Study Shows Baseball Home Plate Umpires Wrong 20% Of The Time

Baseball players and managers griping about the home plate umpire's calls is just part of the game, but a new Boston University study found they're right to complain a lot more than you might think. The study analyzed nearly four million pitches in Major League Baseball over the last 11 seasons and found that the umpires got ball and strike calls wrong at least 20 percent of the time, which is one in every five calls. Experience didn't seem to help, with the higher error rates actually coming from older, veteran umpires, not the younger, less experienced ones. While MLB has introduced instant replay for some umpire calls, they've resisted doing so for calling balls and strikes. But the researcher who led the study suggested umpires could use ear pieces connecting them to a control center that would provide real-time ball and strike information, so calls could be made correctly while keeping traditional parts of the game like signs, signals and sounds from the home plate umpire. He also suggests they could have the ability to override in certain circumstances. (The Conversation)