August 12, 2018

Umpire Adrian Johnson: A Close Pitch Is A Ball; A Pitch Farther Outside Is A Strike

(I forgot to include this in my game recap.)

More Reasons for Robots:

The first batter Chris Sale faced in the bottom of the first inning on Sunday afternoon was Joey Rickard.

Rickard fouled off the first pitch and then took a slider on the outside edge of the strike zone. However, plate umpire Adrian Johnson called it a ball. Sale's next pitch was even further outside - and Johnson called that one a strike!




I would love to see a Twitter feed that collected screenshots of egregious ball/strike calls. Fans of every team could submit gifs; every game would be covered. Seeing all of the wrong calls in one place - and seeing how many of them there are, every single day - could possibly force MLB to institute an electronic strike zone sooner rather than later.

1 comment:

Jim said...

Yep, automated strike zone and actually put a definition for "checked swing" in the rule book. God it's hard getting through to people when they're only interested in money.