New York Yankees manager Aaron Boone was ejected from a game Monday against the Oakland A’s for a comment uttered by a fan. Rather than admitting the mistake or apologizing, umpire Hunter Wendelstedt doubled down and tried to justify his actions.
The latest high-profile umpire gaffe came with the usual blowback among fans, many of whom would prefer to see some version of an automated ball-strike (ABS) system like the kind used in the minor leagues.
Three-time Cy Young Award wine Max Scherzer just happened to be pitching in such a minor league game Thursday. After a rehab start for the Triple-A Round Rock Express, Scherzer was asked for his impressions of the ABS system, telling the Dallas Morning News he was “not a fan.”
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Scherzer instead offered what he thought could be a better solution.
“Let the electronic strike zone rank the umpires,” he told the Dallas Morning News. “We need to have a conversation about the bottom — let’s call it 10%, whatever you want to declare the bottom is — and talk about relegating those umpires to the minor leagues.”
Such a system would likely require collective bargaining between MLB and the umpire’s union, which so far has resisted the incursion of automatic ball-strike systems in baseball’s highest league.
Wendelstedt’s stubbornness was independent of his strike-zone definition Monday. His spat with Boone began during the first at-bat in the game. By the second at-bat, Boone was gone. Notably, Wendelstedt’s strike zone accuracy was unusually low afterward, according to UmpScorecards.com:
Scherzer’s return to MLB is still a way off. He is tracking toward 100 pitches, according to the Dallas Morning News, and hopes to reach the 70-pitch mark in his next rehab start. He attempted to return from a back injury, and Wednesday’s game in Round Rock was his first minor league rehab start for the Rangers’ top affiliate.
Scherzer went 4-2 with a 3.20 ERA in eight regular-season starts for the Rangers last season following a midseason trade with the New York Mets. The 39-year-old made two starts in the American League Championship Series last year and another in the World Series. The Rangers beat the Arizona Diamondbacks to capture the first championship in franchise history.
The Rangers have struggled out of the gate somewhat, going 13-13 — good enough for a first-place tie in an uncompetitive AL West.
According to umpscorecards.com, there have been four games this season in which the home plate umpire’s strike zone reached 99 percent, but never quite reached 100. On the other end, the worst-umpired game was also in New York — a 90-percent accurate zone from John Bacon on April 10.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.