Quote:
Originally Posted by ASA/NYSSOBLUE
I think yesterday shows how far baseball has come in the last few years with the strike zone - Hirschbeck was laser sharp, consistant.....and actually gave strikes above the waist!  And Halladay took full advantage of that. |
I wasn't insinuating that Hirschbeck makes up strikes. I saw a plot of all of Halladay's pitches and only one called strike was outside the zone. I don't know which pitch, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was the called third to Rolen in the middle of the game.
Difference between Hirschbeck and other umpires I see is that JH aggressively gets strikes. Few pitches early in the game where the pitcher missed his spot but the pitch caught the plate and even the announcers admitted that those pitches are, but are rarely called, strikes. I'm happy to see this. At the HS and even small college level I'm loathe to give up strikes just because the catcher looks bad. So I don't. It would be a positive outcome of all this pitch plotting if it meant more strikes because umpires didn't care about a pitcher hitting his spot, etc.