Strike zone

[Rich]

Originally Posted by Tim C

I want to make one thing clear. . .

I respect WWTB and his stance on "get the call right."

WWTB has never waivered from his committment to this 21st Century edict from the "powers that be."

That being said, I stand firmly behind his committment that he calls ALL PITCHES STRIKES that are strikes.

I will continue to disagree with him on calling a strike that passes through the strike zone and bounces to the catcher's mitt -- but that is all I do. . . I disagree but respect his right to call games as he sees necessary.

BTW, I also call strikes that may be eventually uncaught by F2.

Regards,

My demands are about as high as yours, Tee. I got hit cleanly with a pitch I called a strike this season. Right down the middle, catcher crossed up, hit me in the chest protector. Strike. Defensive coach yelled at his catcher, offensive coach said nothing, life went on. Later that game I rang someone up on a fastball clearly at the knee the catcher caught palm-side-up. I can't help it D3 catchers aren't as skilled as I'd like.

I work to not leave any real strikes on the table. The top part of my zone (the so-called "high strike") has been sliding down this summer, for some reason, but I'm working hard to get it back.

[GarthB]

Tee/Rich:

I'll join your chorus with one caveat: A deuce that takes the knee at the front of the zone and takes dirt before the catcher did not, to my view, pass through the zone. I have never been given grief at any level I've worked for correctly recognizing that as a "ball".

[Rich]

Originally Posted by GarthB

Tee/Rich:

I'll join your chorus with one caveat: A deuce that takes the knee at the front of the zone and takes dirt before the catcher did not, to my view, pass through the zone. I have never been given grief at any level I've worked for correctly recognizing that as a "ball".

I think Tee and I agree with you completely on that one.

[Dave Hensley]

Originally Posted by Rich Fronheiser

I think Tee and I agree with you completely on that one.

I think the whole world minus NIUMP50 [edited later] and buckwheat agrees on that one.

[buckweat]

Originally Posted by GarthB

Tee/Rich:

I'll join your chorus with one caveat: A deuce that takes the knee at the front of the zone and takes dirt before the catcher did not, to my view, pass through the zone. I have never been given grief at any level I've worked for correctly recognizing that as a "ball".

Then you’d be wrong. What you said defines a strike by the book.

Now if you’d said that you don’t possess good enough judgment to make that call precisely enough to warrant calling it a strike, that’s ok. Those close calls are difficult at best.

But to say that in your judgment it touches your definition of the zone and you don’t call it, in my eyes, you’re simply not doing your job.

[BlueLawyer]

Most of us are in agreement, although anybody who says any two umpires have the same zone hasn't seen them work. Hell, I sometimes don't have the same zone night to night- even at the same level.

I have been working hard to get my zone consistent from game to game- with the caveat that it should be appropriate to the level of ball I'm working. It's complicated by the fact that I might work 13 yo BR- (they go from 60 to 90 foot bases here- way too big a jump in my opinion) and then go work AAA Legion the next night with 4 or 5 JUCO kids on the field.

The only way to train your eye to the strike zone, IMHO, is to strap it on and get behind the plate for live pitching. The limitation of camps that use pitching machines for cage work is that every pitch is virtually the same, and always a strike. Don't get me wrong- the cage work is valuable for mechanics, timing, stance, etc., but not for finding the pitch at the hollow of the knee of a 5'5" kid for a strike.

Strikes and outs!

[Rich]

Originally Posted by buckweat

Then you’d be wrong. What you said defines a strike by the book.

Now if you’d said that you don’t possess good enough judgment to make that call precisely enough to warrant calling it a strike, that’s ok. Those close calls are difficult at best.

But to say that in your judgment it touches your definition of the zone and you don’t call it, in my eyes, you’re simply not doing your job.

You calling Garth "wrong" is rich. Why don't you take a moment and find yourself a clue?

[buckweat]

Originally Posted by Rich Fronheiser

You calling Garth "wrong" is rich. Why don't you take a moment and find yourself a clue?

