Thirty years into baseball’s sabermetric revolution, relatively little attention has been paid to the impact of a major league umpire’s ball-and-strike judgment on game results. This welcome study corrects this omission by profiling more than ninety current umpires, summarizing their professional history, and charting their performance at home plate from 2007 through 2010. Annual and four-season rankings place the umpires according to four categories: runs per nine innings, walks per nine innings, strikeouts per nine innings, and strikeout-to-walk ratio. The statistical analysis reveals that the home plate umpire’s influence on a game can be huge, both in terms of runs scored and the distribution of walks and strikeouts. By introducing umpires as individuals and encouraging a rational discussion of their work, this examination depicts umpires as dynamic actors whose impact on the game can be measured, analyzed, and enjoyed.

Andrew Goldblatt is an administrative specialist in the Office of Risk Management at the University of California–Berkeley and lives in Berkeley, California. He is the author of another baseball book and two non-baseball books.

Andrew Goldblatt
Format: softcover (7 x 10)
Pages: 206
Bibliographic Info: charts, appendices, bibliographies, index
Copyright Date: 2011
pISBN: 978-0-7864-6058-8
eISBN: 978-0-7864-8687-8
Imprint: McFarland

Preface      1

Introduction      5

The Umpires      19

Appendices

1. Highest and Lowest Runs per Nine Innings (R/9), 2007      183

2. Highest and Lowest Runs per Nine Innings (R/9), 2008      183

3. Highest and Lowest Runs per Nine Innings (R/9), 2009      183

4. Highest and Lowest Runs per Nine Innings (R/9), 2010      184

5. Highest and Lowest Walks per Nine Innings (BB/9), 2007      184

6. Highest and Lowest Walks per Nine Innings (BB/9), 2008      184

7. Highest and Lowest Walks per Nine Innings (BB/9), 2009      185

8. Highest and Lowest Walks per Nine Innings (BB/9), 2010      185

9. Highest and Lowest Strikeouts per Nine Innings (K/9), 2007      186

10. Highest and Lowest Strikeouts per Nine Innings (K/9), 2008      186

11. Highest and Lowest Strikeouts per Nine Innings (K/9), 2009      186

12. Highest and Lowest Strikeouts per Nine Innings (K/9), 2010      187

13. Highest and Lowest Strikeout-to-Walk Ratio (K/BB), 2007      187

14. Highest and Lowest Strikeout-to-Walk Ratio (K/BB), 2008      187

15. Highest and Lowest Strikeout-to-Walk Ratio (K/BB), 2009      188

16. Highest and Lowest Strikeout-to-Walk Ratio (K/BB), 2010      188

17. Runs per Nine Innings (R/9), 2007–2010      188

18. Walks per Nine Innings (BB/9), 2007–2010      189

19. Strikeouts per Nine Innings (K/9), 2007–2010      190

20. Strikeout-to-Walk Ratio (K/BB), 2007–2010      191

Index      193

“Bevis takes the reader on a nostalgic journey and provides a reminder of what the paying customer has lost. A most enlightening and welcome work”—Spitball.