I have to agree with Kevin regarding McClelland. The missed DP at 3B was bad enough. The appeal play on the sacrifice fly was just atrocious.

There were plenty of missed calls you would not expect from a major league umpire this postseason.

It was a general citation, not just mine.

You are correct even though you are trying to be sarcastic. If you knew 1/4 of the baseball this man does, you would know more than the majority of people do. If you had ever sat down and discussed baseball at length with him, as I have, you wouldn't smart off.

A tip of the creased, black six-stitch to you, sir.

I don't care how much baseball anyone knows, that doesn't mean anything when it comes to sports officiating. It is obvious that he doesn't understand officiating by reading what he wrote.

In the real world officials are expected to get calls incorrect. Any time that an official actually has to make a decision there is a chance that it will not be the right one. Certain calls are easier than others but there are no calls which are so easy that the odds of the official getting it incorrect are 0%.

Color me surprised that the topic stayed on baseball at length.

You are correct, and this is irrelevant to what was actually said.

Get a dictionary. He never said that the odds of those particular calls being missed was 0% (and as someone who loves stats, it's a pet peeve of mine to display odds as percentages.) He said the expectation was to blow the call 0% of the time.

Do you expect to get into an accident when you drive your car, or do you realize there's a chance?

No, we're expected to get every call correct. We're expected to be perfect, and then improve from there. That's Umpiring 101. Every umpire knows this, and that's what make our profession so difficult (and cool).

Heck, if we were expected to make mistakes, anyone would do this.

I don't agree with this. We know that we'll miss some. Every manager I've talked to in this regard has said that they expect calls to be missed occasionally. Now, this is in the general sense, because no one expects a particular call to be incorrect, but this whole idea that people expect us to be perfect just doesn't ring true.

Some of the worst umpires I've met were experts on baseball.

No, that's better described as a whine.

Professional umpires receive good ratings when they meet the expectation of 95% accuracy.

I'd wager that McClelland and other MLB umpires the experts here b!tch about meet that criteria regardless of their much publicized errors.

Who is expecting that? Fans, TV announcers? They don't know anything about officiating; see my post above.

The reality is that calls will be made incorrectly. No call is so easy that it will never be made incorrectly.

I'm hoping to break you of creasing your caps one day, Kevin. :D

Hope you have a Happy New year!

Some of the calls that were missed this postseason were easy, and the probability of them being missed was very close to 0%. Not many people watching would have (or should have) expected those misses.

And by reading Kevin's posts I would say he understands umpiring just fine.

Look at it this way, if the umpire had called the out at 2nd base, do you think there would have been a peep from the Yankees? Never know for sure, but have to think highly unlikely. Because thats the expected call. Thats baseball. Every sport is different in its play, and its officiating.
And why wouldnt the Yankees say anything on an out call? Because that play has happened thousands of times, and its been an out. And because the Yankees want that same call if a similar play happens later in the game/series. And Im sure there has been times in the past, even recent, where the INF didnt actually touch the base, and its an out.

If the umpire had called that an out, and they replayed it, the announcers wouldve picked up on the non touch of 2nd, but they would have had the same explanation for the viewing audience.... that play is always called an out.