Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1232: The Ump Show

Episode Date: June 19, 2018

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about Juan Soto‘s timeline-rearranging home run, Adrian Houser throwing up mid-game, Nick Markakis and Braves all-star voting, a Mets official’s donut metaphor, and Mike Trout’s continued excellence, then (17:35) talk to longtime MLB umpire and crew chief Dale Scott about miking up umpires, manager-umpire arguments, the Tom Hallion/Terry Collins […]

Hello and welcome to episode 1232 of the Technically Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our future and supporters. I am Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs, joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Hello, Ben. Hello. How are you? Doing quite well. Great. So we'll be joined for the bulk of this episode by a very long-time Major League Baseball umpire and crew chief, Dale Scott, a fellow Portland, Oregon native.

And we've always had a million questions we've wanted to ask an umpire. So with this one, we tried to ask as many as we could in the limited amount of time that we had. We went twice as long as we told him that we would, but that's all right. Always act first and apologize later, right? So before... I posted in the Facebook group, I said, what would you like us to ask an MLB umpire if we were to talk to one? And the next time I checked, there were a hundred comments already so we felt the same way there

were a million more questions we could have asked but I think we have arranged things such that we can speak to him again sometime so we'll get our our questions in at some point that's the hope but before we talk to Dale I can tell you there's a couple things to get to maybe you have some of your own but one I can tell you that the Nationals and Yankees completed a can tell you there's a couple things to get to. Maybe you have some of your own, but one, I can tell you that the Nationals and Yankees completed a game on Monday. It's a suspended game from more than a month earlier. It's a game in which Juan Soto hit a home run for a game that officially happened before his major league debut. It's a game in which Tyler Austin hit a home run, even though the game wrapped up on a day where Tyler Austin was in

the minor leagues. Adam Eaton participated in the game even though he had ankle surgery just five days before the game commenced. So I know this is not the first time any of this stuff happened. The Nationals beat the Yankees five to three on, I don't know when this game goes in the books. Is it on May 15th or June 18th? We'll find out how this actually works. It's probably not really recorded this way, but it's almost as if Soto's first major League game is now the date that this game was originally supposed to be played, which is weird because, of course, he homered in his original Major League debut. And now he has somehow homered in a game that happened before that game. As far as the records are concerned, we know what actually happened here. But when they're looking back at the Hall of Fame career of Juan Soto in 100 years,

they probably won't even realize that something wacky happened. And maybe they'll wonder why there was a gap between his first game and his second game. Well, there wasn't really. He didn't homer enough. They demoted him. Yeah, right. So lots of wacky stuff happened here. Bryce Harper shaped his beard, and he looks good either way, really, so I don't blame him. But yeah, Juan Soto just cannot be contained. He is now retroactively debuting in the majors and homering somehow. It is interesting because it goes in the books as his sixth home run,

but also now it's like his first by a few days. And also, even though I'm sure that there are rules about this or there's some sort of way that they get around it, like if this game goes in the books as May 15thth what if that counted as another day of wansato's service time and then all of a sudden right now i don't know if that's not going to make him super too eligible but i wonder what the actual i don't know legislation is to get around that because i'm sure it doesn't count that way but on the other hand what if it did wouldn't that be great if some team that was gaming some players service time and kept him in the minors just long enough

to bring him up and keep him for another year, then had all of that undone by a makeup game like that. I would enjoy that. I would too. Over the weekend, we also had Brewers reliever Adrian Hauser throwing up a lot. So I don't know if you remember like 10 years ago or something like that.

I remember seeing a video of Chris Perez getting a save and then throwing up, which is how most fans responded to watching Chris Perez try to lock down a save situation. But Adrian Hauser came out in the Brewers-Phillies game and he threw his warmup pitches, then he threw up, and then he threw some pitches, and then he threw up again, and then he completed the inning. So if you were curious, when Craig Cancel came out,

Brewers manager Craig Can Council came out to attend. Two Adrian Hauser brought him some bottles of water. The Brewers were not charged with mound visits when Council came out, according to umpire Laz Diaz. And also Craig Council said this was the first time he saw a pitcher vomit while on the mound. For me, it's number two. And I've been playing a lot less baseball than Craig Council has. Yeah, you've forgotten more baseball than Craig Council has. Yeah, you've forgotten more baseball than Craig Council has ever known. Someday, if he sticks around, he'll see as much baseball as Jeff Sullivan has blogged about. Yeah, that was weird. I once wrote an article about pitchers who

are sick on the day that they pitch because you sometimes find out about it. You don't always, but often if things go well or if they go terribly, you might hear that a guy was throwing up in the dugout during his game or something. And it always impresses and amazes me because just in my own personal experience of vomiting, which it's been a while, if anyone's concerned, it hasn't happened lately, which I'm very happy about. But when it has, I've felt in no condition to move, let alone try to retire major league hitters. So it's just kind of another example of the somewhat superhuman willpower that many professional athletes seem to possess, because there's no way, even if I had the talent, that I could do that, I don't think. How do you, as a manager, so the Brewers just promoted Hauser.

How do you, as a manager, see your pitcher throw up not once but twice and leave him in the game? I know he got through the inning, but like he allowed a run. But wouldn't like, you know, you'll go out to the mound. You'll be like, how are you feeling? The pitcher will be like, I feel fun. And he like won't touch his arm or anything to indicate that he's just doing great. But there's no clearer, like short of the arm falling off or like making a cracking sound when it breaks just when you touch it. Like there's no clearer red flag that this pitcher doesn't have it today that he's throwing up out of his body.

But still, good for him. He gave Kapler, gave Adrian Hauser his due saying something. I closed the article, but he said something to the effect of, you know, it takes some cojones to stay out there when you're throwing up, but like, does it? Is that really something to applaud? Takes some guts, I guess. It takes some guts to throw up. I don't know. Yeah, it probably, I don't know whether it gets you more made fun of in the clubhouse or gets you respect, probably a bit of both, right? There's probably some jokes, but also some grudging respect that you stayed out there.

Yeah, not that we should be encouraging anyone to pitch in that condition, because I would have to think that if you are in that condition, you are probably impaired as a pitcher to some degree, right? There's got to be, I don't know whether we can quantify the vomit effect, whether there is a certain number of miles per hour, whether there's sort of a spin rate hit that you take when you are upchucking between pitches, but it's got to be something. So I don't necessarily want a guy out there

who's doing that, even if he's willing to. And even if, as in Hauser's case, he wasn't so much sick as he was dehydrated and overheated. I don't know if there's a spin rate effect, but we know he's feeling the spins. So one of the actual best parts of this whole thing is that after the first time, and I think the second time too, the grounds crew

had to come out and tend to the pool of vomit. Like, I hope Adrian Hauser left a tip for the grounds crew somewhere after the game because just how undignified does that have to be? The drying agent as they always call it when they come out to sprinkle the drying agent. Usually that's

not the substance that they're drying, but yeah, it worked. It was just sawdust like you see on the subway. Right. You got anything else? I don't. Do you? I think I do, and we've talked about this briefly, but there's an update. Nick Markakis is now the second leading vote-getter in the entire National League in all-star voting. In the entire? Entire National League.

No one has received more all-star votes, as reported by Major League Baseball Public Relations on Monday, than Nick Markakis. He is leading all NL outfielders. The only NL player who has more votes than Nick Marcakis is his teammate, Freddie Freeman. It seems like there's some sort of Royals-y thing going on here with Braves all-star voting, potentially, because as I scan this list, Johan Camargo is number three on the third baseman list, which he's having a good season too, but he's third there. Kurt Suzuki, third on the catcher's list.

Kurt Suzuki, he's having quite a late career himself. But yeah, maybe Braves getting out the vote here. Ozzie Albies is leading all second baseman. Of course, Ozzie Albies is also really good. And Dansby Swanson is second among shortstops. So something's going on here. But Nick Markakis is having a deserving all-star season. He has been great. We've talked about it. We've marveled at it. And I think we can say now that we are, what, less than a month away from an all-star game or received an MVP vote. So he's about to take himself off that list, and it's well-deserved. According to Baseball Reference, Nick Marquegas' nicknames are Cakes, I get it, or TTT. So I'm not going to look into what that is.

