Do Umpires Cheat?

I love baseball. When I was a kid, I loved playing it. A tennis ball, crushed cans, gateposts, manhole covers, mailboxes, we figured out how to get a game on. If we were lucky we had gloves (I didn’t). If we were lucky we had a real bat (I didn’t). But we would gather in the street and start the game, yelling ‘car’ to warn the others whenever a vehicle impinged on our playing field.

For years after growing up I stopped watching baseball. My husband wasn’t excited by it so we stopped watching because it was too slow, too boring, etc.

Then, on a whim, we turned on a Giants game in 2013.  It just happened to be Matt Cain’s perfect game and we were hooked.

When the league instituted instant replay in 2014, we were excited. We had seen a number of calls since May 2013 that were obviously wrong, but the teams against which those calls went had no recourse.

Football has had instant replay as a regular part of the game for several years, and that was our sport. We liked watching pro football and college. We paid close attention to the replays and rooted for ‘our’ teams. When bad calls were made, they were usually fixed and the game continued.

In baseball not all plays are reviewable. It’s meant for on-the-field determination of close plays, not balls and strikes at the plate. The point is not to slow the game to a crawl - it's to fix a mistake.

Each manager has one chance to request a replay before the seventh inning. If he burns it – asks for a replay and the call isn’t upheld or overturned, depending on what he’s asking for, too bad. He’s out of luck. In the seventh and innings beyond, the manager can ask for a review but it’s not necessarily granted. It’s up to the officiating staff.

Before 2014 it was unusual for umpires to review calls and there was an increasing cacophony from players, fans, managers and owners to ‘get it right’. Some calls, bad calls, affected the outcome of games – winners and losers were ‘picked’ by umpires. Some umpires gained reputation as being good and fair, others not so much. Two, in particular, seem to take their personal feelings about teams, players or managers with them onto the field. Instant replay was supposed to help deal with that too.

Last year it was everyone’s joyous deliverance. Managers liked it, players liked it, it resolved a lot of questions and controversy before it got outside the park because, historically, a large part of baseball has always been human error. People make mistakes. It’s the cost of being a person and having a brain that allows us to make choices. But some mistakes are so bad one just has to shake one’s head.

It is why the league instituted instant replay in 2014. It was a chance to give officials the ability to get it right after a bad call but bad calls still happen. In fact, a lot of managers and players who were relieved last year to have the lines between fair and foul, safe and out more clearly defined through the replay system are starting to stir again.

Not all calls can be replayed or challenged. Balls and strikes is one group that is not reviewable because it’s too fast and, for the league to stop play every time a batter wants to argue would be ridiculous.

But there was a game played on Sunday that was still a head-shaker on Monday evening.

I don’t normally listen to radio chat about sports. I don’t care that much. I do like the games so, last night I tuned into the local sports station KNBR to find out what time that night's game would start. They were still taking about Sunday afternoon’s game between the San Francisco Giants and the Washington Capitals.

Phil Cuzzi was the plate umpire during the game and, according to the pre-game analysis I heard on Sunday, he tends to be ‘inconsistent’ in his calls. That's an understatement, but it's a gentlemanly understatement. It's polite.

Okay, he's 'inconsistent'. That’s the human factor. He makes mistakes and isn’t perfect. However, one analyst on yesterday’s radio show declared that Cuzzi is the second worst umpire in all of baseball. In any case, Cuzzi seemed to have two entirely different strike zones on Sunday.

The Giants were playing the Capitals and when the Giants were pitching, the strike zone seemed to be narrower across the plate and a bit (noticeably) shorter between the knees and letters. The constraints of the strike window gave a decided advantage to the Capital players. In order for Vogelsong, the Giants’ pitcher, to get a call strike, he could not finesse the ball at the corners or edge of the plate. He had to throw it straight down the pipe – into the hitter’s wheelhouse.

On the other hand, when the Giants were at bat and the Capitals were pitching, the strike zone was every inch and then some that it should have been. A ball at the corner of the plate, it was a strike. Sneaking down the edge of the plate, it was a strike. Low, at or below the hitter’s knees? Strike. At the letters or just above? Strike.

Watching that game and Cuzzi’s opposite approaches to the two teams leads to my fundamental question: 

Can game officials, for personal reasons – dislike of the manager, a player, the team or because, perhaps, they’ve a bet on – affect the outcome of a game?

I think it’s definitely possible.

Cuzzi seems, based on my own observations, to have it ‘in’ for either Bruce Bochy, the Giants manager, or the team organization. We’ve seen him before and every time he is officiating a game in which the Giants are playing there is a noticeable difference in how he makes calls for the two teams.

On Sunday it was so egregious that even the ESPN analysts – who don’t usually pay more than passing attention to what’s going on down on the field – spent nearly an entire inning commenting on it.

First, there was a conflicting call at the plate. The Capitals had the field, the Giants were at bat. Brandon Belt was up. He checked his swing – which means he started to swing his bat in a hitting motion. If the batter starts to swing and stops before the head of the bat arcs past the batter’s front knee, it’s called a check swing. If the ball is high or low or outside of the strike zone, it is then a ball.

