Friar Watch

David Wells was ejected from Saturday’s game for arguing balls and strikes. Did he have a case?

Green = called balls
Red = called strikes
Yellow = the only called ball to Francoeur when he hit the home run

It looks fine to me. The one ball to Francoeur in particular wasn’t even close. I bet Wells was upset about those three balls at the lower right corner; he needs those to be successful.

Maddux was also chirping about the zone during Sunday’s game. He was also dealing with CB Bucknor, widely regarded as one of the worst umpires in the game. Was Bucknor really at fault?

Surprisingly, that looks pretty fair to me. I really expected Bucknor to have blown some calls but nothing really jumps out at me here. I’m sure there are several pitches that Maddux is used to getting, particularly the balls on the outer half of the plate to right handers.

The usual caveats apply of course: the accuracy of the Gameday data and whether the ball crossed the plate after the Gameday system measured it. But it looks to me like we just had a couple of veteran pitchers who weren’t getting the calls they were used to.