Also, his agent is listed as Jamie Murphy Octagon. I'm going to guess that's Jamie Murphy of Octagon. However, if it's not, I think we know who the Octagon Corporation is named after. list is is jamie murphy octagon i'm going to guess that's jamie murphy of octagon however i think if it's not i think we know who the octagon corporation is named after first name jamie middle name murphy yeah this is this is going to be disappointed i forgot the name of the other potential best player to not be an all-star do you have that on the tip of your tongue mark ellis is still ahead of nick marcakis on the baseball reference war list, although Markakis has more fan graphs war than Ellis does. Markakis and Mark Ellis sound like they're basically the same word.

Yes, that's right. The only other thing I think I wanted to mention here, I saw a Mike Trout fun fact on Twitter, and I am obliged to report it. This was relayed from Reddit via Ted Berg of USA Today, and Ted Berg said, saw this on baseball Reddit and couldn't believe it was true. Rate this fun fact. Mike Trout has not gone more than two straight games without reaching base since he became a full-time big leaguer in 2012. He's never gone more than two consecutive games without reaching base. He's only done that 14 times in his career, and he's about to hit his 1,000th career game. So only 14 times has he gone even two games in a row without reaching base, and he has never gone more than two games without reaching base. Obviously, this is the

sort of thing that if you look at a player's entire career, it will be more common once you get the decline phase in there. If Mike Trout ever has a decline phase, he will eventually go a few games without reaching base. But the fact that he hasn't so far, I don't know how this stacks up or how unusual or precedented or unprecedented it is, but it certainly sounds good, right? I said, wow, it's a good fun fact. Yeah, I think because we don't know the context and we can't compare it to other people, that limits our full appreciation. So I would give it a 7 or an 8 out of 10. But it's up there. It's far better than most of the terrible fun facts people pass along to us.

So I do have some context. It turns out Sam wrote about this at ESPN. He may even have found this fun fact that he and David Schoenfield did a fun fact-a-thon about Trout because of Trout's 1,000th game coming up this week. So Sam reports this fun fact. He says, Willie Mays had three streaks of at least three goose eggs during his first 1,000 games played. Barry Bonds had a streak of four and three threes. Ken Griffith Jr. had a four and a three, and even Ted Williams, the most precocious on-base machine in history, airballed three straight games in 1939 when he was 20. The Angels hitters alone have managed 197 streaks of three games or longer since 2012, excluding their pitchers, but Trout is slump-proof. Instead, he has

13 streaks of two games without reaching base, and in the 13 games following them, he has hit 326, 412, 558. There's no such thing as a cold mike trout just hot mike trout and regular mike trout so thank you sam i'm sure that's what sam would have said if he were here i can tell you that mike trad this season is a perfect 13 for 13 steel and bases i can tell you that his ops has gotten better each of the three months to the point where in june he's batting 426 his ops is 1.293 I can also tell you that his other nickname, it's the Millville Meteor, which of course has its own funny history, but also kid with five eyes. I don't know the history to that one.

I don't know if it has to be exactly five eyes, but that is, was that his player's weekend jersey? I don't know, but I do know that he has a 459 on base percentage, which is one way that you can go no more than two games without failing to reach base. Every day I look at Mike Trout's box scores. It's gotten to that point, right? I don't know whether you are at that point, but that's kind of the first thing I do each night when the games are over. If I haven't been paying close attention, I'll open up at bat and I will go to the Angels box score.

And Mike Trout is always there because he never takes a game off and I'll just see what he does like it's gotten to that point where it's like a live look in status for me where I want to see every bit of his season if I can because we've been talking now for a while about how he's on pace for the best season ever usually after you make that observation it ceases to be true very quickly, and it has not ceased to be true since Sam wrote his version of that article at ESPN. I believe Trout has improved his pace, which is impossible. So that is happening somehow. Mike Trout has a career 9.88 OPS. This season, in games the Angels have lost, he has a 9.94 OPS.

This season, in games the Angels have lost, very recently, but he just never makes outs anymore. It's amazing. And I can't wait to see how he finishes the season. Like if I don't even want to say it, if Mike Trout were to hurt himself somehow now, and I don't even mean like a serious injury, but just what happened to him last year, for instance, or even something less serious than that. Like if he just pulled a hamstring or something and missed 10 days, missed the minimum, I would be really disappointed if that happened. I do not want him to miss a single game because we're watching possibly the best season ever here and I want it to be as good as it possibly can be. Well, the Angels have, I think, the count is 15 players on the Major League Disabled list. So if

Mike Trout got hurt, maybe it's just because he prefers safety in numbers and he wants to be around more of his teammates. Because if he's on the field, they are in dwindling number. Yeah. Oh, and do we need to talk about this donut analogy, metaphor, whatever it is? Did you see this? Mike Puma tweeted, here is the way a team official described the possibility of a Jacob deGrom trade. This is a Mets team official. Metaphorically speaking, or as Puma says, at least you would hope, the Mets will ask for six donuts for deGrom. If they can get that, maybe there's a trade to be made. But three donuts probably won't get it done.

So this is, we've gone from the Scott Boris nautical analogy to the unnamed Mets front office official donut analogy. Why would you use donuts? What benefit does donuts give you here? Maybe this might just be preparing the crowd for when the Mets trade Jacob deGrom for a box of donuts. Right. There could be actual pastries involved in this transaction. You always joke about, oh, he's going to be traded for a bag of balls. They're talking about donuts.

Why donuts? What time of day, specifically morning, was this question asked? No, I hadn't seen this before. I thought there was going to be more. I thought there were going to be layers to it. But no, he just used donuts as his unit of measurement. Yeah, just donuts. So trades are not judged by the quantity of players coming back.

are not judged by the quantity of players coming back. The Mariners will trade you 90 players out of their farm system, and you won't get one donut out of them. Right. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I guess, right, it must be the worth of the players and the donuts or the type of donuts slash players, or is it like the donut that you put on the bat to warm up before you swing? I don't know what this means. Maybe that's what it is. Maybe it's like the trading that you put on the bat to warm up before you swing? I don't know what this means. Maybe that's what it is.

Maybe it's like the trading for a bag of balls. It's a bag of those warming up in the on-deck circle donuts. I don't know what it means, but it's very mixed. And if actual donuts, they cost like a quarter. Right. Well, we should probably talk about trades in the Mets someday, but we've got weeks to do that before the deadline. So we can take a quick break and we'll be back with longtime MLB umpire and crew chief and storyteller and person we want to already have back on the podcast, Dale Scott. And then stay tuned after the interview. We'll follow up on a few things, figure out how this Juan Soto situation actually works and tell you a story about Pablo Sandoval. I don't want to have to live up to your expectations

I don't ever want to be the one to end relations I may hate you sometimes But I'll always love you Okay, so when you watch a baseball game, you might think of it as a challenge between two parties, one team and the other, but there is, of course, a third group that is always on the field, and they might prefer that you never notice them, but we very, very seldom solicit the thoughts and opinions from a member of the umpiring crew.

I have never spoken to a current or former Major League umpire myself, and Ben and I are joined today by 32-year-old, 32-year Major League umpire, I'm sorry for dating you there, longtime crew chief and retired last year, Dale Scott. Dale, I understand you have a house in Portland, Oregon. I know you split time between here and California, but I'm also in Portland. I know how hot it is. Assuming you are in Portland right now, how glad are you to not be standing

still for three and a half hours in slacks and a full padded uniform? First of all, he's 32 years old. That would be great. But that was a long time ago. Yeah, Portland

was good. I was like 92 yesterday. Anyway, am I missing standing out in that heat, especially behind the plate with all the gear? I'll be quite honest with you. No. I worked almost 4,000 games. I worked almost 1,000 played games in my career. And I've had that opportunity many, many times.

So no, I don't know. So I don't know if you got a chance, but most of the world got a chance to see a video that was not supposed to be spread, but that went viral last week, featuring Tom Hallion and Terry Collins having an argumentative interaction. Did you get to see that video last week featuring Tom Hallion and Terry Collins having an argumentative interaction.

