It has been open season for MLB umpires from announcers so far this season as everyone in baseball is becoming increasingly frustrated with missed calls, especially adjudicating balls and strikes behind home plate.
While Angel Hernandez is the poster child for criticism from announcers around Major League Baseball for his controversial and missed calls because of the sheer frequency of them, he is far from the only one to be on the receiving end of disapproval.
Laz Diaz was behind the plate in the Twins-White Sox game last night. And when Garrett Crochet delivered a pitch that looked like it caught the entirety of the plate, Diaz called it a ball. Immediately, White Sox announcer John Schriffen tore into the umpire.
“You gotta give him that!” Scriffen exclaimed. “That’s strike three! You have to call that. Where are we as a game if you don’t call that a strike?”
Questioning balls and strikes has always been part of the game in baseball, but the advances in technology have put poor performances under an increasingly powerful microscope. When the television broadcast is able to put up a K-zone graphic over the plate and then show a 3D metric showing a clear strike when the umpire called a ball, it’s clear for everyone watching at home to see that the call was missed.
With announcers all over baseball crying out for improvement from home plate umpires, it has to only be a matter of time before the robots arrive and take over, right?