UMPIRE RATINGS. Following up on yesterday’s post, here is a rating for accuracy in calling balls and strikes for each major league umpire. The percentages show that on average, the umpires miss about ten per cent of the calls on balls and strikes. They get a higher percentage of balls right because some balls miss by a yard and are easy to call. The best umpire gets 93.6 per cent of the calls right and the worst gets 86.8 per cent of the calls right. I think that baseball fans wrongly expect umpires to be close to perfect and get upset about any missed call. The article also shows that having individual umpire ratings be public information is not a disaster for the umpires.
[...] UMPIRE PERFORMANCE. I posted here in 2007 on umpire ratings for balls and strikes. An article in Baseball America (March 23 to April [...]
[...] LINE CALLS. I have previously posted (for example, here) on error rates for sports officials. The Wall Street Journal recently alerted me to a study of [...]