Did you get to see that video last week? I saw a clip of it. I'm not sure if I saw the entire thing, but yeah, I know what you're talking about. Yes. Yeah. No, it was only two minutes anyway. But I was wondering, there are two elements there. I was wondering first whether you thought that Tom Hallion handled that well, because

of course, from our perspective, we never get to know what's actually going on in those arguments. And, and the second, maybe longer follow-up question is, is you, what you think about the fact that a mic'd up private conversation was released to the internet in the first place? Because of course, part of the, the CBA with the umpires union is that these, these conversations are never supposed to be leaked to anyone out there. Right. Well, first of all, Tommy, I thought it went really well. You know, you're trying to be, the four of us on the field are trying to be the calm people as the players and managers

and coaches and whoever else are all worked up. And it's easier said than done sometimes. But I thought Tommy was calm in handling Terry the way he did and also talking before Terry went to him when he was talking to

the Mets players there at the mound, just trying to explain to them that it was just a bad time to throw out a hitter with the situation that they had. That being said, you're absolutely right. The CBA strictly forbids any audio from a mic'd up umpire to be

broadcast either live or tape unless it's you know what happens like when an umpire is mic'd up during a live telecast they will record discussions or whatever that the umpire may have uh but then they could never play it live and they can only play uh recorded uh discussions of those types of things. If it's approved by the producer and it's, you know, they can't have damaging information or obviously language that's not, shouldn't be broadcast or any of those types of things. We, you know, when we're doing our job,

part of the agreement to wear microphones was the fact that we had all these stipulations that the league also, many of them, you know, agreed with because, you know, it's their product going out, obviously. And so if we feel that as a mic umpire, our discussions that shouldn't be put out, you know, broadcast either then or later might happen. It's going to affect the way we talk. And quite frankly, we'd probably be turning the internet off all the time and they wouldn't get anything. So I'm not sure how that was leaked. I don't know, you know, the whole details of how that was put on the internet.

But you're absolutely correct as far as the CBA does not allow that. Third question about that video. Had you ever heard the expression, our ass is in the jackpot? Is that an umpiring expression or is that just a Tom Hallion expression? Well, no, that's an umpire expression. The jackpot, it just means that we, you know, if we, you know, for example, if we don't do a certain thing, like in that situation, if we don't eject the pitcher, we're in the jackpot with our supervisors because they're going to say, well, why did you eject the pitcher?

He threw at him. And this was a game that had a heads up, meaning that, you know, with the outlay situation and all that that goes on. When you introduced me, you were talking about the two teams. We are the third team out there. And we do have people that we have to answer to and we have to umpire with the procedures that Major League Baseball wants us to do and have been agreed upon with the union

and all those types of things. So, you know, that statement put us in the jackpot just because it puts us in not a good situation with our bosses if we don't do a certain thing or if we do a certain thing and it puts us in the jackpot. So no, Tommy used that. It's funny because I've had several people ask me since that went online, what does that mean? What is it about? Yeah.

So I also wanted to ask, I mean, it certainly seemed as if there was legitimate anger there on Terry Collins's part. And you hear stories about something completely related and he's just making it look like he's yelling at you. Does that ever happen when it looks like an umpire and a manager just jaw to jaw screaming at each other? Is there ever just kind of a play acting element to it? Well, the arguments are completely different now with the replay. We don't have as many of them. That situation that we're talking about is a non-reviewable type thing. And, you know, obviously, you've got quite a spirited argument on it. But it's funny you should say that.

When Terry Collins was managing the Angels several years ago, a call that I had, they were up like 10-0 at home against Toronto after like three innings or something. In the seventh inning, I was at second base, nobody was on. There was a fly ball of the outfield, which the Angels believed

that they should have had a home run against the Jets. And so we awarded the batter-runner of second base. Well, 10-3 out of the third year. Now, I need to mention that after that 10-0 lead, it was now like 10-8. And so he came in and I thought, well, you know, I'm going to have a pretty good job. Of course, this was before replaying.

And so we're in shallow center field. And as he's approaching me, I said, Terry, the fan reached down. He goes, I don't care. He goes goes, you're terrible. I started to smile, but knew that the cameras would be on it. He goes, I can't believe we got 10 minutes and later, and now we give him all these reasons. We're terrible. He goes, and now remember, he's, it looks like he's cuing me pretty good from the, you know, just without knowing what he's saying. And he goes, you have to throw me out. You have to throw me out. I said, well, Terry, you want me to

throw you out? Yeah. I go, well, you going to do something for me? He goes, sure. He threw his hat about 30 feet. I said, well, that's good. He said, well, you know what? I'm tired. I'll tell you right now, Dan. You know what sucks about this is I have to leave and you have to sit here and watch this stuff.

So that was an instance with Terry Collins that he was just trying to get his team fired up, the fans fired up or whatever. Now, that being said, those are rare. Usually when they're out there, they're not happy. They're not happy because of whatever situation has come about. There are times they're out there just because they're protecting their player. And Bobby Cox was one of the best at that. He leads all managers in injections. But the reason was, is Bobby Cox had the philosophy that I don't win games, my players do.

And if my players get ejected, we're not going to win games. So when there was a situation that went against them on pitches or plays or whatever, he would take the brunt of it and a lot of times get ejected because he was protecting his player. That's their job. That's the manager's job. And so you understand that as an umpire. There's other times that they're just downright not happy with you. And it might be something that's been going on all game, like on pitches or whatever. But, you know, the whole thing, you know, as umpires, we understand they have a job to do.

We have a job to do. A lot of times in doing our jobs, we have conflicts. And, you know, in baseball, there's no penalty, basically. You're either in the game or you're not. And the managers know what they can say or do or what they cannot say or do that will get them ejected. So, you know, the vast majority of the times is because they are either very upset at what's going on

or they're protecting their players and trying to maybe get the team fired up. It's very rare, although very funny, when they come out and say, you've got to reject me. So it's maybe an obvious point, but you have said before that when you're an umpire out in the field,

there's no room for nuance, of course. You have to make a decisive call. And so, of course, you being a smart adult, an adult person who understands that this is a world of gray areas and nuance, how do you train yourself to deliver just an instantaneous and decisive call, even on a play where you know that maybe it was bang-bang? Well, we do that all the time, actually.

We have many bang-bang plays throughout a game or throughout a season, and we just don't approach it that way. For example, you have a lot of bang-bang calls at first base, once the players are first. You're just focused on the play and what your instinct and gut reaction and positioning and timing and everything. It tells you you're either out or you're safe. The ball either beat him or it didn't.

There's that old philosophy of tie goes to a runner. Well, that's, first of all, nowhere ever does it say that in a rule book or anything else, or certainly not in an umpire school. It's the question is, did the ball beat him or not? Did the ball beat the runner or did the runner beat the ball? And that's all you have to think about. And, and, and you react to that.

And, you know, there are times that, you know, I've called a bang, bang play out. And right after I called, I thought,

Ooh, maybe I missed that, you know, because my timing was quick or whatever. There's other times that I, I'm very, very confident on, on that bang,

bang play. And you just go from there, but we, you know, we just look at things differently as an official than a fan or a player because it's not uh gosh that's close I wonder I'm well maybe I should damn well he was running pretty fast I don't know that was a good throw you know I mean none of that isn't taken into consideration it's just is he out or is he safe

and that's that's that's the decision that we have to make in a very short amount of time. So you got to the majors in the mid-80s. And of course, you were there for the whole technological revolution, Quest Tech and PitchFX and StatCast and the zone evaluation system. for the years that we have them, whether for you or for umpires as a whole, they say that on the whole, those things helped, or at least they encouraged umpires to match the rulebook definition of the strike zone more closely than they had before. So I'm curious about what you think about that now and what you thought about it then. Were you resentful at all when those things first came in, or did you want the information and want the feedback? Well, we had some serious questions when they first were introducing the pitch tracking systems.

