![]() More likely, they just drew the rulebook zone because, hey, it’s the rulebook. Maybe the guys at TBS really like dingers, and this is their plan to bring back 10-8 slugfests. Maybe they’re trying to shame MLB into getting the strike zone back to a smaller size in order to get more offense in the game. If we wanted to give them the utmost benefit of the doubt, maybe TBS is trying to draw attention to the fact that umpires don’t call the rulebook strike zone anymore. The box is simply deceiving, and does not reflect the reality of what either umpires or players should be expecting in terms of called balls and called strikes. Even on pitches basically down the middle, the very small size of their graphic makes it look like a hitter pulled a pitch on the outside corner. TBS is the outlier here their box is tiny. ESPN, Fox, MLB Network - channels that broadcast baseball games with regularity, it should be noted - all have strike zone graphics that represent the modern-day reality of the fact that the zone is just larger than the rulebook states, and so, when you’re watching games on those channels, the overlay on TV matches up with what the umpire actually calls. TBS, for some reason, has decided to build their strike zone graphic on the rulebook zone, which hasn’t been particularly close to the actual strike zone called by MLB umpires in probably close to a decade. Jon Roegele just published a look at the 2015 called strike zone, showing that the zone grew slightly again this year, and the zone continues to be much wider than the rulebook zone. But Cuzzi’s strike zone wasn’t really abnormally wide, given what MLB umpires call strikes nowadays. When you look at the map of Cuzzi’s calls for the whole game, you see that a Cardinals batter did indeed take a pitch as far off the plate, and it was called a ball, so yes, the extreme lefty strike went against the Cubs once and didn’t go against the Cardinals, which is unfortunate and unfair. Here’s an example of one of the calls that they particularly didn’t like, with Chris Coghlan getting rung up on a fastball away.Īgain, freeze-framed for when TBS’ graphic shows where they think the ball was. On ESPN, Jesse Rogers wrote about the team was hampered by a “wide strike zone” in the headline of his game recap, and Cubs fans on Twitter were livid with Cuzzi both that night and the next day. John Lackey dominated the Cubs, and they believed that Phil Cuzzi’s ridiculously wide strike zone was part of the reason. ![]() Let’s take a look at another example, this one from the Cubs/Cardinals series. Notice the black dots on the left-hand side of the map those are called balls in the “lefty strike” area, as Porter did not really give pitchers too much off the plate against left-handed hitters. This was not only not an extremely wide strike zone, as everyone on Twitter believed while watching the game with the influence of TBS’ strike zone box, it was actually a pretty narrow zone by MLB standards. It wasn’t it was a pitch just off the outside that is called a strike in MLB with a decent amount of frequency.Īnd look at the rest of the pitches in those plots. You can argue that it’s a toss-up call that went against the Mets, especially given the specific count, but TBS’ graphics package makes it look like an egregious miss by Alan Porter. But it is within the range of where umpires generally call strikes. There’s no question that it’s a borderline pitch - you can see two other pitches in similar areas were called balls in the same game - and in an 0-2 count, when the strike zone shrinks in size the most dramatically, that pitch is called a ball more often than a strike. Now, you might say Twitter is a platform built on getting people to give knee-jerk reactions in real-time without considering the accuracy of their comments, and I’d agree with you, but the differences in number of complaints between the zones in the ALDS and NLDS have been very obvious. During nearly every game of the two NLDS series, Twitter has lit up with complaints from fans who think the zone is far too wide to both sides of the plate. We’ve seen teams win with speed, power, pitching, defense, and sometimes just good luck the games have been wildly different and wildly entertaining.īut if there’s been one consistent theme on a nightly basis, it’s been that fans of of the Cubs, Cardinals, Mets, and/or Dodgers have felt like they were getting absolutely screwed by the home plate umpires strike zone. ![]() The postseason started off with dominating pitching performances from aces on the road, but then yesterday, the four games were mostly slugfests, with batters obliterating the “good pitching always beats good hitting” mantra. The playoffs have been a bit of a roller coaster so far. ![]()
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