Getting an Edge: Breaking down the unbiased LCS numbers

Amid accusations of umpire bias during the League Championship Series, both National and American, the discerning fan turned to objective analysis: If the Cardinals truly were gifted umpire calls over the Dodgers, the numbers would show it, the same principle conceivably holding true for the Red Sox and Tigers.

For better or worse, the numbers show that the Cardinals experienced a net advantage of +20 pitches during the 2013 NLCS vs. Los Angeles; the Red Sox +12 during their ALCS vs. Detroit.

In the grand scheme of this type of analysis, league average theoretically and logically should be a net neutral (plus zero) result, that's what average is all about—yet St. Louis, for instance, came away with 20 calls that a simply complex piece of technology says should have gone the Dodgers' way based on the rules book definition of the strike zone. For the purpose of this discussion, we concentrate on the NLCS, ultimately concluding that bias did not factor into the series, despite St. Louis' clear pitch calling advantage.

At this point, one might be tempted to oust the overt "bias" inherent with a 20-call swing—especially if one bleeds blue. It certainly doesn't help that on Game 6 eve, the media churned out the report, "NLCS umpiring crew not pleased with Puig." Puig, of course, is a Dodger, as is 2012 ejections leader Don Mattingly.

Yet in this post-Tim Donaghy era of officiating to the tune of Pitch f/x and Zone Evaluation precision, could, as the Twitterverse invariably suggests every night, an umpiring agenda be to blame?

The first step to proving anything with numbers is inevitably to gain a thorough understanding of what those numbers represent—We know St. Louis had a net advantage of 20 pitches, but what does that mean?

It means simply that pitch f/x determined a pitch thrown by a St. Louis pitcher called a strike was located out of the strike zone OR a pitch thrown by a Los Angeles pitcher called a ball was located in the zone twenty more times than an LA pitch out of the zone was called a strike or a STL pitch in the zone was balled.

It has nothing—yet absolutely everything—to do with catcher framing analysis, which is our next step to understanding the +20 conundrum.

In 2013, the St. Louis Cardinals finished first amongst MLB teams with 24.07 real runs added due to catcher pitch framing (getting the extra strike on pitches out of the zone [+]). Meanwhile, the Dodgers finished 23rd with 14.51 runs lost due to catcher pitch framing (pitches in the zone called balls [-]).

To further the point, Dodgers ace Clayton Kershaw's "robo-ump" or league average catcher WAR increases from 6.5 to 6.7 when framing is neutralized while Cards ace Adam Wainwright drops from 6.2 to 5.8.

More to the point, catcher performance results compiled by Mike Fast—albeit to a bench mark of Fast's strike zone maps which deviate from the "rule book" zone—found that in 2011, the Molina brothers (namely Jose, but Cards catcher Yadi as a rising star) were the epitome for "best"—Yadi's net extra strikes-per-pitch rate was +.007 while LA catcher A.J. Ellis floundered near that "worst" benchmark, drawing a -.022 rate for those years studied.

Because the value of extra strikes per pitch considers the likelihood of an extra strike being called per thrown callable pitch and not just borderline pitches, similar to the overall UEFL accuracy method, we consider all 937 callable pitches during the Dodgers-Cardinals series.

Multiplying 937 by the net .015 rate (.022-.007)—the series was exclusively caught by Molina and Ellis—suggests the Cardinals should have netted an extra net 14.055 ball/strike calls, which is just six short of the +20 swing actually recorded.

To determine whether this difference of six is simply due to chance or is significantly significant, we create a 95% confidence interval. The interval is (8.34, 23.33), suggesting that the +20-pitch swing is not statistically significant and the deviation from 14-to-20 is due to chance.

In other words, the umpires' "missed calls" at the plate during the Dodgers-Cardinals series were not out of the ordinary and were due to chance—the numbers suggest bias did not play a role during that series.

All of that said, framing makes its appearance, most notably, in how a catcher receives a pitch. For instance, Xander Bogaerts' controversial 7th inning walk versus Max Scherzer on Saturday night resulted from a 3-2 breaking ball over the outer edge of home plate, at the knees, that catcher Avila received poorly—by (1) moving his glove and reaching out over the plate and (2) pulling the pitch back towards the center of the strike zone, Avila gave the impression that the pitch was worse than it actually was.

Similar poor receiving by a catcher occurred during Game 6 of the NLCS when Kershaw threw two consecutive pitches within the rules book strike zone that were balled after Ellis made the pitches look worse than they actually were. A rousing double followed the ensuing 2-0 (instead of 0-2) pitch.

There are two schools of thought: The prevailing attitude is to reward the proper pitches—both thrown and caught well—and to make the "expected call" when possible. The second is that umpires must call the rules book strike zone in spite of a catcher's potentially poor performance.

This is what happens when a butchered catch, located within the strike zone, is called a strike: Jim Joyce calls Wilson Ramos out on an inside corner pitch the catcher didn't see coming
Another instance of a catcher's too-eager sell job on a strike, Umpire Kulpa properly rules K3 regardless / Ted Barrett ejects Reyes after strike three at the bottom of the zone is pulled back up

More video: CB Bucknor ejects Fredi Gonzalez on a beautifully caught pitch off the plate called a ball
And a failure to hit a spot pitch on the corner improperly ruled ball four