How about an opinion:

[UmpJM]

Tim,

Interesting question.

I believe that soliciting input from coaches for an umpire evaluation system would most likely be a good thing.

While I wouldn't give it a ton of weight in the overall evaluation scheme (I don't know, maybe 25% max...), I believe there are some aspects of our umpiring that coaches have a unique perspective on - and it would be good to include that perspective whether the purpose of the evaluation was to rank/score umpires or simply help them improve their umpiring.

As a couple of posters have suggested, the vast majority of coaches do not know HOW to umpire - they don't know the proper positioning techniques, they don't know proper mechanics, they don't know rotations & responsibilities, etc. Evaluation of those aspects I would think best left to umpires.

However, there are a number of other aspects of umpiring - things like game management, communications, decisiveness and consistency of calls, professionalism, etc. that I feel the coaches DO have a useful perspective on.

Like it or not, they are our customers. If you're not interested in their perspective, you're not really interested in being the best umpire you can be.

In terms of bias, I have found most coaches to be fairly reasonable and objective - once you remove them from the heat of a game situation.

So, I would solicit input from coaches, but it would be different input than I would solicit from evaluating umpires.

JM