The Pastime

I ran across some new stat reports at Baseball Prospectus today, and immediately my attention was drawn to the umpire stats.What are those? Well, they’re basically the stats that occur on the field while a certain ump is in control of the game. It shows a pretty wide variety of umping styles, and how each one calls a strike zone.After looking at all of the data, I’ve come to the conclusion that John Hirschbeck and Doug Eddings are the top two umps that favor the pitcher the most. The race to favor hitters is closer, with Deryl Cousins and Gerry Davis seeming to be near the top.

Here are some graphs and leaderboards to illustrate my point:

[All data is for umpires who have been behind the plate at least 200 innings so far this season, to weed out small sample size problems. Each data point on a graph represents an individual ump.]

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Umpire ERA

Top 10 (favors hitters)

5.79 Jerry Crawford
5.77 Mike Everitt
5.41 Ed Montague
5.39 Alfonso Marquez
5.35 Joe West
5.33 Derryl Cousins
5.22 Gerry Davis
5.17 CB Bucknor
5.14 Ted Barrett
5.03 Jerry Layne

Bottom 10 (favors pitchers)

4.01 Kerwin Danley
3.99 Jeff Kellogg
3.97 Bill Welke
3.89 Laz Diaz
3.84 Brian Gorman
3.77 Doug Eddings
3.72 Bruce Froemming
3.70 Jim Reynolds
3.68 Mark Carlson
2.96 John Hirschbeck

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Umpire K/9

Top 10 (favors pitchers)

7.71 Brian Gorman
7.51 John Hirschbeck
7.34 Mike Winters
7.26 Bruce Dreckman
7.24 Gary Darling
7.16 Marvin Hudson
7.13 Jeff Kellogg
7.02 Brian Runge
6.98 Dale Scott
6.97 Bill Miller

Bottom 10 (favors hitters)

5.93 Bob Davidson
5.92 Chuck Meriwether
5.88 Wally Bell
5.83 Ed Montague
5.80 Tim McClelland
5.79 Tim Timmons
5.74 Jerry Meals
5.71 Jerry Layne
5.60 Tim Welke
5.50 Gerry Davis

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Umpire BB/9

Top 10 (favors hitters)

4.34 Greg Gibson
4.25 Derryl Cousins
4.19 Alfonso Marquez
4.15 Sam Holbrook
4.11 Andy Fletcher
3.99 Larry Poncino
3.95 Angel Hernandez
3.88 Bruce Froemming
3.87 Gerry Davis
3.86 Paul Emmel

Bottom 10 (favors pitchers)

2.91 Phil Cuzzi
2.88 Bill Welke
2.78 Brian Gorman
2.76 Larry Young
2.73 Wally Bell
2.68 Mike Reilly
2.52 Charlie Reliford
2.44 John Hirschbeck
2.41 Marty Foster
2.26 Doug Eddings

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Umpire K/BB

Top 10 (favors pitchers)

3.08 John Hirschbeck
2.96 Doug Eddings
2.77 Brian Gorman
2.75 Charlie Reliford
2.61 Marty Foster
2.39 Larry Young
2.36 Mike Reilly
2.33 Laz Diaz
2.30 Gary Darling
2.27 Ted Barrett

Bottom 10 (favors hitters)

1.63 Tim Welke
1.61 Bruce Froemming
1.61 Jerry Layne
1.53 Ed Montague
1.52 Alfonso Marquez
1.52 Sam Holbrook
1.51 Derryl Cousins
1.47 Andy Fletcher
1.47 Greg Gibson
1.42 Gerry Davis

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I find it interesting that John Hirshbeck has the lowest ERA in the majors by a good margin, powered by calling the second most strikeouts per game, and the third fewest walks. He must have a huge strikezone. He does have the biggest K/BB ratio in all of baseball.

I realize that some of this can be thrown off by an ump seeing more quality pitchers, or more quality offensive teams, but it’s a pretty wide statistical margin at this point. I’ll check back in on the umps later on in the season at least twice, and after the season has ended.