First of all, we weren't sure how accurate they were. We wanted to do our own testing and get a feel for what exactly are the nuances of the machines, were they calibrated correctly. And there's all kinds of questions you have, especially when you're going to be evaluated on this information. We certainly want to make sure that it's accurate. And so that was a process. It did, you know, what it did is it did uniform the strike zone much more to what is written in the rulebook. And also, as we remember this came in about after the umpires went from working just one league to working both leagues or the

entire Major League Baseball. And so it used to be when I came up with the American League, American League teams would see me numerous times throughout the year. And now, since 2000, with the umpires with both American and National League, sometimes you, quite frankly, sometimes you wouldn't see a team all year because you're working twice as many teams now. Other times you may only see them once or twice throughout the whole year, a lot less than what it used to be. So to have a much more uniformed,

much more consistent strike zone staff-wide made a lot more sense. In the old days, not saying it's right or wrong, but just the way it was, oh, that's Dale Scott. I know his strike zone. He likes to call the outside corner more, or he's a little tough on the inside, whatever, oh, that's Dale Scott. I know his strike zone. He likes to call the outside corner more or he's a little tough on the inside. Whatever. Oh, there's Rocky Rowe. He likes to call the pitch down on the

knee. He's very consistent on that. Maybe not so much on the high pivot. Whatever it is, because you had little variances of the strike zone. Well, that's what they were trying to get rid of for several reasons, but that's what the pitch tracking system helped do. It brought the plate was a little wide than before the system,

and the plate was not high enough. The pitches or zones weren't high enough, and they weren't quite low enough, but they were much wider. What that system did is it got us back on the plate much, much more uniformed, and it helped with the high-low. It made everybody's strike zone much more uniformed and consistent. Now, there's still issues with the tracking system as far as just pitches that don't track correctly, or you have to understand the four cameras, two on each side, one side of cameras, either

right or left side, is going to lose the ball at some point because the hitter is there. So it extrapolates where the pitch would have gone based on the information from the pitcher's hand up to that point where it loses the pitch. Well, that's all well and good, but these major league pitchers are extremely talented. And when you've got a knuckleballer or a guy with a good breaking ball or a ball that just moves a lot,

a lot of that movement was right at the plate area. And that's right at the area where this will lose the tracking, at least on one side of it, and extrapolate. Well, it might extrapolate what it should have done according to that, but the pitch may not have done exactly that. So, I mean, there were some issues that we had to work through, but, you know, overall, I think the staff now, the overall staff percentage on pitches for the entire season, half now, the overall staff percentage on pitches for the entire season, the last year I worked, I believe was close to 98%. And when you consider how many pitches are called in a season, that's pretty good. Of course, we've known forever that the strike zone can change a little bit at the edges. And of course, we've known forever that catchers are trying to catch the pitch as

cleanly as possible and present it so that they don't lose any calls. But of course, we've known forever that catchers are trying to catch the pitch as cleanly as possible and present it so that they don't lose any calls. But of course, one of the major consequences of having pitch effects and then stat casts is that people could then start to calculate which catchers were manipulating the zone the best and who was getting the least friendly zones for their team. So given that this is something you would have been aware of before, how did, how did you and your colleagues respond to pitch framing statistics, uh, people writing about them, people calling more attention to them? Because at the end of the day, this is, this is just now public evidence of how, of how catchers are manipulating the strike zone, which in theory is something that's not supposed to happen. Well, some catchers are extremely good at receiving the ball. The best catcher I ever worked behind at receiving the ball that made almost every pitch look good was Bob Boone. Bob Boone had soft hands, very firm wrists, and he caught the ball.

He caught that low pitch up. He caught that outside pitch. He didn't jerk forward or try to bring it back in when he caught the ball. He caught that low pitch up. He caught that outside pitch. He didn't jerk forward or try to bring it back in when he caught it. He, I like to say, massaged it as the ball kind of went toward that outer part of the zone or off the zone. And he was very, very good at making almost every pitch look good. It didn't mean it was a strike, but he made it look good. He presented the ball very well for the umpire. There's other guys that don't do that very well. Now, this whole framing thing, anytime you see a guy take a pitch that's a little bit off the plate

and then move his glove in, that's not going to fool anybody. Because, in fact, the fact that the guy kind of jerked his glove back in toward the zone right after he received it is telling me, well, you have it outside. I mean, you know, if you thought that was a good pitch on the plate, you wouldn't have done that. And it really, I think, gets overblown sometimes by, you know, people watching the game. Oh, he stole that or whatever. by people watching the game, oh, he stole that or whatever. A guy that blatantly frames like that is actually not helping his pitcher.

In fact, I've told catchers before, hey, you don't need to bring that glove in. That pitch is borderline right there. If you just catch that ball strong, you're probably going to get a strike on it because it's right on the edge. But once you start moving your glove a little bit, trying to quote- unquote, deceive me,

what you're really doing is telling me that you had it outside too, you know, also. So I think that's a little overblown. Now, that being said, there are good receivers. A good receiver is a pitcher's best friend because a good receiver, like I said with Bob Boone, will make almost every borderline pitch look like it's right there. And that's not to be framed. I think framing gets kind of a bad connotation.

To me, it does. That's receiving. But that's a catcher that knows how to receive the ball with very little movement of his glove and not putting his glove down and catching the ball with his glove down instead of keeping the glove up and that type of stuff. And so if you have a good receiver, that is gold to a pitcher because any of those close borderline pitches at the knee

or on the inside or outside of the plate, he's going to look great. That same pitcher with a guy that doesn't receive the ball as well, he's going to lose some of those pitches because of the way that he's receiving the ball. So that's been going on way before any of this pitch track and stuff. I mean, there's just good receivers, good catchers that receive the ball really well. And there's some that just aren't as good at it.

So, you know, the bottom line is we have to determine no matter how well he massages that pitch, it was a pitch in the zone or not. And, you know, it's been going on for years, but suddenly it seems like it's taken a life on its own as far as, you know, the people looking at it more. But it's, I don't know how to explain it.

There's just good receivers and the not so good, and the good ones are gold to pitchers, and those pitchers love to throw to them because they know that all those close borderline pitches are going to look a lot better. They may not get them all, but they're going to look a lot better from that catcher. I have about 37 more strike zone questions,

but I will try to condense them into one. So according to the tracking information, it seems like there are certain factors and circumstances that may cause the zone to shrink a little bit or expand a little bit in how it tends to be called. Certainly the count, you know, the count on 3-0 doesn't seem to be the same as the count on 0-2 or, you know, maybe you could talk about a makeup call kind of thing, or maybe the pitcher's working fast or slow.

You hear that that maybe affects things. To what extent do you think the zone shifts from pitch to pitch and situation to situation? And if it does, is that ever something you're conscious of? I mean, on 0-2 or 3-0, are you saying, OK, I know that I'm not going to call this pitch here that I would maybe if the call were different or is it more of a subconscious kind of thing? Well, you know, first of all, they throw a strike and the guy's taping. So a lot of times, yeah, it is a strike, but here's the deal. You know, first of all, I don't care who the pitcher is, if he's, you know, a multi-side young award winner or a rookie that's his first time on the mound.

If a pitcher is struggling and if he's not hitting his spots and he's not around the strike zone, it's going to be a long day. And it's going to be a long day because the hitters pick up on that. And so they're going to wait and wait and wait to get their pitch. And a lot of times when a guy is all over the place and now he throws the pitch that's close, because it's a lot closer than what he's been throwing, but it's still not on the plate. You know, it's almost like,

ooh, you've got to give him that one. No, you don't. Just because he was all over the place and now he's threw one that was actually close does not mean it's a strike. It's still obviously being the zone. Now, let me preface all this with this thought. We're umpires.

We make mistakes. There are pitches that we call strikes that we shouldn't have. There are pitches that we call balls that we shouldn't have. What we try to do is, when you do that, is not make up something. It's just that you're trying to, if I call a pitch a strike that's off the plate, and I strike it, and my timing is fast, whatever, that's not a strike. Sometimes, depending on the catcher, I'll just tell him, hey, you're not going to get that all day.

That's off the plate, just to let you know. If you throw it there again, I'm going to try to get it correct and that means I'm going to ball it and I'm going to say, oh, he's inconsistent. Well, no, I'm not inconsistent. What I am is I'm telling you right now, that pitch that I called a strike was a gift, but that's not a strike for the rest of the game. I do that pitch that I called a strike was a gift, but that's not a strike.

I do not intend that to be a strike. But now if you do that a lot, now you're in consistent mess. Now you're all over the place as an umpire. We've all had days where the baseball looked like a beach ball, and other times it looked like a ping pong ball. It's like, you know, sometimes for whatever reason, you're not picking the ball up and use the background. Maybe it's the way the pitcher delivers,

whatever the situation is, but a certain counts of that kind of thing. Or I, I, a lot of times I get people say, well, you, uh, when,

when you hit that home run, when you think in fastball too, I said, I don't think pitches, I don't think, although he'll, he'll throw a breaking ball here, or he's going to throw a fastball here or whatever.

I'm not trying to hit it. I'm trying to call it. So I can't be trying to guess or he's going to throw a fastball here or whatever. I'm not trying to hit it. I'm trying to call it. So I can't be trying to guess what he's going to throw because now I'll be guessing on what the pitch was. What I'm trying to do is whatever he throws, wherever location it is, inside, outside, up, down, what I'm trying to do is determine did it enter the zone or not. One of the things with the pitch tracking systems is that it has no, you can't decipher it. For example, the strike zone is three-dimensional.

It starts to be at the front edge of the plate. It ends at the back corner, back point of the plate. It obviously is the same width for everyone. It's 17 inches plus about a couple uh inches on each side because if you know the width of the ball uh hits any part of the zone by rule it's a strike here's the problem with the pitch tracking system you may have a pitch a breaking ball or a slider or something that it is at the very front edge of the plate right at the knee, but it's going, it's, it's, it's moving out. And, uh, you know, so outside corner, right at the front edge at the knees, moving, the

ball is moving out. And by the time the catcher catches it, the pitch is outside and it's, and it's down almost on the ground by rule. That's a strike because it entered the zone at any part of the zone. Uh, that would be a strike in theory. a lot of times that pitch is called a ball. Why? Because the catcher's catching the ball almost on the ground, a few inches, if not a half a foot outside the outside corner.

Now, most, almost nine times plus out of 10, no one's going to say a word about that when you ball that pitch because no one expects that to be a strike. But the pitch tracking system, it doesn't have any you know personality it just says oh that entered that very part of the the strike so that is a strike so even though with the technology that that we have out there there's still a you know i always say there's a science to umpiring baseball there's also an art to it and and uh the technology may have the science to it but it doesn't have the art to it and that and that is you know if i technically

called every single pitch that entered the strike zone but but uh you know it's it's it's at the very front edge like i uh just explained and on the outside corner and it's caught almost on the ground the dugout's going to be on fire because no one's going to accept that as a strike, even though technically it may be. So be careful what you wish for. I know there's a lot of talk about, well, let's get rid of the umpires and let's just have a, you know, a computer call it.

Well, okay. But be prepared to have a lot of nasty looking unhittable pitches called strikes only because, you know, to have a lot of nasty-looking, unhittable pitches called strikes only because the computer can't decipher between the nuance of the game and the technical aspects of the game, if that makes any sense. So, I mean, we know we can just keep you here all day and night asking you questions, but I guess in the interest of moving faster, we can sort of lightning round it. I don't know if you saw a week or two ago, umpires to shore water, uh, called back Brandon Nimmo on a hit by pitch saying that he actually

put his elbow in the way. That is a call that as I'm sure, you know, does not happen very often. So I guess one, did you ever, did you ever call back a hitter for, uh, not getting out of the way? And, and two, what was your threshold for the hitters behavior where, uh, beyond which you would call him back instead of giving him a base? Well, you know, my thoughts on a pitch that's close to hitting the guy or whatever is you're going to err on the fact that it was a bad pitch and the guy got hit. I'm not going to reward a pitcher for a bad pitch because the guy maybe barely moved or something and it grazed him.

Now, if you see him leaning in or if you see some kind of obvious, you know, a lot of times right toward the end, maybe he's kind of throw his forearm or whatever, his elbow, or whatever it is out there, it happens very quickly. And if you really in your gut think that he intentionally did that, that's one thing. But the benefit of the doubt is going to go to the hitter because, let's face it, it was a bad pitch in most cases.

And so I'm not going to reward a pitcher for a bad pitch. So that is something you just have to see. You have to be there and see it and get a feel for it and, again, do what you think is right and what you think happened. And it's rare. It doesn't happen a lot. But, you know, it's something that's a rule. And if you really think that that hitter was taking advantage of that, well, then you keep him there. Was there a pitcher who was hardest for you to call and does being hard to hit equate to being hard to call just because it's hard to see the pitches?

see the pitches? Well, there's so many factors in seeing slash calling pitches. You know, like I said before, sometimes, you know, day games in the background where the pitcher's hand is coming out of, it's just tough to see their shadows, that type of thing. I remember, you know, the Rangers used to on Sunday nights, they had six o'clock starts at the old Arlington Stadium. And it's good when they were home on Sundays at 6 o'clock, they would try to pitch Nolan Ryan because it was so tough to see those first several innings. The sun was setting, and, of course, they would always have big crowds with Nolan usually.

And so sometimes they even put fans back behind him in the batter's eye. It just was tough. But there's so many factors that can play into seeing the ball from, you know, obviously both from the hitter and for the, for the umpire. And as far as that goes for the catcher too, but you know, what, what you try to do again is even though those are factors that you just got, you know, just because a guy is, is, is very hard to hit doesn't necessarily mean he's got really good stuff. Usually it does, but sometimes because he's so all over the place, he's hard to hit. He'll fire a couple beautiful outside corner

92-mile-an-hour fastballs or something, but then he'll almost hit you with something, and then he'll throw something in the dirt. And the timing and the hitters aren't really quite sure what they're going to get. For example, we don't have a lot of them, but guys, I've had a few in my career, the knuckleball. I mean, the knuckleball, it's unbelievable because you can't hit it and you can't catch it. But by God, you better not miss it. You know, and so it's like, it's like uh it's that that was i remember i had trouble my when i first started uh in the american league and i and i first few times i would have a knuckleball

and you didn't see a lot of it in the minor league so it was it was kind of new and and and i i didn't really know how to call it and finally a veteran guy said you know what with the knuckleball you have to be very slow on your timing and And, you know, quite frankly, be thinking strikes because nobody knows one way or the other. You might as well call strikes instead of balls. It's almost, I mean, it's really true. If a guy is really, if his knuckleball is working, it is just tough to hit.

It's tough to catch. And a lot of times the break in that baseball can be so extreme right at the plate area that it entered the zone, but by the time it crossed through the zone, the catcher's almost standing up to catch it or he's diving to his right or whatever. So, you know, there's a lot of factors that come into who's tough to call and what pitchers are tough to call. It's not necessarily the guy that throws the hardest.

It's the guy that can swing speeds and hit his spots and really keeps the timing of the hitter off. At the same time, you know, throwing strikes and getting around the zone. That's your ace pitcher right there. So a few years ago, as you know, the current commissioner of baseball has been talking a lot about pace of play. And a few years ago, Major League Baseball implemented a few rules to try to hasten it up. And it did work. The pace between pitches on average did go down for about a half of a season, maybe a full season. And then

it started to trend back in the other direction. So we know there are rules in the books about how quickly pitchers are supposed to work. We know there are rules on the books about how quickly hitters are supposed to work and where they're supposed to stand or not stand. So I guess we all see what the data says. So what would be, from your perspective, maybe some nuance that the average fan might not understand about why the pace rules don't seem like they are being enforced very often? Well, you know, one rule that is confusing to fans and people who don't fully understand is the 12-second rule. The pitcher has to deliver the pitch once he gets the ball within 12 seconds.

But there's a lot of nuance to that rule. First of all, it only applies when there's nobody on base. Second of all, if the pitcher doesn't deliver the ball in 12 seconds, the hitter's got to be in the box ready to hit. In other words, if at 10 seconds now the hitter steps out, now the clock's off until he gets back in the box and ready to hit when that timing starts again. So even though you could have some long delays between pitches with nobody on, rarely does a hitter just stay right there ready to hit for a long period of time.

Usually his concentration, he'll want time to step out because it's taking too long. There's one thing. But the pace of play overall, they're trying to work this thing out. You have a lot that you maybe didn't have in years past of teams and hitters working a count. That's the philosophy when they come up there. They want to work the count. They want to work the pitcher. They want the pitcher to throw more pitches

and get deep into pitch counts and that kind of stuff. Obviously, that takes more time when that happens. You've got pitchers when you get a runner on, especially runner on first, are continually stepping off or throwing over and stepping off, throwing over. And, you know, there's no rule against that. They can do that as many times. There's been talk about, you know, you can only throw over so many times

or whatever, but, you know, that's tough to do because if it's five times from about after your fifth throw over, the runner knows you're not going to throw over. So, I mean, it's just, you know, that's a tough thing to do because if it's five times after your fifth throw, the runner knows you're not going to throw over. That's a tough thing to do, but there's a lot of that going on, that cat and mouse game going on between the pitcher and the base runners. You've got hitters that, quite frankly, they won't come up to the box until they hear their walk-up music. They've got to have their walk-up music before they come up.

up to the box until they hear their walk-up music. They've got to have their walk-up music before they come out. They've got some pitchers that are continually, you know, this isn't as much, but, you know, they're continually, there's something wrong with the ball or they're changing the ball. I mean, just little things that can add up in a game that contribute to the length of the game. Now, the clocks that they put on the field between innings and for mound visits and for relief pitchers and stuff,

it definitely helped because, you know, I saw the first year they had the in-between inning clock. You know, pitchers that used to really take their time and kind of sonder out there and that kind of stuff. Just the fact that, and we used to say, all right, let's go, come on, you know, and try to get them going in a little bit quicker pace. But now, all of a sudden, they put a clock up there.

There's something tangible that they can see. And we saw guys that actually started getting back on the ground and getting the warm-ups a lot quicker. You do have a little bit of a delay in the National League, whether it's the pitcher is on base or is the last hitter of an inning, because especially when it's hot weather, he's going to go back to the dugout, he's going to towel off, it's just a little bit longer to get him out there where the American League obviously did not hit him.

So there's all kinds of little things that can cause the games and the pace to go a little bit longer than we certainly hope. There's no magic key. I mean, let's face it, there's been an increase in commercial time over the years. It used to be two minutes, and it was 225, and it's 235. And, of course, in postseason, it's three minutes, three and a half,

depending on whatever. So that obviously can add time to the game. So there's a lot of stuff there. We continually write up guys. They don't want the confrontation on the field and end up, you know, ejecting a pitcher or a hitter or something. So if a guy is just continually slow or slow from the bullpen as a relief pitcher or whatever, we write them up and we just report to the league and they find them and send out letters and stuff and try to do it that way to incentivize these guys to work or go a little bit quicker.

But there's no magic answer or no magic rule that's going to make games go quicker. And quite frankly, baseball purists, they love the fact there is no clock, and it is a game that you don't have those time boundaries that you have to deal with. So I don't have an answer of what would make it quicker, but I know everybody involved, especially umpires, we like quick games. If we had the answer, we would certainly have. You threw out the first pitch at the Dodgers Pride Night earlier this month.

And of course, you came out publicly a few years ago, became the first major league umpire to do so. And from reading previous interviews with you, it sounds as if that's been a very positive experience for you, even in ways that you didn't necessarily expect at the time. Not that you had ever hidden anything, but just having it known and welcomed and your husband acknowledged it, it seems to have been an experience that has improved your life in some ways. So obviously, this is a personal decision and it varies from case to case, but what would you say, I suppose, to someone else in baseball who is weighing whether to follow in your footsteps, potentially a player even, which maybe is a slightly different situation with different demands, but maybe some analogous lessons that you could impart?

Well, you know, I've always said that, you know, coming out for someone is an extremely personal decision. And so there's, you know, that's something that that individual has to, you know, think about and talk to, you know, people close to them or family or whatever, and make that decision. But all I can do is speak from my experience, and I know that it was – I just quite frankly didn't know what to expect. I didn't know what the reaction from players or managers or coaches,

I didn't know about media or fans or, you know, whatever. And I was really, frankly, surprised at how positive it was. You know, I was their family supplier then, so it wasn't like nobody knew who I was. They knew my work ethic. They knew, you know, whatever respect or lack of respect a player might have had for me was already established, you know, way before it became public. But, you know, all I can say is somebody in baseball

or any sport, frankly, or just anyone in life, that's a decision that you need to make individually. You'll know when it's ready. You'll know when it's right. Be true to yourself. In a perfect world, every gay individual would come out and show everyone that's not gay, just quite frankly, how many people that you associate with every day actually are gay. And it would probably very much surprise a lot of people, but I know that's not reality. I think, you know, it's coming.

One of these days, there's going to be an active player that on a major league roster that's going to come out. They've got other considerations with maybe endorsements, those types of things that certainly I didn't have to go through. But my advice to anyone is just listen to yourself. If you think it's the right time, be true to yourself. And all I can tell you is the reaction that I had has been extremely positive. And I'm very happy that I did it. And I wouldn't change anything. You've umpired so many games, as you mentioned, almost 4,000, a few World Series, countless playoff games, I suppose, not countless, but I haven't counted.

countless playoff games, I suppose not countless, but I haven't counted. Is there any wilder inning or game that you have umpired than the 2015 ALDS between the Blue Jays and the Rangers, specifically that extraordinary seventh inning of game five? Well, I'll tell you, that was one of the craziest game slash innings in almost 4,000 games I've ever had. If somebody had told me as I was about to take the field in Toronto for a decisive game five behind the plate, that we would have several bench clearings. We would have to stop the game for fans throwing stuff on the field.

We would have two rejections. We would have a rule that I've never seen ever in the big leagues. And you would have a protested game. If they had told me that right before I went out on the field, I might have retired right then. That was crazy. And as it turns out, that ended up being the last. I worked 91 postseason games.

That was the last one I ever worked. And it was crazy. But, you know, that's the thing about baseball. I mean, umpiring baseball, people say, you know, what did you like about it? What was it? And I feel, obviously, the challenge and just every day going out and trying to be perfect and knowing that that's not

attainable or certainly very, very rarely if you have no calls or whatever. The point is that every day was different. You never knew when you walked on the field if there was going to be a perfect game and no header, a guy hitting for the cycle,

19 inning game. A guy hitting for the cycle, a 19-inning game. I mean, you just don't know every day when you walk out there what exactly is going to happen. And that was a lot of times kind of one of the exciting things about it because you just didn't know. And quite frankly, that playoff game and that seventh inning is a prime example of that thought process because it had a little bit of everything. And, you know, if somebody had told me that before I went out there, I would have been, oh, my goodness. But you just go out there and you just have to deal with the pressure that you're dealt.

Sometimes it's not a great hand. Sometimes it is. But whatever it is, you've got to deal with it. I know. I know you've said before that you were a pretty pro replay umpire. This way, you at least don't have to feel so bad if you get a call wrong because you can get it corrected immediately. But now thinking about the last few playoffs, the playoffs have brought to our awareness a little replay quirk that it makes all the sense in the world, but I think a lot of people find unpleasant. You would be familiar uh the replays of slow motion slides where players make contact with the base and then come off the base for a split second and then get tagged out

and that's something that i'm sure it's been happening forever but only because of slow motion cameras have we been able to see when players do instantaneously come off the bag so i don't know if you yourself ever had a replay review where you had to look at that and then call somebody out, but do you have an opinion on that play now being a reversible call because of instant replay? Well, first of all, let me correct you at the beginning. You said about replay that you're happy about it

because if you make a mistake, it'll get corrected. Well, that's true, but you're never happy about making a mistake. So, you know, just because you have replay, you don't slack off on a play or anything. You certainly are trying to get the plays right, and, you know, sometimes you're not. And it's good that we have that, that we can correct it and move on. But, you know, what you're talking about, the slide and then the hand or foot just coming off the bag a little bit, which is not obvious on the field. It happens very quickly.

But when you watch it in slow motion replay in the replay center in New York, it's very obvious that the tag is still being applied, and he's clearly off the bag. It doesn't have to be by a lot, but when it's clearly off, by rule, he is out. Now, that is a byproduct of replay. It's a cheap out, let's be honest. It's a very cheap out. It's not like a guy completely overslept the base.

