FanHouse Umpires

Tuesday night, Magglio Ordonez was called out on what he deemed to be a questionable call. As he expressed his frustration, in a respectable fashion, home plate umpire Paul Schrieber gently pushed Ordonez toward his dugout. Now, let's be careful to not go overboard here. He didn't shove Ordonez and there really didn't seem to be malicious intent. It was more of a just get outta my face nudge.

The aftermath was phenomenal, as Tigers manager Jim Leyland went absolutely ballistic on Schrieber (you can view the video here), and rightfully so. Umpires are very protective about being touched by players and managers, even if the contact is accidental and lacks any malicious intent. As well they should be. Any contact could escalate matters into ugly territory. Thus, physically moving a player is a double-standard.

Back in 2001, major league umpires weren't too pleased with the revolutionary new QuesTec systems that were placed in a third of the ballparks around the league QuesTec was put in place to help establish a more uniform strike zone as the data collected would be used to teach the umpires about what they were doing right and what they were doing wrong.

As any manager can tell you, umpires don't like being told what they've done wrong. So it wasn't surprising that umpires were upset by QuesTec, and now, finally, they will be rid of the system this season. Of course, there is the new system called Zone Evaluation that will now be taking QuesTec's place. In every ballpark.

Major league umpires have always been overly sensitive about being embarrassed. Take for instance the unwritten rule on complaining about balls and strikes: batters are generally allowed to say whatever they want while at the plate so long as they don't "show up" the umpire by (gasp!) actually turning to look at him. If they commit that egregious sin, they risk an early shower.

Not surprisingly, there are plenty of written rules about now showing up the umpire, as well -- and they apply to the stadium workers just as much as the players and managers. Have you ever noticed how it's impossible to catch a replay of a close play on the stadium video display?

The infield fly rule is used in baseball all the way from youth leagues to the majors. During a pivotal part of the World Series game last night, however, it was ignored by the umpires. Why? Let's sort this out.

Last night, the Phillies had runners on first and second with one out, and a pop-up was hit to Carlos Pena at first base. The umpires, as I said earlier, chose not to call the infield fly rule in this instance.

We were told over the air by Joe Buck the reason for the no-call. The umpires have claimed that, because of the conditions, catching the ball required more than an "ordinary effort." I can't disagree that it was taking an extraordinary effort to catch the pop-ups in those conditions.

By definition of the rule, this is a textbook infield fly rule case.

Before we go any further, let's review the rule, via MLB themselves:

This week, Major League Baseball decided to step up background checks for umpires. The union representing the umpires, the World Umpire Association (famous for such great matches as Kerry Von Erich vs. Umpires), has complied with the checks. But then!

The Biz of Baseball reported that the WUA issued a press release concerning questions being asked during the league's investigations. Among the standard questions to the neighbors (what do you think of barry bonds, how many years of prison should barry bonds get, et al.) was this: do you know if the umpire is a member of the Ku Klux Klan?

hahaha whaaaat

The Dugout asks the serious questions about the Neo Nazi skinheads at Citizens Bank Park, after the jump.

Earlier today, I wrote about a study that claimed to have discovered that racial bias exists among Major League umpires -- that being, umpires reward pitchers of the same ethnicity with extra strikes roughly 1% of time. I questioned the results of the study, but while my questions were gleamed from a brief article on the subject, the blog Man on a Rant actually did some poking around to find the actual study itself (PDF).

After reviewing the study for first-hand, the blogger raises some concerns about the validity of the results -- namely, the sample size of the umpires studied:

This looks like a data problem. A quick review of the study's first table (which I should have spent some more time on initially) reveals that our umpire sample size is 93, and a whopping 85 of the 93 umps tracked are white. 5 are black, and 3 are Hispanic. And right here, at least in my mind, you can throw out the study's results, regardless of how elegant the rest of the paper may seem.

You cannot make sweeping statements of race and racial bias with subject groups this small. There is nothing to infer. Sure, you might have enough total pitches viewed by umps of all ethnicities to generate a statistical comparison that looks legitimate... but, at the end of the day, you're making key assumptions about racial attitudes based on the work of 3-5 people. An experiment/study's conditions need to be comparable in number. You wouldn't compare the averaged IQ tests of 85 students to the average of 5 other students and expect to gain any kind of brilliant insight. It's the same deal here.

I have absolutely no formal training in statistics, but this sounds like a legitimate concern. Obviously, the sample size of umpires included in the study is constrained by the number of major league umpires employed at any particular point in time, so I'm not sure how the researchers can accurately compensate for this obstacle. Does this mean we should invalidate all of the results of the study? I don't think so, but it seems like any discussion about it should include the caveat that the work of only eight non-white umpires was analyzed.

Coach: "So you're saying right there that he's safe?"
Ump: "Yeah."
Coach: "But you called him out for the hell of it?"
Ump: "Yeah, I did."

Umm, file that conversation under "things an umpire shouldn't be caught dead saying." I don't have a clue what level of baseball this is -- my best guess is that it's either the low minors or college -- but this guy shouldn't be allowed to umpire Little League, let alone grown men. Is it as bad as shaving points? No, but any umpire who puts his pride over the rulebook is tainting the integrity of the game nonetheless.