FACT

And any umpire that officiates any type of decent baseball and calls balls and strikes strickly by where it crosses the plate, is not officiating decent baseball for very long.....!

I believe the MLB tracking systems (the official ones, not the TV network ones) measure the area over the plate and rate the umpires accordingly.

Except that the pitch that hits the bottom of the zone and then hits the dirt (not sure the exact criteria for this) is properly called a "ball" even in the tracking system

Well, if it's "decent baseball", then you aren't going to be dealing with catchers that set up that deep in the box in the first place. And it's easier to sell a Ball call on a pitch that hits the dirt after nicking the lower part of the zone in "decent baseball" because it will likely be a nasty breaker.

Really? ...and any umpire that decides to just make up his own rules about the strike zone (i.e. "one off on the inside, two off on the outside") is not officiating decent baseball for very long...FACT!

But that begs the question as to what is considered "decent" baseball, I guess.:confused:

What ever works for you!!!!!:)

Mitt question has been answered.

At 12U there's a high probability of a catcher too far back, and a high probability of strikes hitting the dirt because of it. (At the higher levels, there's more velocity/flatter pitches, so fewer in the dirt even if F2 is back). Fundamentally I rarely call a pitch in the dirt a strike. At younger ages in instructional league ball, I'm telling the catcher to move up and often his coach. Tournaments and older ages I'm staying quiet unless asked, and the too deep catcher will cost his pitcher some strikes.

Too far back? Again I reference the size of the catcher's box (agreed, often not even marked on most fields) so how far is TOO FAR for you?...you even acknowledge that a strike can hit the dirt but yet you still say you won't call it a strike, why not? You want to send a message the the HC but by not calling it you are really giving the batter a huge advantage....that is not right at any level.

I dunno...I may not have much experience in this strike-calling thing, but if I call a pitch in the dirt a strike, I'm probably not going to be working much anymore.

just a side note, the MLB tracking system (ZE system) judges the ball from the time it crosses the plate, so initially that pitch that catches the bottom of the zone but hits the dirt is ruled as a missed pitch for the PU... obviously they don't want that called a strike so the supervisors go in each morning and when they check the performance of the umpires they reverse that decision and recalculate the PU's accuracy score so it is scored as a ball

edit: the balls and strikes system they use is the ZE system, the system they use for calls in the field is the SURE system

:eek::eek:I find that hard to believe that in THE PROS they actually cheat and call pitches that touch the strike zone balls. Where is that allowed in the rulebook.:rolleyes::rolleyes::)

"Too far" is far enough that a potential strike in the bottom of the zone can hit the dirt before the mitt. Why won't I call it a strike? If I am fully convinced it was a strike, I'll call it. But I can't remember ever hearing it from a DC for not calling a pitch in the dirt a strike. It's a near certainty to hear from the OC if you call it a strike. And while I don't let potential coach "feedback" influence my calls, I tend to look at that the result as decent calibration/validation.

As for "giving the batter a huge advantage?" Hardly. The very bottom of the zone, and any decent coach will see it and correct his catcher. When I coached Legion ball, if I felt we weren't getting the bottom of the zone, I blamed the catcher far more often than the ump.

I was doing a HS Varsity game and the only negative feedback I heard was on a 12/6 curve ball that the F2 didn't get his mitt under and the pitch hit the dirt. The pitch was a strike all the way but the 1B coach said it hit the dirt.