Rich,

Read what I said closely. I said he was wrong because he said he wouldn’t call what he identifies as a strike, one that touches his zone, a strike. That defies logic. He didn’t say his strike zone didn’t include that particular location, just that he wouldn’t call a hook there a strike. That makes me believe he’d call a FB, slider or some other pitch in the same exact place a strike, and is a heck of a big reason why people go nuts about consistency.

I don’t care if a blue calls corner shots at all! As long as a ball hasn’t touched HIS zone, it shouldn’t be a strike, no matter what the pitch. But, if its in his zone, it should be a strike no matter what it is. What you seem to be advocating is a zone that’s different shapes and sizes for every different type of pitch, and I can’t buy that one.

[buckweat]

Originally Posted by BlueLawyer

Most of us are in agreement, although anybody who says any two umpires have the same zone hasn't seen them work. Hell, I sometimes don't have the same zone night to night- even at the same level.

I have been working hard to get my zone consistent from game to game- with the caveat that it should be appropriate to the level of ball I'm working. It's complicated by the fact that I might work 13 yo BR- (they go from 60 to 90 foot bases here- way too big a jump in my opinion) and then go work AAA Legion the next night with 4 or 5 JUCO kids on the field.

The only way to train your eye to the strike zone, IMHO, is to strap it on and get behind the plate for live pitching. The limitation of camps that use pitching machines for cage work is that every pitch is virtually the same, and always a strike. Don't get me wrong- the cage work is valuable for mechanics, timing, stance, etc., but not for finding the pitch at the hollow of the knee of a 5'5" kid for a strike.

Strikes and outs!

This is off subject, but I’m curious about something.

Being an SK, I have the same problem all the time when flipping from one level to the next, or from flipping from games governed by one rule set to another. There are just enough subtle little differences to make my life miserable if I try to do the best job possible.

What I almost always end up doing is scoring the game as though it was under OBR, but adjusting it for what “ordinary play” was. But before I turn in any numbers, I almost always have to go look in a rule book to make sure that those rules coincide with what I turn in.

Goofy things like there being “team errors”, or OBP using all sacs to compute OBP under NFHS, while not under other rule sets. There’s other things out there that are definitely different, just as with differences for the ump in going from venue to venue.

I “try” to always have the “books” for what games I’m scoring in the brief case, but that doesn’t happen all the time. From the umps I’ve been around, most are pretty candid in that they don’t usually have a “library” they carry around with them, but generally try to do much the same thing I do.

They go by OBR, or whatever they call the most, then don’t worry about it all that much. If there’s something that gets protested, it will be ironed out by whoever adjudicates the protests. For other things that happen during the game, like “pop up” slides for NCAA, they count on their partners to help them out, or will even actually hear out a coach, unless he gets to be an a******.

Do you find jumping around bites you on the backside very often? I know the umpire’s assn we used this year for JUCO would send us guys who were calling JUCO, D1, local semi-pro, HS, softball, slo-pitch, Mickey Mantle, Legion, BR, LL’s Big League, and tournament ball of all levels. Plus, we even got a few early games called by guys who did games for the local A and AA teams.

I imagine it gets pretty overwhelming at times, and wondered how much you concerned yourself with it. The thing I got a kick out of was that most of the umps said most of the lower level coaches didn’t know enough about he rules to be a big problem, but those old farts who’ve been coaching teams at the same level for 20-30 years could drive ya nuts sometimes.

[GarthB]

Originally Posted by buckweat

Rich,

Read what I said closely. I said he was wrong because he said he wouldn’t call what he identifies as a strike, one that touches his zone, a strike. That defies logic.

I never said I would call a pitch that I idenitfy as a strike, a ball. Nope, just re-read my post. Never said that. Pleae refrain from putting words in my mouth.

I said I identify that pitch as a ball.

RIF

[buckweat]

Originally Posted by GarthB

I never said I would call a pitch that I idenitfy as a strike, a ball. Nope, just re-read my post. Never said that. Pleae refrain from putting words in my mouth.

I said I identify that pitch as a ball.

RIF

I’m sorry if I misunderstood, but … A deuce that takes the knee at the front of the zone… sure sounds like it had to at least touch some part of “your zone”.

