This is one of my favorite stories to write every year.
There are few things that bring all fans together like complaining about bad ball and strike calls. Most umpire decisions are reviewable now, but the most important aspect of their jobs is still subject to human error.
Nobody’s perfect. And in a year like this, umps get a bit more of a free pass because they didn’t get a spring training either.
But we can still point out the worst calls against the Pirates this year.
We’ll start with the pitchers, where the Pirates got a noticeable boost in the framing department from Jacob Stallings. He was able to steal a lot of strikes, but there were also a fair amount of pitches in the zone that were called balls.
As a staff, the Pirates had 155 pitches in the GameDay strike zone called a ball. That was the 17th most in baseball, so a bit fewer than average. The pitcher who was jipped the most often was Derek Holland, with the umpire missing the call 22 times, tied for the 22nd-most in baseball.
The worst called ball came from someone who only had two calls go against him this season: Yacksel Rios. Trying to hold onto a 7-6 lead late, Rios delivered a pitch right down the middle to start his at-bat with CJ Cron:
Going through the rest of the league’s called balls, I believe this is the worst in the entire sport this season. It certainly is the worst fastball, which would have the least amount of movement, which would seemingly make it easier to call.
You could see Stallings talk to the home plate umpire after the call, but it was a clear cross up. Stallings was calling for a breaking pitch low and outside. Rios fired a fastball. So even though it was clearly in the strike zone, you can’t really blame Ramon De Jesus for calling it a ball and not rewarding Rios for a clear mistake pitch.
Cross-ups were a common theme early in the season. The Pirates have used an elaborate set of signs the past few years to try to prevent other teams from stealing them. They took some grief for it last year, at least until the Astros and Red Sox scandals hit.
"Opposing teams' broadcasters make fun of us a lot for using multiple signs with no one on base,” Stallings said during PirateFest in January. After a comedic pause, he continued, "So now everybody kind of knows why."
Protecting your signs is obviously imperative, but when it comes at the cost of this...
...the signs needed some tweaking.
“It's new for everyone and it's new for me too,” Stallings said about the signs and the number of cross-ups on Aug. 18. “... It's challenging for me because I'm thinking through what pitch I want to call, then I have to think through, ‘All right, what sign sequence are we doing here?’ so I don't mess it up. We're going to try to simplify it. We’re going to try to make sure it doesn't happen quite as much anymore.”
To Stallings’ and the staff’s credit, the cross ups did seem to drop dramatically over the final month of the season.
As for the offense, the Pirates took 244 called strikes out of the zone, the 12th most in baseball. Josh Bell saw the most called strikes outside of the Gameday strike zone at 35, tied with Eugenio Suarez of the Reds for the seventh most in baseball.
But Bell wasn’t hurt by the most egregious strike call for the Pirates this year. That happened to Bryan Reynolds, and it came on Aug. 14 against the Reds.
Sonny Gray offered Reynolds a curveball that was over the heart of the plate…
...but about a foot low.
Granted Gray has a very good 12-to-6 curveball, so it looked like a strike for a bit, but catcher Tucker Barnhart picked that just a few inches off of the ground. Reynolds didn’t fight it, and later struck out looking.
Just to round out the article with the calls that actually helped the Pirates, 135 pitches in the strike zone were called a ball, but that was the fourth fewest in baseball. For the pitchers, 254 pitches out of the zone were called a strike, the seventh most.
“Robo umps” and automated strike zones could be coming at some point over the next few years. If they do, the game will lose some of its character, but games will be better called. It’s up to each of us to see if that trade is worth it.
