Strike zone

[buckweat]

On another baseball BB, I'm involved in a thread discussing the strike zone.

On individual made the following post.

The model I try to use for calling balls and strikes differs quite a bit from what your suggesting. Imagine a plate of glass suspended in the air. The front of the glass is directly above the front lip of the plate. The glass is 18" wide, and starts at a point halfway between the hitter's belt and the top of his shoulders when he is standing in his normal batting stance. The bottom of the glass ends at the hollow just below the hitter's kneecaps. There is no debth to the glass plate.

As I observe the pitch I register what I see and try and answer; did the ball break the plate of glass? Did any part of the ball touch any part of that glass plate? The secondary clues that make up much of this list just confirm or conflict with my assesment of the condition that glass plate is in.

I understand that the zone is pretty much up to the umpire’s judgment, but I’m of the belief that the zone is in fact 3 dimensional, not 2, and that what happens after the ball passes the plate shouldn’t have any bearing at all on the call.

As I said, I understand that in practice, many factors are involved, but I also believe the rules defining what the strike zone is, shouldn’t really be affected.

In practice, do most experienced umps try to take into account a pitch such as a slow curve “falling” into the zone, or something like a “flat” slider from a side armed guy missing the front edge but touching the zone someplace past the front of the plate?