Arizona Diamondbacks blown calls of the week, Apr 2-18

“So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out, and yell, ‘I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!’”
-- Howard Beale, Network

After Monday night’s strike-zone, apparently paying tribute to the works of Pablo Picasso, I am indeed not going to take this anymore. I’m going to record the blown calls for each game (as reported on Twitter by @DiamondbacksUmp), and monitor them over the course of the season. Which umpire will be the worst? Do more of these calls hurt the Diamondbacks than help them? That’s what we’re looking to find out. It’s still not going to be an exact science, but it should give us some idea. For although it may just be me, it feels like there have been more horribly blown-calls this season than previously. Here’s what we’ll be recording for each game.

• Date, score, home-plate umpire
• Total number of bad calls
• Split of bad calls (hurts/helps Arizona)
• Number of outrageously bad calls (less than 10% of umpires would agree)
• Overall bad call score. This is the sum of the “disagreement percentage” on the bad calls. For instance, if a call has a “10% call same” rating, it would score a 90 disagreement percentage.
• We’ll also highlight the very worst call of the game.

I’ve gone back through the Twitter to Opening Day on April 2nd, since we have some catching up to do, and pulled the numbers. Here’s what we have so far.

• 145 blown calls in total, an average of 9.7 per game
• Only 55 of those helped Arizona, compared to 90 which hurt. If there were no bias, you’d expect a 50/50 split (73 each way) or close to it. The odds of such an split in one or other direction, purely by chance, is only 0.46%, so it does suggest umpires so far have been exhibiting bias against the Diamondbacks.
• Related:
  At home: 32-37
  On road: 23-53
  When playing at Chase Field, the split has been within the bounds of random fluctuation, with about as many blown calls for them as against them. But on the road? Their opponents have seen the benefit far more often. This was particularly notable in the four-game Los Angeles series where the ratio was a startling 8:33, with every single game seeing the bad calls favoring the Dodgers.
• This is a bit anecdotal, but it seem more of the really bad calls seem to happen later on in games. If so, either the umpires are getting tired, or the “hurry-up” call is a real thing.
• Best called game: Mark Carlson, Apr 11 @ SFG
• Worst called game: Stu Scheurwater, Apr 17, 4-2 @ LAD. This just edged out Angel Hernandez’s stinker on Apr 8. Both had the same number of blown calls, but Stu’s were just a little worse.
• Worst call of the week. That does belong to Hernandez. Note: as we’ll see, a purely mechanical approach can lead to occasional bizarre results. I’ve discounted those cases for this category, and will only include calls where the results are confirmed when cross-checked on BrooksBaseball.net.

And now, let’s take a look at each of the games from Opening Day through last night’s contest in San Diego.

Apr 2, 6-5 vs. SFG (Greg Gibson)

• 10 bad calls
• 4 help, 6 hurt
• 2 outrageously bad calls
• Bad call score: 842
• Worst call

Apr 4, 4-8 vs. SFG (Tim Timmons)

• 6 bad calls
• 4 help, 2 hurt
• 3 outrageously bad calls
• Bad call score: 520
• Worst call

Apr 5, 8-6 vs. SFG (Jim Wolf)

• 8 bad calls
• 4 help, 4 hurt
• 2 outrageously bad calls
• Bad call score: 682
• Worst call:

Wow. That one’s a real doozy, and I suspect some kind of misfiring of the process, somewhere or other. I don’t recall hearing the shrieks of (well-justified) outrage which would surely accompany such a spectacular bout of blindness, and the Brooks Baseball maps for Hoover’s outing don’t show something so hellaciously wrong. This is likely a worthwhile reminder that mechanical systems are not entirely infallible either.

Apr 6, 9-3 vs. SFG (D.J. Reyburn)

• 12 bad calls
• 7 help, 5 hurt
• 6 outrageously bad calls
• Bad call score: 1,066
• Worst call:

Apr 7, 7-3 vs. CLE (Ted Barrett)

• 8 bad calls
• 3 help, 5 hurt
• 2 outrageously bad calls
• Bad call score: 658
• Worst call:

Apr 8, 11-2 vs. CLE (Angel Hernandez)

• 18(!) bad calls
• 6 help, 12 hurt
• 5 outrageously bad calls
• Bad call score: 1,502
• Worst call:

The above is the one which really got me started down this track. It was an utterly dreadful call - but not the only 0% call the dreaded Angel Hernandez made that inning, which also brought us this doozy. All told, @DiamondbacksUmp flagged a staggering 18 pitches as wrongly called by Hernandez, providing solid evidence to back up his subjective status as the worst umpire in the game.

Apr 9, 3-2 vs. CLE (Lance Barksdale)

• 7 bad calls
• 4 help, 3 hurt
• 1 outrageously bad call
• Bad call score: 568
• Worst call:

Apr 10, 1-4 @ SFG (Fieldin Culbreth)

• 6 bad calls
• 4 help, 2 hurt
• 2 outrageously bad calls
• Bad call score: 510
• Worst call:

This is another one which is probably a measurement issue - again, Brooks Baseball doesn’t show anything too bad for Walker’s outing. However, if this was a sharply breaking pitch, a 12-6 curveball, it’s possible this might be accurate. I’m not sure quite how @DiamondbacksUmp works in three dimensions - where in the plane between the pitcher and catcher its “slice” depicted is taken. If we discount this pitch, Culbreth’s outing would become the best-called involving the D-backs over this period.

Apr 11, 4-3 @ SFG (Mark Carlson)

• 6 bad calls
• 4 help, 2 hurt
• 1 outrageously bad call
• Bad call score: 472
• Worst call:

Apr 12, 2-6 @ SFG (CB Bucknor)

• 10 bad calls
• 4 help, 6 hurt
• 2 outrageously bad calls
• Bad call score: 838
• Worst call:

Apr 14, 1-7 @ LAD (Doug Eddings)

• 10 bad calls
• 4 help, 6 hurt
• 4 outrageously bad calls
• Bad call score: 862
• Worst call:

Apr 15, 4-8 @ LAD (Cory Blaser)

• 7 bad calls
• 0 help, 7 hurt
• 1 outrageously bad call
• Bad call score: 580
• Worst call:

Apr 16, 3-1 @ LAD (Jeff Nelson)

• 6 bad calls
• 1 help, 5 hurt
• 1 outrageously bad call
• Bad call score: 480
• Worst call:

Apr 17, 4-2 @ LAD (Stu Scheurwater)

• 18(!) bad calls
• 3 help, 15 hurt
• 7 outrageously bad calls
• Bad call score: 1,552
• Worst call:

Apr 18, 11-2 @ SDP (Rob Drake)

• 13 bad calls
• 3 help, 10 hurt
• 4 outrageously bad calls
• Bad call score: 1,112
• Worst call: