North Shore Tavern Mound Visit: The worst ball/strike calls of 2022

In the world of technology, the "singularity" is a hypothetical future where computer and artificial intelligence growth can no longer be controlled. It theorizes that technologies will unpredictably and irreversibly alter our environment, perhaps to detrimental results to all living beings.

It's a terrifying potential future, but it's one we don't have to worry about now. Not as long as Angel Hernandez is still calling balls and strikes in major-league games.

The Pirates' 2022 season is in the books, giving every analytics nerd what we all secretly long for: A full season's data set. And what better way to celebrate not having to write the phrase "small sample size" for five months than reliving the worst calls of the season? (Well, there probably are better ways, but that's the data I sorted through this week.)

I’ve done this feature four times now, and every time I’ve been upfront that I’m ripping off Jeff Sullivan, the former FanGraphs writer who is now currently working for the Rays. I have different criteria to determine each one of these calls. For the worst strike call, I’m looking for how close the pitch was to any part of the zone. For the worst ball call, I’m measuring based on how close it was to the center of the zone.

We start with the hitters who were punished for having a good batting eye. The winner this year is Ben Gamel, who on Aug. 3 against the Brewers watched a 96-mph Freddy Peralta fastball land outside but still get called for strike one:

I purposefully cut that gif a little longer to include Andy Haines' and Derek Shelton's reactions.That's good stuff.

In defense of home plate umpire Ed Hickox, it is a belt-high fastball, but going by back of the envelope calculations, that's about four inches outside. Everything turned out fine for the Pirates and Gamel in this one. He drew a walk and the Pirates would come back to win as part of a weekend sweep that quite possibly kept the Brewers out of the postseason.

The same could not be said for Michael Chavis, who had the worst strike three call of the season. On Sept. 15 in New York, Chavis thought he had worked the count full by taking a fastball away, but was instead wrung up on a 97 mph Seth Lugo fastball away.

Chavis was designated for assignment 11 days later.

But bad calls go both ways. So while Gamel's called strike was the furthest outside of any player in a Pirate game this season, both David Bednar and Eric Stout got a couple of free strikes on June 30 and August 17, respectively:

The ump giveth and taketh away, which is important to remember when a pitcher doesn't get the call. And the recipient of the worst called ball of the season is Wil Crowe. On May 11, he delivered a slider to Dodgers shortstop Trea Turner that stayed up, but was still clearly in the zone. The scorebug operator went as far as to make the count 1-1 because they believed Crowe had just thrown a strike. Home plate umpire Jansen Visconti disagreed.

This is quite the coincidence, but Visconti and Hickox are actually part of the same umpiring crew, who are lead by crew chief Jerry Meals. Can't make stuff like that up.

Finding a worst ball four was far easier to find. Baseball Savant tracks what pitches are in the "heart" of the plate, meaning not right on the black of the strike zone. This year, the Pirates just had one ball four on a pitch in that range, and it was JT Brubaker to Bo Bichette on Sept. 4:

On the offensive side, the lucky duck of the season is Kevin Newman, who got away with not offering at this 96 mph Zach Pop sinker on July 11 against the Marlins:

There are a couple factors in play here for how Newman got a freebie. He was squaring up to bunt and pulled back at the last second, and catcher Jacob Stallings did a poor job receiving the pitch, taking his glove higher than where he received the throw. It ended up being an inconsequential call, though, as Newman grounded out shortly after.

Perhaps that should be the takeaway from a piece like this. That to err is human, and a lot of these calls don't have a major impact on the game being played. Robo umps are an inevitability, but not for at least a few more years. The technology just isn't quite there yet.

So for now, we'll continue to call games the same way people did in the 1800s, and watch Angel Hernandez occasionally just pull a grade-A botch job.