On the fifth day of D-backsmas, Ken Kendrick gave to me...

Oldenschoole won yesterday’s stanza, offering us “Four robot umps,” despite a complaint from one corner that Ken Kendrick would not actually be capable of giving us this. The judging panel i.e. me decided this was technically true, but considering this is a parody version of a carol about an apparently Amazon Prime obsessed stalker, decided not to worry about it too much.

So, robot umps. It hasn’t been too bad a year for blown calls and the D-backs. Or, at least, there hasn’t been anything as obvious and egregious as the one which gave the Cardinals a victory in September. Searching the SnakePit, the only usage of the term in a recap was a game against the Reds in August, where Daniel Hudson was robbed of a strikeout by a bad call at home-plate, as Clefo noted:

While Huddy did go on to blow the save, partly as a result of the call (and partly a result of him taking five attempts to get the final out), the Diamondbacks won the game 4-3 in the end. But Arizona’s pitching staff this year did seem to have very different results, depending on the home-plate man. Over the more than twenty umpires to have called balls and strikes in three or more Diamondbacks’ games, our pitchers’ ERA varied dramatically, from 2.77 (For Bill Welke) to 10.73 (Lance Barksdale). The K-rate showed a similarly broad variation: 5.7 (Jerry Meals) to 10.0 (Rob Drake). Obviously, there are other factors to be controlled for here; yeah, our ERA is probably going to be higher if you’re calling Shelby Miller games. But it might be interesting for someone to dig into the pitch F/X data and see what ticks.

On the fifth day of Xmas, Ken Kendrick gave to me...

• _____________________________________ [Five gold rings]
• Four robot umps
• Three Miller wins
• Two Cuban projects
• And a catcher you can have for free!

There is one extremely obvious answer for today’s phrase. But we already went there last year, which I should remind you was, “Five Goldy dingers,” so we won’t be repeating that one. Bonus recs will be awarded by the judging panel i.e. me for going in a different direction.

As usual, throw your suggestions into the comments and/or rec the ideas you feel most deserving of praise. The winner will be announced tomorrow.