On appeal about the swing from the Capital’s catcher, the third base umpire who is responsible for deciding whether it was a check swing or a swing for a strike, waved it off. It was not a swing. Behind home plate, Cuzzi overrode him. Even though it had been waved off by the third base ump, and the ball was clearly down around the hitter’s ankles, Cuzzi called it a strike and, because it was the third strike, the batter was out.

Another, even more questionable call, decidedly raised a lot of eyebrows. It was the bottom of the fifth inning. The pitch was clearly outside – off the edge of the plate enough that the catcher had to reach to his left to get it. Given its location, it should have been called a ball. Instead, Cuzzi called it a strike, even though the catcher had to move the glove outside the strike zone.

By this time Bruce Bochy, the Giants’ manager, was about to come unglued. He’d been seeing bad calls, terrible calls, all day and that was it for him. Bochy came out of the dugout and spoke to Cuzzi about it. That is the manager’s prerogative, so long as he does not get aggressive or ‘show the umpire up’ in front of players and fans.

Watching it on Sunday and seeing the replay of their ‘conversation’ after, Bochy did nothing but exercise his right. He asked ‘what the hell was that’ and Cuzzi threw Bochy out of the game.

Ryan Vogelsong, the Giant’s starting pitcher was on the mound. He knew it should have been a strike, also questioned it. From his position on the mound, he has, along with the catcher, the hitter and the umpire, the clearest view of the pitch. He has never before been thrown out of a game – until Sunday, because he was exercised enough to confront the umpire over it.

Pitching is not an exact science. The goal is to develop a variety of throwing methods – cutters, curveballs, sliders, fastballs, splitters – and work on them until you’re capable of using them in a game. Once in the game, there’s the strike zone which is the area above home plate, between the batter’s knees and shoulders, and extends the width of the plate. Pitching well at 80+ mph is an art form.

The catcher’s job is to make sure the balls pitched don’t get past him or the runners can advance. If a pitch does get by him, and if it’s an error by the pitcher, a ball badly thrown that is uncatchable, it’s called a wild pitch. If it is deemed catchable, but the catcher misses it, it’s deemed a pass ball.

In Sunday’s game, according to the ESPN pitch tracker, the Giants were disproportionally called out on strikes that were outside of the strike zone. It was so egregious that even the national ESPN announcers commented at length on the obviously bad calls.

And those guys never notice anything but themselves! Seriously, they sit in the booth and shoot the breeze. It's like sitting at the bar at Hooters and listening to a group of guys talk about themselves. No calls, no discussion of what’s going on down on the field. Yet Sunday, they paid enough attention to comment, at length, on Cuzzi’s screw ups.

 

So what is up with that?

Does this umpire have something personal against the Giants, or against Bruce Bochy? Is he taking his personal attitude to the plate, using his position to ‘cheat’? Or is he simply incompetent?

He hasn’t blown calls only for the Giants. He’s known for making a bad call during an ALCS playoff game that cost the Detroit Tigers a double that could have put them in position to win the game.

He’s so bad he’s featured widely on “MLB bad call” videos.

As far as his dislike of the Giant’s and deliberately making bad calls against them? It looks like it to me and to the radio announcers for the Giants, based on what they said and, apparently, to the announcers for ESPN. Are all of us wrong and the umpire is right?

If the umpire is cheating, if he is deliberately making unfair calls against the Giants or any other team, what recourse do the teams have?

Sure, they can complain to the league, but at what price? Word will spread, other umpires might back the umpire who is cheating, and then where will those teams be?

It’s so obviously wrong, so utterly unfair. Enough so that the announcers on both the radio and the national broadcast are questioning it – which is not something I’ve heard before in all the games I’ve watched and/or listened to.

The league needs to step in. Independently, they need to take a look at this game, at this umpire’s history and his calls. If it’s obvious that he’s incompetent, they need to relieve and retrain him. If it’s obvious, upon examination, that he’s consistently favored one team or certain teams over others, they need to relieve him and ban him from the league for life.

That’s the only thing that would be right and fair. It won’t change the outcome of any of the games he has cost teams but maybe, if the game officials know that the league is paying attention, and is willing to do the right thing, it might make it a more level playing field for all teams.

Whatever. It's just a game, right? No, not really if the umpire, the representative of Major League Baseball is using his position to cheat a team or a manager out of a win.

Players put too much energy and effort into their health, their skills and their life for it to be 'just a game'.

Teams and fans get together and spend time in the fresh air and sunshine. It's a community and it's a place where families can safely go and spend time together.

It's an important part of the American psyche - too important to be mildewed by cheating.

I hope he's not. I do hope he's simply blind and incompetent.

No matter what the case, though, I do hope MLB steps up to the plate, takes a look and decides to do the right thing. Either retrain him or eject him from the game.

Best~

Philippa

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