Analysis of 4 Million Pitches Reveals Umps Really Do Suck at Calling Strikes

(Credit: Richard Paul Kane/Shutterstock) Baseball is back, and fans can anticipate another season of amazing catches, overpowering pitching, tape-measure home runs – and, yes, controversial calls that lead to blow-ups between umpires and players. Home plate umpires are at the heart of baseball; every single pitch can require a judgment call. Yet ask any fan or player, and they’ll tell you that many of these calls are incorrect – errors that can affect strategy, statistics and even game outcomes. Just how many mistakes are made? Comprehensive umpire performance statistics are not readily known, tracked or made available. Major League Baseball doesn’t seem interested in sharing the historical data. Could it be because the numbers aren’t flattering? Luckily, every MLB pitch is tracked and made available – numbers then have to be accessed, downloaded, sorted and evaluated. This takes time and computing power. In a new study with support from a team of Boston University graduate students, we closely analyzed how many balls get called strikes and vice versa. The accuracy of all home plate umpires was ranked and age and experience taken into account. While the human element of the game certainly adds color, our results show that it comes at a high cost: far too many mistakes.