It's because he barely maybe came up in a pop-up slide or whatever. The fielders now are very smart. They keep the glove on them when they didn't used to, and they just keep it right on them for the entire slide and the entire play until the play is over because there's a possibility of this happening. It's a byproduct of replay. It's one of those things that was not intended for replay,

but that being said, there's no other way you can enforce it. I mean, you can't say, well, he barely came off, and normally we're just going to ignore that, so we're going to ignore it. Either you have replaying the call, what you see on replay, or you don't.

And that's one of those things where, granted, it is a cheap out, but all the positive things about replay, that's maybe one of the negative ones, but that's something that you're just going to have to live with because you, you, you certainly cannot write a rule saying, well, if he only comes off a quarter of an inch or if only, I mean, yeah, there's no way to regulate that. He's either on the bag or he's not.

And if he's not on the bag and he's being, the tag is still being applied, then he is out, period. And so that's just the way it's going to be with how we have going to replay now. There's nothing really you can do to change that. Yeah. So the last question I wanted to ask you, it goes back to the strike zone a little bit,

but you have been umpiring very recently. You were the only retired last season after sustaining a sustaining a concussion which could be a whole different conversation but because you've been umpiring so recently you of course have umpired with someone like jose altuve come out of the plate you have umpired with someone like aaron judge coming to the plate and one thing we have been able to observe statistically is that someone like aaron judge who is enormous will have a lot of strikes called that are below what it seems like should be his strike zone level. And someone like Jose Altuve, who is very small, will have a lot of high strikes called against him. So how difficult is it as an umpire to actually change the strike zone based on the

height? Of course, you've done it for decades and you know that it is the rule but when you have these extreme hitters who have such unfamiliar zones how realistic is it that the zone can shift as much as it should uh well it's you know it's i mean it obviously it's a challenge but it's just something you do every day with with every guy that comes up and i mean every guy is uh little bit different. That's an extreme. Obviously, those are players that you talk about. Again, Tuve's got a much smaller high-low zone just because he's a much

more compact, shorter player and much more compact when he's at bat than obviously a judge or somebody that's really tall. Is it difficult? No, but it's not.

Just because it's a huge contrast in a high-low from hitter to hitter, you just make the adjustment, basically. I don't know how to explain it. It's just reality. I mean, you've got a guy that's real tall and a guy that's not so

tall. You still have to do what you've got a guy that's real tall and a guy that's not not so tall and and uh so yeah but you still have to uh do what you got to do and and and judge the pitches as best you can on that uh the high low part of it and and that's what you do and then and i didn't see judge a lot uh just because you know he's relatively new and i didn't have the inky's or whatever when he played i just didn't have him that much. Altavia has quite a bit more. And, I mean, one thing I can say about that dude, I mean, the guy can hit. I don't mean to say the obvious, but no. It's amazing how locked in he is

and how he can just breathe and see the ball so well and make contact. So we've got to let you go. I just wanted to wrap up with a quick couple of silly ones or lighthearted ones that you can answer very quickly. If you'd like, you had a fairly distinctive strikeout signal, kind of a deliberate call, a bit hunched over. You turn to the side and you really let the fist fly.

Like you're delivering a body blow. How do you develop that? Do you practice that? Do you learn it from someone else? Is it just something you're born with, like a batting stance or a pitching motion? It's a little bit of all of that, really. Most umpires, as the umpires progress in the minor leagues, they'll pick up things that they like or possibly things that they don't like from seeing other umpires work and try to

incorporate that into their own personality and that type of stuff. That strikes re-calm just kind of evolved early in my career as I was working and coming up with something a little bit more of my personality and more

distinctive that works for me. I mean, my strike call, strike one or strike three call in the minor leagues was very different from what I ended up with after 30-plus years in the big leagues. I think that my strike three that you were talking about, that mechanic, that basically came about, I've probably been doing that consistently my strike three that you were talking about, that mechanic, uh, that basically came about, uh, I probably, I've probably been doing that consistently from about, uh,

the early nineties, probably, uh, you know, my first few years, I, I did a few other things that didn't work or I liked or I didn't like. And,

uh, um, they mock other umpires. I mean, you know, certain things they'll see that they'll, they'll pick up on it. And,

uh, and if it works for them, that's great. And if it doesn't go, it'll go on they'll go on something else kind of tinkered with your mechanics like cal ripken a little bit yeah a little bit not drastic i mean i had i had the basic uh strike off the side and that kind of stuff but i just uh instead of instead of uh going to my right like i do a strike one and two uh with strike three i just started stepping back and going to my left and i I liked it. I felt comfortable with it.

And it always helps when people say, oh, I love your strike three calls. Okay, great. Yeah. And then the other one I wanted to squeeze in here is I've been watching baseball most of my life. I still don't think I know what a balk is. I don't know that I can reliably identify a balk or that I know it when I see it. I don't know that I can reliably identify a Bach or that I know it when I see it. I don't know whether anyone does, but if anyone does, it would be you and other umpires.

Do umpires generally agree on what a Bach is and what isn't, or is there a range of opinion? Well, certain Bachs are odd. Yeah. You can set 100 umpires and watch a video of a guy who's the first, and you might not have 50 of them say Bach, and 50 say it's illegal. It's legal.

So, you know, there's a ton of ways that you can Bach. Quite frankly, some umpires are much better at seeing Bach than others. It's just they see the nuance to it a little bit more, a little better than others. The common frame that we learn at umpire school, and it's ingrained in you, is see a buck, call a buck. It doesn't matter where you are on the field. It doesn't have to be just the plate umpire or first base or whatever. If you see a buck, call a buck, and that's the philosophy you take.

Sometimes I'll have a partner, you know, I'll hear him yell, buck, I didn't see it, I didn't see what happened. Now, afterwards, oh yeah, his shoulder or this, whatever, and you'll look on the video and say, oh yeah, now I see it. And it's because of my angle behind the plate where he

sees it differently at first base on the side, or whatever it is. But, you know, Bach's usually very quickly, very, they can be very slight in what the action is that causes the block. And so it can be very quick and it's easy to miss. And you've got to remember, too, when you watch a pitcher taking a sign, it's like he's got four guys staring at him.

I mean, that's what you're looking at him. And so, and from four different angles. So, so that's, you know, your focus and concentration level on that is, is that's what you're doing. So it's, it's, it's, it's a lot easier to see, see a buck when you're, you know, focused right on him than when you're just casually kind of looking down the road. And then lastly, we had a listener write in earlier this year to say that he can hear what a strike sounds like, that a strike sounds different from a ball, that he can tell just from listening to the broadcast. Every now and then you do hear a quote from someone saying, that sounded like a strike.

I never know whether they're joking or not about just how hard it was going and how hard it was to see or whether there's something to it. So is there a sound of a strike? No. No, not really. Okay. You know, there's – I mean, tell me what a knuckleball sounds like. Yeah, nothing probably, yeah.

But, I mean, it's kind of like sometimes you hear the ball off the bat, you immediately think, oh, that's gone. I mean, that just sounded so good. And sometimes it is, and sometimes it's not. But it just sounded good. So I mean, especially the fastball, and it hits the catcher's glove, and you just got that good sound, boom. I mean, it sounds good.

It doesn't necessarily mean it's a strike. It could have been six inches off the plate, but it sounded good. But no, there's no sound element to a pitch. I know, as Jeff mentioned, that you were forced to retire, although you certainly got a full career in because of suffering several concussions. And you retired so as not to suffer anymore. And we certainly hope that there are no long-term effects that you're dealing with and that you got out in time because it's a hazardous job. We talk a lot about how hazardous it can be for catchers, but umpires are right back there, too. So we hope that you are doing well. Yeah, yeah. It's a little less concussive afterwards, but then we're much more in tune

with trainers and that type of stuff. If you're concussed, the possibility, you know, we, I think I, I think you might be concussed and I want to get off the field because once, if you're concussed and haven't, uh, and then be concussed again, it's, it's, it's not, it's not twice as bad as exponentially as bad. And that's where, uh, that's where you really start to get into, you know, long-term issues and that type of stuff. But I feel great guys. I haven't had any residuals from my concussions. It doesn't mean that down the road I may have. You know, that is yet to be seen.

