Gregg being home plate was Game 5 of the 1997 NLCS when Gregg presented Liván Hernández with a home plate about two feet wide.
I would dearly love to know the BBWAA member that waived his membership card in your face, Joe, if only to avoid them if I ever find myself in the same place as them.
Wait a minute…aren’t you Paul Wight, the wrestler?
No, I’m the cardiologist who got his own postage stamp. https://postalmuseum.si.edu/object/npm_1998.2008.7
What a great reply!
great Glavine story! speaking of umps, how about a piece about the very worst (by general consensus) umpires of each decade? w/special emphasis on Angel Hernandez
Wow!!!! What a great feature to find in BR. I did look at one pitcher and found the breakdown to be fascinating. Did not see anything showing the named best and worst in the opinion of the pitcher but the raw data was there. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
I kind of expected to see Angel Hernandez's name in the least favorite category at least once....
Even as a lifelong Braves hater, the Glavine story warms my heart every time I read it.
Would be interesting, at least to me, to know if pitchers are aware of who is behind the plate beforehand, and if they know they have to change their game plan a bit because of it.
You have told the Glavine story before, but I don't remember the punchline - that Glavine did not pitch that day, so it was great to relive it.
What...is...this? I mean, the match between pitcher and umpire could account for at most, what, 0.2% of a pitcher's performance? So I think it's really just a study of discrepancies that you get with random small samples. I suppose the additional element is that the expected E.R.A. with every umpire isn't equivalent; some are pitchers' umpires, some hitters. That's true for everybody who works with them/\. But around that mean discrepancy, the deviation should be assumed to be random. The other point would be that particular umpires who only called games for a pitcher at the height of his powers or when he was in decline, depending on when the umpires entered or exited MLB, would have different expected results. But overall, for me, there is NO underlying point here, and this post is on the lazy side.
"Lazy" is the wrong word to use here, based on the number of pitcher-umpire match-ups that Joe searched, reviewed, and cited and the 1,400+ words Joe banged out on a plane when most people would be drinking bad beer/wine and watching Top Gun Maverick for the tenth time.
You can’t use the “most people” standard. I and a lot of other people pay money for this blog. It’s Joe’s job to produce good articles. I don’t think this one was great, but Joe’s not doing me a favor by writing a blog on a plane, he’s fulfilling a contract.
This is "Free Friday." You didn't pay anything for this. Relax.
So, I checked if newspapers.com had the Augusta Chronicle but it did not, and some searching for the Glavine-extended quote piece did not pan out. If Joe or anybody has a bead on where it might be hiding these days, please share--it would be fun to read it afresh given the story behind it.
A lot of this is small sample size and particularly with Randy Johnson may depend if they had the ump at the peak of their career or the downside. But I suspect there's a lot more than random variance going on here and it really shouldn't depend on who is umpiring.