Here’s the pitch: Umps struggle with balls, strikes

A few weeks ago I heard from Mike Bryant, father of Chicago Cubs slugger Kris Bryant, the player soon to be named National League Rookie of the Year. It might have been in July, when his son was scuffling.

Mike said Kris had been called out on strikes "X" number of times, and "X" number of times K-Zone or Pitchf/x or some other ballpark pitch-tracking technology had shown these pitches were balls. The second "X" was of lesser value than the first "X," but not by a wide margin.

The Bryant patriarch, a former pro ballplayer himself, suggested that because other batters were being called out on pitches outside the strike zone — this is especially true when Joe West and Laz Diaz are behind the plate — I should write a story about how bad these umpires are.

I said I'd consider it, if I had proof that backed up what he was saying.

Now I have some.

A couple of other guys recently have written stories about this topic.

One report, by Noah Davis and Michael Davis at Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight, was called "Umpires Are Less Blind Than They Used to Be."

The second was not as complimentary of the men in blue (who mostly wear black). This one was by Business Insider. It was titled "It Is Time for Major League Baseball Umpires to Stop Calling Balls and Strikes."

This story said they should let a machine do it.

You could almost see Joe Maddon cupping his hands over his ears, the universal gesture for a replay review. (Although with 43 challenges, the Cubs ranked only sixth in the big leagues starting Sunday. The Red Sox and Rays led with 49.)

I'm of two minds on this.

The first is that umpires have a difficult job and they generally get it right and these ballgames are long enough already, without managers cupping their hands over their ears. And that we all make mistakes — it's only human — and that when an umpire errs on national TV, it gives us something to talk about at the water cooler the next day besides whatever Donald Trump might have said on the stump.

The second mind is that if the technology exists — if a manager is allowed to cup his hands over his ears every time a catcher takes a step up the third base line to catch a ball and tag a runner (it was terrible that Buster Posey got injured but had it been somebody such as Jarrod Saltalamacchia that had gotten run over, home plate collisions probably would still be part of the game) — then why not use it for balls and strikes, too?

The story by Nate Silver's guys said that by using pitch-tracking technology to review balls and strikes, umpires have improved their correct percentage from a tad better than 83 percent in 2008 to 86 percent today.

That's good, but the percentage was lower than I thought. I thought it might be closer to 95 percent.

So what does it say when fans sitting on living room sofas can call balls and strikes more accurately than Joe West or Laz Diaz, even on their best days?

When everybody was watching football Sunday, I watched the Cardinals-Cubs game. Both starting pitchers complained they were being squeezed by home plate umpire Alfonso Marquez. The Cardinals' pitcher, the highly animated Carlos Martinez, even dropped to his knees in supplication. Marquez didn't care for that. After the inning, Martinez apologized.

Here's what can be gleaned from the statistics: The average MLB game has 288 pitches. Batters swing around 47 percent of the time, meaning an umpire has about 154 balls and strikes to call.

If on average the umps are wrong about 14 percent of the time, that means they are wrong around 22 times per game. And not all pitches are borderline and difficult to call. So the percentage of mistakes on close calls actually is higher.

Anyway, by using the most generous math, it means that over the course of a season the umpires are wrong more than 50,000 times.

I wonder what the statistics are for getting one's order wrong at Jack in the Box?

I recognize that calling the pitch on the outside corner correctly when you are set up on the inside corner can be difficult. It's like late at night, when somebody drives up buzzed and orders a Portobello Mushroom Buttery Jack without the mushrooms and without the butter.

I also recognize that the baseball season is a long season. It's almost longer than the NASCAR season.

But 50,000 blown calls still seems like a lot.

No wonder Bryce Harper is always jawing at the umpires.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski