The Josh Innes Show - MLB Umpires Out Of Control?

Episode Date: September 18, 2024

One of the most common complaints I see on social media is that MLB umpires are terrible. The Astros were nearly screwed by a missed call on Jose Altuve's foul ball. The good news is they won. I'm going to say something that's probably not popular...I don't think the umps do a terrible job. That was a missed call. That was a bad job. That said, I don't think the umps are terrible overall. The most annoying fans are those who constantly carp about umps. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Yes. Get almost, almost anything delivered with Uber Eats. Order now. Alcohol and select markets. See app for details. Hello, fellow Jamokes. Get almost, almost anything delivered with Uber Eats. Order now. Alcohol in select markets. See app for details. Hello, fellow jamokes. So last night, I actually got to see an Astros game.

Once I got home from the movies, I got to watch the end of the Astros-Padres game, which had a lot of shit go down. Like, basically, right when I got home is when the umpire biffed the two calls on the Manny Machado at bat. When it was-0 the 3-1 pitch was ball four the the 3-0 pitch was ball four the 3-1 pitch was ball four and then he just yanks one just blasts one which felt like a very ball don't lie moment and tied the game there and eventually the Astros would rally to win despite everything kind of going against them including Altuve fouling one off his foot which ended up being called a ground ball out he takes off his shoe to show I thought it was fucking amazing like that we actually need more shitty umpiring to make games interesting honestly like at this point like like some of these baseball games are fucking drag like I like

baseball I enjoy playoff baseball but man regular season baseball can be a real fucking slog. And then you throw in the fact that there ain't no way the Mariners are going to catch the Astros. So, really, the Astros aren't playing amazing baseball, but the Mariners are never going to catch them. There's just nothing overly exciting about the Astros. That's why I'm just waiting for the postseason. But I will tell you this. The worst person on the Internet, and there's a lot of bad people let's just keep it in the world of sports here if you wanted to have a Mount Rushmore of

the worst social media sports people the person who constantly bitches about the umpires balls and strikes is on the Mount Rushmore of worst sports people. And I don't even know that like that person may actually be the Washington monument of annoying internet sports people. Like I get it. The umpires miss calls, right? Like usually those missed calls aren't going to cost you the game unless you really want to, unless your team gets screwed and it becomes a well it was a 1-1 count and if he calls that a ball it's 2-1 and it changes the complexity of the entire at bat yes the umpires fuck up by and large they get the balls and strikes right i saw some statistic that said they're getting like 95 to 96 percent of the balls and strikes accurate i can live with that also throw in the fact that like

whether you like it or not baseball's been played for like 150 years and the umpires have their own strike zones and that's kind of part of what makes baseball interesting in a way you've got you don't have a common dimensions or uniform dimensions on ballparks that's interesting and every day the strike zone may be a little different umpire may call it a little tighter someparks that's interesting and every day the strike zone may be a little different umpire may call it a little tighter some days and that's where the art of pitching comes in and you're able to adjust but nobody has the art of pitching anymore there aren't any Greg Maddox's out there that know how to do that so like to me getting on the internet like there's guys on there who's commentary I don't mind but there

are these guys who spend so much time screenshotting the mlb.com app to show that a ball that was called a strike was actually a ball and the umpires are terrible and they're fucking us and it's like look I bitch about a lot of stuff and I'm easily annoyed by a lot of stuff and I yell at people on social media and I get all that. I'm not judging you for doing it. I wish I didn't do it as much. I wish I didn't let social media annoy me as much as social media annoys me because it does. But if you're spending time screenshotting every fucking missed pitch to bitch about umpires, you got issues and you need to chill the fuck out. Somebody actually asked me on Twitter X last night, would you prefer having real umpires or the robot umpires? I want real

umpires all day. One, I'm not certain that you still wouldn't bitch. Like people will argue with the robot ump, the robot strike zone. People will still bitch with the robot up the robot strike zone people will still bitch with the robot strike zone so whatever here's what you should do put a pitching machine out there and have them throw all fastballs and let's have some fun that way if we want to put robots out there i actually like part of the appeal of baseball that you don't get with any other sport like there really is no debate about what a hold is or what an offsides is in football. Like it's pretty well defined. You know that by rule, offsides, you jump offsides, you're across the line of scrimmage,

it's going to be a flag. Unless somehow you're LSU and you do this shift on the defensive line and they call you for like this delay of game penalty or disconcerting signals, which is, I still don't understand what is what, but whatever. But for the most part, you, you can say that refs miss calls in basketball and football, but you at least know by rule what they are in baseball. When it comes to balls and strikes,

the umpire is determining on that particular day, what is a ball and what's a strike. And as long as now you understand what the basic area of the strike zone is but you're going to find out if he's going to give you a wide zone if he's going to squeeze you that day and it kind of makes the sport more exciting or at least more enjoyable and more tactical if you will that as a pitcher you have to go all right so he's calling the outside pitch i'm gonna see how far outside i can go and still get the call that's interesting to me row bottoms don't make shit interesting to me like and by the way i think a lot of people look at this like they look at these

k zones and they take them as gospel like there's no real way of knowing where the ball crossed i know they've got a bunch of different computers and in a nanosecond, they can spit out to you where they think the pitch went. Not all of those are accurate. Now, and by their own admission, they could be off by as much as an inch. Well, an inch could be a big deal when we're talking about the black of the plate. So whatever. And there will be times that there will be a bad call on a ring up on a strike three to end a ball game. And in that very situation, if you want to bitch about it and say you blew the call ump, especially if it's like he's calling that a strike all day, but it's a ball in this one, I get it. Consistency is really the biggest issue that you deal with with umpires.

You want to be consistent. If you go out there on a given day, pitchers will tell you this and hitters will tell you this. They're going to go up there the first time at bat, and there's an idea of where the strike zone is, and then the umpire is going to dictate to you where it is in that particular day. And you can say that's bullshit, but that's the way of the world and that's the way it's been done for 150 years. It won't be done that way for very much longer, so you'll have to find something else to bitch about. But that's kind of fun to me. The idea that a pitcher has to figure out what he needs to do to make the pitches and the hitter needs to know how to adjust. Generally speaking, there are not a lot of missed pitches in a ballgame that are going to cost you a ballgame.

It's not going to happen that way. That's why it's one of those things that I don't bitch about a ton. I don't run to the internet every time an umpire has an egregious miss and say, oh my God, they're fucking us. Like find something else to bitch about. When a ref blows a pass interference call that, you know, look, I'm going back to the Saints thing again. The Saints should have been in the Super Bowl. I was at the game. I was heartbroken.

I was despondent after that game. When there's an obvious botched call on something that we all understand and it cost a team. Like if that happens, they're lining up for a field goal, they're going to the Super Bowl, right? In the third inning of a baseball game, if an umpire misses on a 2-0 pitch, there's no way of knowing that that cost you the game. So to sit there and yell about it and bitch about it and cry on the internet and post screenshots of, oh god look how much he missed this by like shut the fuck up like be better now if you want to bitch about the Altuve thing like what I'd like to know from what I understand is the Altuve play in the ninth was not reviewable why like if you're gonna have replay like I don't want us reviewing balls and strikes we'd be here all day there's no point in doing that my god that'd be brutal but if you can review safe out on tag plays and you can review safe out on whether

or not a guy beats out a throw to first and you can review whether or not a guy trapped a ball in the outfield or not which i think you can review that at least i think you can challenge it certainly i've seen plays like that reviewed so it's obviously possible now again i don't know the whole situation here but why the fuck can't you just review that now it's going to be hard to tell you can review if a guy gets hit by a pitch we saw it in the game a guy at the end of the game where you very well could look at that and go I didn't get hit by a pitch people review hit by pitches all the time was it a matter of you're out of challenges I honest to god don know. But you should be able to review

that and look at that and say, all right, it hit his foot, foul ball, we play on. You got one of the best hitters of the last decade of baseball at the plate with the go-ahead run on base in the ninth inning of a big baseball game, and you're taking the bat out of his hands because you missed a call. That I understand being pissed about. That I understand yelling about. And that I understand Altuve being pissed about because he wants to be the hero. And honest to God, if there's any player that you'd rather have for the Astros at the plate other than Jose Altuve, you're nuts because that's the guy that's the most clutch player they've had. So you have a chance to win that game in the ninth or at least take the lead in the ninth

and you get hosed out of it. That I understand being angry about. Balls and strikes, like, again, here's the thing. Now, first of all, let's go back to umpires. Umpires are not held to the same public scrutiny and accountability as players. So for that, I think they have an easy out. You know, you don't show a ton of these replays in the stadiums. You don't want to show up the umpire, right?

Well, when a baseball player strikes out, we see it 20 times. When a guy blows a play in the outfield, we see it 20 times. So players are allowed to be made a mockery of and held accountable, but umpires are not publicly a lot of the time. That I don't like. They should be held to the same standard. But I think what happens is people refuse to acknowledge, and this is going to sound like a pussified take. I get that it's going to sound this way.

Bitch at me if you want. Say I'm a pussy if you want. I would not want to be an official. It is not an easy gig, particularly in a sport like baseball where you're calling balls and strikes. It's probably not an easy gig. I wouldn't want to have it. But let me ask you this. Like, let's look at a baseball player. In today's baseball, a guy can hit 210, and as long as he hits 30 home runs, he's a hero. Back in my day, 210 was a joke.

But now in baseball, you can hit 198, but if you drive in 75 runs, 80 runs, you're okay by people's metrics. That's what we do now. But let's just say you hit 210. Let's just go to 250, which is you get to hit one every four at-bats. 25% of the time you succeed, 75% of the time you fail. You're considered a hero. Wow, 250. You fail three-fourths of the time,

but you're considered great at what you do. An umpire, and again, these were stats from earlier in the season. I don't know how it's adjusted or how it's changed. 95% to 96% of the ball strike calls were accurate. That means that these umpires are getting it right 95% to 96% of the time. That means they fail 4% to 5% of the time. Yet they're the piece of shit. Baseball players fail 75% of the time, and it's like, pretty good, pretty good.

Again, I'm not trying to be in the position of defending umpires or officials in general in any sport. They blow a lot of calls, a lot of bad. I mean, look, you want to ask people in South Carolina today how they feel about officials? They've spent the last four days whining about how the refs robbed the LSU game from them. When LSU played Texas A&M a couple years ago in that 72-71 game, or whatever the final score was at seven overtimes or however many they played, I don't understand how you're

able to snap a ball and spike it all in less than a second but that happened I bitched about that there's always going to be things we bitch about with refs but most of the time I'm not going to tell you that a ref cost a team a game because you have opportunities to win games all the time particularly with balls and strikes because for every botched you know 2-0 pitch that you know it looks a strike, but they call a ball or vice versa. A batter misses a meatball right down the heart of the plate and fouls it back and missed his opportunity to hit a home run. So again, I get that this is probably not the angle people care about. That's not the angle that people want to hear. People want you to be outraged by the

umpires. The umpires are ruining baseball. No, analytics have ruined baseball. But the umpires, for the most part, do a decent job. And now we're never going to be in a position where we see a Don Dinkinger that blows a call at first and costs a team a World Series. We're never going to see that again because we have the replay. But we're not replaying balls and fucking strikes. So they're going gonna miss some calls they're human god i can't believe i'm saying this like i feel like i should be on here going fuck these umpires when you look at twitter that's all it is ah they fucked us but like

that doesn't like i don't i i refuse to do that now in a big moment it's different you know but all you can ask for is consistency I think the problem with these umpires is there's a lack of consistency and that's what the managers were bitching about really in the first couple of games of the series is the lack of consistency you gotta be more consistent and that I can see

you bitching about but if dudes are getting 96% of the ball strike calls right that's 4% they're not. You can live with that. It's not an easy gig. It's not a gig I would want to have. So here I am defending umpires, defending referees, even though I'm a guy who roots for teams that have been fucked hard by referees in the past. I don't know. I just, I'm easily annoyed by people. Like, like there's, there's so much I can take from people bitching about certain things to the point that I'm just like, and I've had enough. Now you're annoying

me. Like, why are you this angry over this? And then I turn on you. There's people I follow on there that will post screenshots of MLB.com strike zone. I'm like, dude, it's one fucking pitch, man. Like you've scored two runs all fucking game like stop bitching about the umps do better find me some other material why are you so fucking angry about this but either way i do love altuve taking off the shoe though fuck it's beautiful takes off the shoe points to his foot they throw his ass out good for him that little adorable pepper pot he's a cutesy as as milo used to call him oh there's the little pepper pot um fuck i love it man that's fun and the astros are gonna get in and as i've told you before i'm not betting against the astros once they get in if they can find a way to get verlander right somehow fuck

kakuchi's pitched his balls off fromber is a cy young candidate shit you get one more baller in there if somehow verlander can be that guy or whomever i'd like it to be um i'd like it to be verlander because i love the verlander man but he hadn't pitched well at all people have kind of turned on him but shit man anyway all right more to come