Let it be known, I haven’t played in a meaningful baseball game in a long time. In fact, it’s been about a decade since I dug into a real batter’s box. But I do remember that the strike zone wasn’t an 18-sided polygon that changed shape every pitch.
Steve Mattingly and crew did an atrocious job behind the plate this last weekend. They flip-flopped on the strike zone like summer footwear or the Beavers’ gymnastics team in a three-minute touch. And I’m not just criticizing them on behalf of our pitchers, because the unorthodox strike zone went both ways.
Oregon State players won’t come out and say the strike zone was everywhere, but they were thinking it. Besides, the crowd was arguing for them. I haven’t heard that much chatter at an umpire since the “four-out inning” a few years back.
Boos from the crowd were more common than finding a dendrophiliac in Eugene. I’m almost positive that this last weekend was one of the most disputed and poorest called set of games in the history of Goss Stadium and perhaps Beaver baseball. I gazed in awe as the strike zone shrank and swelled like a 2:1 silicate clay. (Who said I never studied for CSS 305?)
Pitches on the outside corner were called for balls, and throws just off the dirt were called strikes. I watched a breaking ball thrown in the same spot on consecutive pitches called a strike, then a ball. Inconsistency is never a recipe for success, regardless of your field of work. Let that be a life lesson for umpires. If the strike zone is going to be a mile wide and a mile tall, so be it. Just call it with consistency.
If you don’t call the pitches consistently, it holds a pitcher out of rhythm. Pitchers who aren’t comfortable with the strike zone as the game starts to wind down into the later innings start to press. If a pitcher hasn’t gotten comfortable with the strike zone by the fifth inning, he is in trouble.
I’ve watched pitchers in later innings face a 3-2 count and let their curve ball hang over the plate and throw breaking balls with no break. Why? Is it fatigue? Sure, fatigue comes into play anytime a pitcher gets up in the pitch count. But most likely it is a pitcher still trying to find the strike zone despite his fatigue.
Pitchers throwing into a phantom strike zone will hesitate to drop the ball on the outside corner or throw a little inside because they don’t know the strike zone. Add fatigue to the mix, and the ball is going to hang over the plate. And any baseball fan knows what happens when a ball hangs over the plate – the ball isn’t going to stay in the yard.
But there are two sides to each story, and this one is no different.
Batters didn’t exactly have a heyday either. I don’t think I’ve watched more batters step in and swing at balls in the dirt, up in the zone and in on the hands as I did this last weekend.
Did all of those swings turn into immediate outs? No, but I imagine that those swings did put the batters behind in the count earlier than they had anticipated. Put a batter behind in the count, and he is going to protect the plate. Sounds easy enough, until hitters remember the strike zone is more undefined than the inverse of sin.
So batters dig in and swing at everything from high and tight fastballs to the curve balls that two-hop the catcher’s mitt. That apparition of a strike zone was responsible for a handful of under-served strike-outs and a gaggle of bloop, short hop and altogether lame hits.
Props to Pat Casey and the coaching staff. Way to recognize the flaw behind the plate and manage to salvage two wins out of three this weekend. I can’t imagine the amount of psychological knowledge needed to calm down hitters as they walked back to the dugout after being struck out on a pitch at the eyes.
I hope the Pac-10 takes a look at some video of the game, because that crew should be sent back to little league. I’m not saying I want an umpire to be a mathematician. All I want from an umpire is basic mathematical awareness: a strike zone is a two-dimensional box with four sides that doesn’t change shape.
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