ABOVE AVERAGE IS OVER:

All 30 Major League Baseball stadiums are outfitted with triangulated tracking cameras that follow baseballs from the pitcher's hand until it crosses home plate. Ball location can be tracked up to 50 times during each pitch, and accuracy is said to have a margin of error of 1 inch. This information is used to evaluate players, but MLB doesn't share the results in a way that allows fans to easily evaluate the performance of umpires.

We analyzed nearly 4 million pitches over the course of the last 11 regular seasons. This data, which had been collected by MLB-owned Statcast and  Pitch f/x, was sorted, formatted and superimposed on a standard strike zone map.

Using this available technology, we measured ball and strike calls for accuracy. We then ranked the error rates for each active umpire, creating a "Bad Call Ratio." The higher the ratio, the worse the umpire.

The findings were troubling.

Botched calls and high error rates are rampant. MLB home plate umpires make incorrect calls at least 20% of the time - one in every five calls. In the 2018 season, MLB umpires made 34,246 incorrect ball and strike calls for an average of 14 per game, or 1.6 per inning. Last season, 55 games - 2.2% of the total played - ended with an incorrect call.

When batters had two strikes, the error rate for all umpires increased - incorrect calls happen 29% of the time, almost double the error rate when the batter had one or no strikes.

We also found that the highest error rates did not come from younger, less experienced umpires; they came from the older, veteran umpires. The average MLB umpire is 46 years old, with 13 years of experience. But the top performers between 2008 and 2018 had an average age of 33 years old and had less than three years of experience at the big league level. Like professional baseball players, professional umpires seem to peak at a certain age.

Despite years of data-driven evidence, MLB has notoriously resisted retiring poorly performing umpires and hiring better-performing ones. The league remains top heavy with aging umpires, making it difficult for fresh new talent to make impact.

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