Arizona Diamondbacks blown calls of the week, June 21-27

Well, guess what I forgot to post last Wednesday? Must have been all the excitement. And not any kind of recovery period from the hangover of Seattle. Not at all. I did think about combining it with this week’s report. But then I remembered last Thursday’s game, and I’ll have quite enough to talk about there. So, here you go!

Summary

• 40 bad calls in total, averaging 5.7 per game. There was a relatively even spread, with a low of three and a high of nine.
• This week started off on the road, where both games leaned towards the D-backs by the odd call, making for a 6-4 split in their favor. This was followed by the wraparound series at Chase against the Phillies, and last night’s thriller against the Cardinals. Only one of those was decided by more than a single call too, but that went decisively for Arizona, making the split here 18-12.
• The totals for the year
  Overall: 273-299 (47.7% favor the D-backs)
  Home: 152-145 (51.2%)
  Road: 121-154 (44.0%)
• It has been interesting to watch the splits even out over the last few weeks, both at home and on the road. The differential overall is down to 4.6%, and even the road split is narrowing. Theory: winning teams get “better” calls? And the D-backs have now proven themselves sufficiently to get the benefit of the doubt. I’m just speculating here though.
• Best-called game: June 23, 1-6 vs. PHI (Adrian Johnson). There were two games this week with three calls, but Johnson just managed to edge out the contest the previous day at Coors, by Alan Porter, based on overall bad-call score. It was close though, with Porter having a lower percentage of calls flagged. They were, however, slightly worse calls than Johnson’s.
• Worst-called game: June 26, 6-1 vs. PHI (Gabe Morales). This falls into the category of “seen worse,” I suspect. Morales seems to be guilty of having a small strike-zone, to be sure - look at the array of black dots below, which are inside the zone. But to his credit, it does appear to have been consistent. With the exception of a couple of dubious pitches at the bottom of the zone, there aren’t many red dots (called strikes) outside of the black ones.

• Worst confirmed call. The week’s only 0%, backed when cross-checked at Fangraphs, went to Ron Kulpa, who was clearly in no hurry on getaway day at Coors, calling this obvious strike a ball. Mea Kulpa, if you like...

The individual games

June 21, 16-5 @ COL (Ron Kulpa)

• 7 bad calls (2.22% of pitches)
• 4 help, 3 hurt
• 3 outrageously bad calls
• Bad call score: 608
• Worst call

June 22, 10-3 @ COL (Alan Porter)

• 3 bad calls (0.98% of pitches)
• 2 help, 1 hurt
• 2 outrageously bad calls
• Bad call score: 278
• Worst call

June 23, 1-6 vs. PHI (Adrian Johnson)

• 3 bad calls (1.03% of pitches)
• 1 help, 2 hurt
• 1 outrageously bad call
• Bad call score: 266
• Worst call

June 24, 9-2 vs. PHI (Gary Cederstrom)

• 6 bad calls (2.08% of pitches)
• 6 help, 0 hurt
• 0 outrageously bad calls
• Bad call score: 500
• Worst call

This is the most one-sided contest in favor of the Diamondbacks that we’ve seen this season so far, all six calls going in the team’s direction. While still less startling than the 0-9 against one we saw previously (which was 8x less likely by random chance), this was perhaps cause for eyebrows to be raised. However, none of the individual calls were particularly woeful.

June 25, 2-1 vs. PHI (Shane Livensparger)

• 7 bad calls (2.08% of pitches)
• 4 help, 3 hurt
• 3 outrageously bad calls
• Bad call score: 606
• Worst call

June 26, 6-1 vs. PHI (Gabe Morales)

• 9 bad calls (2.85% of pitches)
• 4 help, 5 hurt
• 1 outrageously bad calls
• Bad call score: 702
• Worst call

June 27, 6-5 vs. STL (Jim Wolf)

• 5 bad calls (1.53% of pitches)
• 3 help, 2 hurt
• 0 outrageously bad calls
• Bad call score: 406
• Worst call