I don’t know how umpires or officials in other sports are evaluated.
In baseball, do they have cameras everywhere, so that each pitch is evaluated, and then they compare that with the umpire’s call of ball or strike on the pitch?
Then I know they have challenges on safe or out calls on the basepaths.
Just wondering if each umpire gets a percentage score or how this all works.
Just thinking too, that if umpires are shown to be wrong way too often, they should not be in this line of work.
I wonder too, this year they started the system of challenging balls and strikes, how often has the umpire been overruled on those challenges?
They have a camera down each foul line at the top of the stadium. These take multiple pictures of the pitch as it approaches the plate, which are then triangulated to estimate where the pitch was as it crossed the plate.
The strike zone box that we see on TV was not the final strike zone for each batter, which was calibrated after the game. I don’t know if this has changed, since the strike zone is now known for each batter in advance, based on the batter’s height.
There are more cameras which follow the action and can be shown on TV. There are still more cameras which are available to the folks in the national office, who rule on team challenges.
I think that major league umpires are evaluated based on their accuracy for both balls and strikes. I also think that minor league umpires are evaluated on either balls and strikes, and the evaluation incentivizes them to call one or the other, I don’t remember which. Silly, but that’s baseball.
There are public sites showing umpire evaluations. I don’t know if these are the same numbers that baseball is using. Given that the umpires have a union, it is difficult to get rid of a bad umpire. They do seem to have encouraged a few of them to retire. The bad ones don’t get extra money for working the playoffs. Angel Hernandez retired in 2024, Laz Diaz will retire at the end of this year and so will CB Bucknor, three of the worst umpires.
The umpires have been wrong on about 50% of ball/strike challenges. Catchers have been best on challenges at 59%, hitters next at 48%, then pitchers at 37%.