Post Season Boo Boos
 

I apologize if this was already posted. The worst was the 2 Yanks standing off 3rd when tagged.

Baseball Video Highlights & Clips | Controversial postseason calls: Who was right? - Video | MLB.com: Multimedia

Yeah, all the boo-boos made the rounds already, right after they happened.

I thought that this post-season's score of blunders and inane explanations would make it markedly more difficult for all of us at umpiring's lower levels to umpire ballgames.

The opposite has been the case. I have been complimented and thanked and praised more then ever. The appreciation of our work has actually been heightened---at least in my area.

Thank you, Tim McClelland! And thank you, C.B. Bucknor!

yea, I just never saw them all together. Usually every post season has one contraversial call, but wow!

there were alot of them, but I still think the safe call on the double play in the Angels /yankee's game was a good call, Eybar never touch the base..

It was the correct call, but was it good? If you've been calling that an out for the last fifty years, and you suddenly not call it, is it good?

And I agree with Kevin, I got nothing but praise for my games after all that nonsense.

There was bad umpiring that didn't make the highlight video too.

One of my favorites was in game 4 when Jeter walked on a 3-1 pitch way outside and in the dirt. The bat never left Jeter's shoulder. Mike Everitt pointed him to 1st base with his left hand, and Dana DeMuth promptly gave the safe sign indicating "no swing." A junior high ump would get dinged for doing that.

I'm surprised Everitt didn't accompany the point with "Ball four, take your base!":rolleyes:

I liked the one where Stewie and Brian went back in time to Poland just prior to the Nazi invasion.

I prefer the "KISS Saves Christmas" episode.

I tried to make a YouTube video of all the close calls the umpires got right, but it went over their 10-minute max length, and I wasn't even close to finished.

That's very clever.

Umpires at the major league level are paid quite well to make the right call 99.something percent of the time. They are supposed to make the right call hundreds and hundreds of times between blown calls. They are expected to blow a call like McClelland's, Cuzzi's or Bucknor's (all easy calls for any umpire) zero percent of the time.

The outcry over this year's post-season umpiring is more than justified.

The pickoff play at 2B is the one which falls under the .something percent missed b/c it is quick in real time and Aybar didn't make it look good either. I can even see the 1st play of the clip being missed trying to watch everything in the play with the high throw and as close as the 1Bman was to being pulled off by the throw.

Those are the only 2 which I can understand missing b/c we have all missed those calls for 1 reason or another and the speed at which the opportunity goes by. The rest should have been done better.

And, I still agree with Layne not giving that DP to Aybar. He was just being lazy.

Aybar never made the play effectively enough to grant him the neighborhood out. Layne was effectively and technically right. And I am an Angel fan.

Good thing we have such a smart guy like you here to let us know which calls are difficult enough to be missed.:rolleyes:

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.

Everyone. Everyone is expecting us to be perfect. Just like every routine ground ball to Jeter is expected to be handled.

But we aren't perfect. And that's part of the allure of the game. If it weren't for our accepted imperfection, we'd be replaced be radar equipped robots and instant replay tomorrow.

There's a big difference between expectations and acceptance. They expect us to be perfect, but accept that we aren't. And that's why they boo.