Semantics and picking nits aside, and “assuming” you’re not so silly as to believe you can call the zone to such an infinitely close degree that we’d have to get into calculating infinitesimally small numbers, I’ll accept that you don’t identify any pitch you think just touches the zone as a strike. Heck, even QuesTec claims only to be able to be accurate to within ½ inch, so expecting anything more from a human being would be absurd.

All I can say in my defense is, I took “catching the knee to mean the ball was at least an inch or so into the zone. That would mean it had to go through some part of the zone, and then it would follow that you’d be calling the pitch based on something other than what happened “over the plate”.

That does bring up another question though, based on what that QuesTec operator said.

Setting the lines at the top of the belt and at the hollow of the back knee…

The top of the belt was perfectly understandable since the computer automatically raises the line about 2.5 balls. But that bottom line is different.

I always assumed the “bottom” of the zone was determined by an imaginary line parallel to the plate and drawn touching the “hollow between BOTH knee caps. But after I read what he’d written, it struck me that trying to do that would be almost impossible with many batters, since their knees are seldom the same height off the ground.

It would even make it more impossible with guys who take their stance with one of those ridiculously “open” stances, where an ump wouldn’t even see that front knee until the pitch was already on the way, and that would be a very bad time to start trying to figure out a strike zone.

Then, when I looked closer at the rule, the lower level is a line at the hallow beneath the knee cap, it became apparent that it wasn’t saying “KNEES”, it was saying “KNEE”, so what the operator was doing, really made a lot of sense.

What I’m wondering is, how do guys like yourself define it? I can see a computer using only one point maybe 20-25” behind the back part of the plate to draw the line, but that’s one brutal task for a human being!

I know good umps are pretty darn good at that stuff, but thinking about it, an ump’s head is 4-5’ from the front of the plate, and at least a foot or two above it, assuming he’s “locking in” at the top of the inside of the plate. Heck, I have trouble guessing how far from the urinal I am, let alone trying to do the mental match to compute the strike zone.

How do you determine that bottom line, and when do you do it?

[NIump50]

Originally Posted by LMan

I'm confident that Mr Wendelstedt will not sanction the 'practice' of calling breaking balls in the dirt strikes, and that refusal to do so is clear evidence of cowardice

I'll apologize and back off the statement of cowardice and leave it at this:
Most everyone on this thread has said they would not call a strike on a pitch that clearly hit the strike zone if it hits the dirt, one person even said any curve ball caught even a couple inches below the zone should not be a strike.
The reason given when I first posted my opinion, and reiterated many times was that the coaches will give you too much crap, and when I stopped calling that pitch it made life easier and so on and so on.
When I hear those reasons for not calling a strike i come to one conclusion.
Perhaps coward is to strong a term.
In any case I think on this issue the coaches opinion is carrying too much weight.

[NIump50]

Originally Posted by LMan

I'm confident that Mr Wendelstedt will not sanction the 'practice' of calling breaking balls in the dirt strikes, and that refusal to do so is clear evidence of cowardice

1. You forgot the part about the pitch hitting the strike zone.

2. I doubt he'll even respond

3. If he does respond, do you really expect him to say a pitch in the strike zone should be called a ball?

I'll guarantee you that if anyone gets a written response from anyone in MLB it will say something to the effect, 'if a pitch is judged to have entered the strike zone it should be called a strike.'

If you think otherwise, you're quite (naieve). sorry for the spelling

[NIump50]

Originally Posted by GarthB

Tee/Rich:

A deuce that takes the knee at the front of the zone and takes dirt before the catcher did not, to my view, pass through the zone.

I'm as confused as buckwheat on this statement.


How many think the following statement could stand up under scrutiny?

A pitch that takes the knee at the front of the zone did not pass through the zone.

[Dave Hensley]

Originally Posted by NIump50

I'm as confused as buckwheat on this statement.


How many think the following statement could stand up under scrutiny?

A pitch that takes the knee at the front of the zone did not pass through the zone.

You two are confused because you're too busy arguing to spend any effort listening.