Atlanta Braves Morning Chop: Joe West is a Bad Umpire
The Strike Zone Was Simply a Reference Point for Joe West to Call Almost Anything He Wanted Last Night
The notion that Joe West is a bad umpire is not new. He’s made a name for himself in baseball for 3 reasons: the ‘West Vest’, country music, and bad umpiring.
The latter trait was well on display last night. Jeff’s writeup last night showed that via ESPN’s graphic. Here is a more specific set of indicators from BrooksBaseball.net (graphics are drawn from the umpire’s perspective, facing the pitcher).
The results were particularly egregious for the starboard-siders, with at least 8 balls out of the strike zone being called as strikes. In all honesty, this chart doesn’t make his calls seem as bad as they appeared last night live. In particular, David Price appeared to get multiple calls well inside to RHH’s for strikeouts, yet only 4 such strikes are shown on the chart for the game despite the fact that Price certainly was pounding those edges of both sides of the plate. One pitch called as a strike was nearly 6 inches inside (likely either to Castro or Francouer).
And – by the way – that isn’t even counting the strikes that were erroneously called as balls. These are represented by the green symbols in the graphics above appearing on or inside the solid black-lined actual strike zone… a term West seems entirely unfamiliar with. You could fairly argue for up to a dozen of these.
Braves’ pitching was only able to manage to entice West to make 3 errant strike calls last night – 2 vs. RHH.
I’m not even going to bother with the box score for today (though here’s the link for the curious)… with calls like this and reactions like the Braves’ hitters were having to those calls, it’s not terribly instructive information. It’s obviously bad enough that Atlanta can’t hit its way out of a paper bag on a normal day, but to also have the umpire conspiring against you doesn’t help matters at all.
When the strike zone changes, everything changes. Hitters do not know how to react or adjust. They assume that pitches in certain places are supposed to be balls. When they aren’t, confusion sets in. They get behind in the count and mindsets are altered. They can ‘chase’ the pitches, but it’s hard to do that on-the-fly when you have been trained into swinging only at strikes.
For the pitcher, it’s like going to a store and finding out that everything is available on a huge sale. You start going into sections of the store that you don’t normally even frequent, for it’s easy, cheap, and there’s few consequences for going back there – again and again. David Price exploited that last night.
Umpires should be invisible. The best ones are transparent to the game. You can argue that this column is about whining about the umpiring instead of the play on the field if you like, but that’s missing the point. Whether the Braves might have ultimately won of lost last night isn’t relevant to this key point: Umpire Joe West changed the game last night, and that’s a very bad thing.
Joe West has a reputation. It’s a bad one. Stories have been written. Rankings have been made. Nothing changes.