Posted on 07/14/2026 10:50:32 AM PDT by Mr. Mojo
Things got testy in a game between the Toronto Blue Jays and San Diego Padres over the weekend. Home plate umpire Jen Pawol ruled that Padres hitter Sung-Mun Song didn't make his ABS challenge in time, resulting in Padres hitting coach Steven Souza Jr. being ejected after he took exception with the ruling.
Later in the game, the Blue Jays were heated with Pawol over a controversial balk ruling brought home a run for the Blue Jays.
After the game, MLB writer Dan Clark noted how much Pawol has struggled throughout the year with Grok, X's AI assistant for premium users, which, statistically, has her worse than controversial former umpire Angel Hernandez.
(Excerpt) Read more at sports.yahoo.com ...
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Yes but she was probably promoted to the majors because of DEI. If she can’t call balls and strikes, no player will respect her. They will ignore her.
Stupid decision.
I watched a game and the umps were overturned 9 times by batters and catchers. They were really bad calls.
I used to listen to sports radio, but when I started hearing chatty 20 year old girls running their mouths about something they have no idea about, I change the channel.
Young brats that have never played the game are “experts” in the game?
Completely agree. There have been a few female Circuit Court judges who would have been great Supreme Court Justices, but were shot down by Democrats.
There is an American female ref at the World Cup. She got 2-3 matches and performed very well.
Oh, my gosh…please tell me that is from a movie!
Naked Gun?
Looks like it
The whole country went down the crapper when we gave women the right to vote.
Yeah, but they think they can run the whole entire world. Just ask ‘em.
No, we can't, not anymore, ever.
I just looked at her picture, are we sure she is female? She looks like she would hit laz.
The Bible says being ruled by women is a curse...
I watched several games umped by Jen Pawol last year - haven’t seen any this year. In the games I watched she did fine - certainly as good as the average male ump. And I’ve seen many games where I wondered what game the (male) home plate ump was watching - they all have bad games and botched calls. Now that ABS is clarifying the strike zone, they need to address check swings - they get appealed to the base umpire and everyone calls it differently.
It’s Enrico Pallazzo!
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%.
I don’t think Suzyn knows baseball, only what she’s heard. She is a good reporter, people will talk to her on the pre-game show, she gets good info for the post-game show. I was hoping she would retire when John Sterling did.
Dave Sims is no great shakes as a play-by-play announcer. I yell at the radio, where are the baserunners?
IIRC, WFAN recently tried a program devoted to women’s sports. It didn’t stay on long. They’ve gone through periods when they’d give the scores for the WNBA, but those don’t last long, and they get very few calls about the WNBA.
Danielle McCartan is very good, Lori Rubinson is OK, Kim Jones was excellent, Ann Ligouri is good covering golf and tennis.
They are getting more women callers. Carton and McMonigle had all female callers at one time on a recent afternoon.
Some of their young male hosts aren’t particularly expert, either. They can rant about the same point for 20 minutes at a time, basically saying the same thing over and over again. It may be that they have no callers, so they have to stall. Or it may be that they are repetitive and boring, so they have no callers.
one lousy Ump.
One UGLY beast of a women.
“Or announcer. I don’t mind that women are part of panels and whatnot but do they HAVE to be part of EVERY panel? Can’t we have one show that is all guys?”
The only sport I watch is Alabama football. If I ever turn on a game and there’s a female announcer that will be the end of that.
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