Friar Watch

Didi mentioned in the comments that there was some discussion of who was getting the calls last night. Let’s look at the charts for both starters.

Green = Balls
Red = Called Strikes

Greg Maddux:

Wow, what a mess. Balls were called strikes, strikes were called balls. What gives? Well we’ve seen before that guys who throw with a lot of movement will have conflicts between Gameday and what the umpire called. It could be the umpire is fooled by the movement or it could be that the pitch catches enough of the plate after it crosses the front edge, which is where Gameday is looking. One thing I think this chart rules out is that Maddux was getting strikes because of his reputation. There’s nearly as many balls called on pitches in the zone as there are strikes outside the zone.

Matt Belisle:

Well at least home plate umpire Adam Dowdy was consistently inconsistent.