The Official Forum - Umpiring Metrics

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So, you know everything about the two teams (or the other team, if you're one of them). You know all about the park and how it plays. You've got up-to-date weather information and crowd size projections. You're all set and know exactly what kind of game it will be, right? Well, it turns out that there's one more factor to check on.

This week's topic is a good reminder for me of why I publish my email address. I got a note last week from a player's parent, who will remain nameless in case the umpires turn out to be unhappy about this stuff but who is thanked, asking whether there was a way to measure umpires. I love the idea; the umpires' names are in most box scores, but no one's taken a comprehensive look at them at the college level, as far as I can tell.

The full report contains three measures that I've come up with. I don't know that they give a specific measure of quality, but they do provide some useful information on what kind of umpire each caller is. The three measures are Relative Run Rate (RRR), Relative Strikeout Rate (RKR), and Relative Walk Rate (RWR). RRR is the number of runs allowed by pitchers called by a home plate umpire (only home plate umpires are included in this study, since the base umps don't really have much that can be measured) divided by the average number of runs that those pitchers allowed during the season. RKR and RWR are equivalent measures for strikeouts and walks. The data included is for the 2005 and 2006 seasons and includes all umpires who showed up in at least ten box scores during that time.

An interesting read.

According to the article, pitchers gave up 85% more runs per inning with Dennis Walker behind the plate than they did the whole two-year span 2005-2006...and pitchers gave up 48% fewer runs per inning with Bob Simmons behind the plate than they did the whole two-year span 2005-2006.

The full list can be found here.