But I feel great. And all the signs from the testing that I had for my last one points to the fact that there's no red or yellow flags up there saying I was better keep an eye out on this. So I feel good about that. There's so much that we would like to talk to you about. I know that Billy Martin threw dirt at you and you called

the Andy Hawkins no-hitter that's technically no longer a no-hitter. You must have a million stories. Maybe someday we will have you back again. We would love to. It's been a pleasure. I would love to come back, guys. Absolutely. Just let me know. Great. We will do that. Thank you very much for your time, Dale. You bet. All right. Bye. Yeah, thank you. So thanks again to Dale. That was great. We have

so many more questions, but we will find a time to ask them. We will definitely have him back. I should note that Dale retired with a rate of one ejection per 43 games worked, which is a little less frequent than average. Less frequent than Joe West or Angel Hernandez, but more frequent than CB Buckner, if you want to compare to umpires whose names you probably know. A few things to tell you about here. First, to follow up on the Juan Soto situation. According to the Elias Sports Bureau, the made-up suspended game is not officially his Major League debut. So even though MLB Game Day during the game said that his sixth career homer was actually his first career homer because of the date of the game,

technically his first official Major League at-bat is still his pinch-hit strikeout on May 20th. However, Soto is not the first player to have this sort of situation. Sean Foreman looked up the previous examples. Turns out there have been 17 players who have appeared in a suspended game that began before their official big league debut. One of them, Barry Bonds. So I will link to Sean's tweet with the full list if you're interested. A couple other things. We've talked about the Mets' lousy run support for Jacob deGrom. Well, on Monday, they scored 12 runs in a Jacob deGrom start. He pitched great again, and he actually got the win. Good for deGrom. We also talked about Mike Trout's amazing on-base abilities. Well, on Monday, he went two for three with two walks, although he

did finally get caught stealing. Also wanted to note that our buddy Steven Brault no longer has zero career strikeouts, but he is making his Major League National Anthem singing debut on Tuesday night against the Brewers. As he talked to us about, he was a vocal performance major at Regis University, and now he's doing a vocal performance. So good luck to Steven Brault. Also, we talked about the stumble play that the Gators pulled off, college baseball. Runners on first and third, the runner on first falls down between first and second, confuses everyone, and then the guy on third scores. Well, we mentioned on a previous episode that Tony La Russa did this. I've also been informed that Billy Martin did this. And listener Andrew M. writes in, and he says, I'm currently reading Nine Innings by Daniel Okrent

and came across this passage during a digression on Earl Weaver. He put his genuinely creative turn of mind to work as a quotable anecdotist and an admirable strategist. Parentheses, the Orioles won a game in 1980 against the Chicago White Sox on a prearranged maneuver. Baltimore players called it the famous play that had a runner on first take a long lead, fall down to attract a throw from the inexperienced pitcher on the mound, and enable the runner from third to steal home with the winning run. And as Andrew says, it appears that La Russa learned the play the hard way because the team that lost that game when Weaver's Orioles did the famous play, 1980 White Sox, that was a team managed by Tony

La Russa in his first full season as a manager. So it looks like he got it from 1980 White Sox, that was a team managed by Tony La Russa in his first full season as a manager. So it looks like he got it from Earl. So again, nothing new under the sun in this sport. Okay, two fun things. This was brought to my attention by listener Zach Cram, who happens to be my colleague at The Ringer. In addition to writing his own excellent articles, he often fact checks mine. So I know that he has an eagle eye for inaccuracies and he spotted one this past weekend. Some of you may have seen or heard about the Netflix rom-com that came out called Set It Up. It's gotten good reviews. I haven't had a chance to watch the whole thing yet, but I've got to give

it a bad review for its baseball accuracy. So these two characters are trying to set up their bosses by having them go to Yankee Stadium and then having them appear on the kiss cam so that they'll have to kiss each other. The bosses are played by Lucy Liu and Taye Diggs. So first of all, the woman, Harper, she goes to the hot dog vendor at Yankee Stadium to ask for the favor of putting those two people on the kiss cam. I don't know why the hot dog vendor is the hookup here, but sure, we'll go along with that. So then we see some brief baseball footage. The PA announcer says, now batting for the Red Sox, Andrew Benintendi. Then we get a side view of the batter at home plate. It is not Andrew Benintendi.

It is, I believe, Raphael Devers. Then we get another cut. Suddenly we have a high view of the field. And now Benintendi is batting. And he hits the ball and it's caught on a line out to center. So we have a misidentified batter here. I will upload this clip and link to it on the show page and in the Facebook group if you want to check it out. Yet again, as we always say, when you have a baseball scene in your movie or TV show, just let us know. Just run it by us. We'll take a look. We'll let you know if it's all kosher. And in this case, we have a case of mistaken Red Sox identity. Now batting for the Red Sox, number 16, Andrew Dunn and Taylor.

That's pretty nothing! And the last thing I want to tell you about, on a recent episode, we talked about how Pablo Sandoval is now a patient hitter, at least in one sense. He no longer swings at first pitches, which he used to do all the time. Jeff noticed this. He wrote about it. We talked about it. who is an effectively wild listener and also covers the Giants for sfbay.ca. She read Jeff's post or heard us talking about this, and she went to ask Pablo Sandoval before BP on Monday about why he's been so reluctant to swing at first pitches this season.

So Julie sent me a clip. I'm going to play it now. Well, I noticed that you're a lot more patient at the plate this year. And actually someone from FanCrafts wrote a story about how you last season swung 44% of first pitches, and this year it's like 3%. So I was wondering if there was anything on purpose you were doing, if you were working with a coach, or if that was something you thought about and decided to change. It's pretty big. I think you've swung at like five first pitches all season.

Why am I going to give you my secret? I'm just wondering if that's something you did on purpose. No, it's my secret. No, it's your secret? Yeah. I can't tell the people why I'm doing different. No, I can't. I'm sorry.

No, so you don't want to tell them. I can tell you, yes, I'm patient. Yes, I am. Is that something you wanted to work on this season? Yes, I am. That was like something you wanted to work on maybe this season? Or is that? Yes, I am. That was like something you wanted to work on maybe this season? When you're in the league now, you see everywhere in the picture, you take all the staff and work a little bit on different things.

You realize the way they've been doing the approach to you, you have to get the approach to them. So that's why I do different. Yeah. It's interesting because also what they found, the stat nerds have found, that you're also seeing a lot more first pitch strikes now because they're almost reacting to you because they realize that you're taking more often. So people are like, wow, someone noticed that and so I want to ask you about it.

What happens if you don't throw the first pitch and strike? I'm not hitting the count, so I'm going to get a pitch to hit. Right. Things like that. It's just kind of an adjustment maybe that you are working on. Cool. Well, thank you very much. You're welcome. See, I give you a little bit. I don't give you everything.

That's fine. Fair enough. So coy. Pablo is not giving anything away. But it certainly does sound as if this is a conscious change that he's made. thing away, but it certainly does sound as if this is a conscious change that he's made. And Julie says that he came up to her after his time in the cage to ask where she got her info and was thrilled to find out someone in the world thinks he's a patient hitter. So thank you for that, Julie. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already done so. Jake Risk, David Kim, Travis Ingram, Daniel Greer, and Andy Jordan.

Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash Effectively Wild. I can stop saying that we are approaching 8,000 members. We have now eclipsed 8,000 members. If you are not one of them, please consider becoming one. You can also rate and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. Please keep your questions and comments for me and Jeff coming via email at podcast at fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you're a supporter. We will be back to talk to you very soon. Don't hate me

I'm not special like you I'm not special like you I'm tired of solo Don't fight me I know you? I'll tell you, yeah, I will. Okay, three, two, one. Hello and welcome to episode 1232?

Yeah, of Effectively Wild, a Fancrafts baseball prog-pod-nope. Okay. You want to start over? Yes. You went one week without doing an intro. You just fell apart. I know. I started when I was mid-yawn.

That was a mistake. Three, two, nope. Three, two, one.