Friar Watch

How individual umpires call balls and strikes is something fans love to debate. Let’s compare the umps from the last two Padre games: Joe West was behind the plate on 5/15, Ed Rapuano was the man who had to make the controversial call on the final pitch to Kouzmanoff on 5/16.

Joe West 5/15
All pitchers
Green = Strikes
White = Balls

Looks like Joe was not giving the low strike but he was calling the high strike. He was also calling strikes on pitches pretty far inside to a right hander.

Compare that to Ed Rapuano, 5/16:

Rapuano called a strike in the first inning on a fastball to Adrian Gonzalez that was almost in the same spot as the Kouzmanoff pitch. Other than that he didn’t call any strikes in that area.

One thing both umpires share in common is they didn’t call a strike on anything that was beyond the upper and lower limits of the zone (The two high strikes on West’s chart were in the zone for that batter, according to Gameday). They had no problem expanding the zone laterally though. That’s something I’ve noticed before, it seems like most umpires follow a similar pattern. That tracks with what we see in a game. How many times do you see a close low or high ball called a strike? It’s almost always called a ball. Conversely, batters are always rolling their eyes or mouthing off over balls on the inner or outer edge that are called strikes. In fact, if we were watching a game and saw the reverse pattern, a long and narrow strike zone, it would seem bizarre.