Close Call Sports objectively tracks and analyzes close and controversial calls in sport, with great regard for the rules and spirit of the game. Developed from The Left Field Corner's MLB Umpire Ejection Fantasy League (UEFL), baseball's number one source for umpire ejections, video instant replay reviews and their corresponding calls, with great regard for the rules and spirit of the game.
Umpire Jordan Baker Nearly Called a Perfect Game and the World Will Never Know
On Day 1 of UEFL f/x—in which we introduced preliminary/day-of vs final/day-after plate score reporting—we discovered that umpire Jordan Baker nearly called a perfect game in Cleveland (one pitch shy), but thanks to the MLB computer's vertical strike zone blind spot, the world may never know.
During Game 1 of the Yankees-Indians AL Wild Card Series, HP Umpire Baker saw 166 callable pitches and, according to baseball's real-time pitch tracking computer, officiated 163 of those 166 pitches correctly for a plate score of 98.2%.
As we discussed in our UEFL f/x 3.0 Plate Score primer, baseball's computer quietly changes its grading system overnight, after the computer essentially double-checks itself to account for errors caused by the computer's inability to see certain vertical strike zone attributes in real-time.
Baker's game in Cleveland was no exception: While the computer scored Baker as 163/166 = 98.2% on the day of his game, MLB's computer went to work overnight re-processing and re-grading Baker's work, ultimately returning a result we hypothesized would likely occur: it increased Baker's score from 163/166 = 98.2% to 165/166 = 99.4%, an increase of +2 pitches and +1.2% accuracy.
Jordan Baker's preliminary (pre-processed) plate score for NYY-CLE WC Game 1 was 98.2%.
Perhaps a more convincing way of putting it would be the inverse of accuracy, or what Mark Williams at Boston University would call, the "Bad Call Rate" (BCR). Thus, Baker's preliminary, day-of BCR was 100-98.2= 1.8%, a strong performance in its own right.
However, after post-game processing, MLB's morning-after BCR for Baker decreased from 1.8% to just 0.6%. And, thanks to the lack of fanfare surrounding the post-game processing procedure, fans who saw Baker's game in real-time will never know what he called a better game than what ESPN K-Zone initially showed.
Baker's final (post-game processed) plate score for NYY-CLE WC Game 1 was 99.4%.
Put differently, the computer preliminarily charged Baker with three incorrect calls (163/166), but after processing changed its grade to just one incorrect call (165/166). For the computer, to decrease its red marks on Baker's game by two-of-three pitches or 66.7%, constitutes an incredibly statistically significant adjustment.
And this adjustment rate of 66.7%—which would be known as a failure rate had the computer made these calls in real-time, as would be the case with a robot umpire or computerized strike zone proposal, such as Automated Ball/Strike System (ABS)—is a blatant Achilles heel in the ABS experiment and one reason why, despite sign-off from the umpires' union and Commissioner Rob Manfred's vow to put computers in baseball games, MLB has, as of yet, been unable to assign a RoboUmp to call balls and strikes.