We're seeing so many low and/or outside pitches off the plate this season it's crazy. How should players prepare to hit balls at their knees 9 inches off the plate? Understanding that with 2 strikes you need to be in big time protect mode -but being down 0-2 on 2 badly called strikes is a tough place to be.
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What age are you talking about? I personally love those umpires.
HS JV. Good for pitchers of course.
WashBarn posted:We're seeing so many low and/or outside pitches off the plate this season it's crazy. How should players prepare to hit balls at their knees 9 inches off the plate? Understanding that with 2 strikes you need to be in big time protect mode -but being down 0-2 on 2 badly called strikes is a tough place to be.
To be honest, I'm not sure I generally put much stock in an assessment such as this.
I know there are horrible umpires. I also know that very few people can see the zone inside and outside with any measure of accuracy. I know I've been accused of ringing batters up on pitches "a foot off the plate" when I can tell you with 100% confidence that they were on the black, at worst.
Keep in mind that on a properly-lined field, 9" is 3" into the other box. Most fields I see at the HS level put the lines too close to the plate, which means we're looking at maybe 6" into the box. Please forgive my incredulity.
Here is what I tell my players.....
If you don't like it, don't put yourself in that position by taking hittable pitches for strikes.
If truly consistently that far off the plate, at some point, coach would have to express concern directly to ump but problem is the coach has the worst angle to see just how far off it is being called so not much credibility. If it is somehow otherwise clear that the zone is stretched way too far, coach can submit a request for ump not to do his games with the reason why.
But this needs to be kept in perspective. JV baseball - zones are typically wide. You don't want to be that coach unless there is a clear and blatant issue. Spend a lot of time instructing on hitting oppo. Teach them to get closer to the plate with two strikes so that they can cover pitches just off the plate. Nothing at all wrong with the knees. It is a strike.
In my experience it is the travel ball tournaments where the zones seem a little wider -- perhaps they have to get the games in and need them to move along? -- and in HS they seem more legit.
Don't forget the receiver effect. If you have a really good catcher back there, he can steal some of those questionable balls and make them strikes.
What I have seen it the zone moves out as the batter gets closer to the plate. So "inside" pitches that are strikes are called balls because the batter turns out of the way. Then the ball way off the plate becomes a strike.
Matt13 posted:WashBarn posted:We're seeing so many low and/or outside pitches off the plate this season it's crazy. How should players prepare to hit balls at their knees 9 inches off the plate? Understanding that with 2 strikes you need to be in big time protect mode -but being down 0-2 on 2 badly called strikes is a tough place to be.
To be honest, I'm not sure I generally put much stock in an assessment such as this.
I know there are horrible umpires. I also know that very few people can see the zone inside and outside with any measure of accuracy. I know I've been accused of ringing batters up on pitches "a foot off the plate" when I can tell you with 100% confidence that they were on the black, at worst.
Keep in mind that on a properly-lined field, 9" is 3" into the other box. Most fields I see at the HS level put the lines too close to the plate, which means we're looking at maybe 6" into the box. Please forgive my incredulity.
I have seen this too. When they are too close anything between the lines is in fact a strike. Actually makes it easier to see.
If you watched the C.B. Buckner debacle the other night (Nats v. Braves), and then saw him botch another call in the field last night, then you understand that even the highly paid MLB umps are fallible. In fact, some of them are just not that good at all.
Every level of baseball you step down from MLB, things get worse. MiLB, college, high school varsity, then HS JV.
So think of your son's situation like this: The guys making the calls are 4 levels down from guys who screw up with regularity and yet are the best that money can buy apparently. Adding to that, in a typical HS game there are only 2 guys out there, so sometimes they just don't see things that well because you can't be at every angle at once.
What that means is, umpire screwups are a part of the game, and there's nothing you can do about that.
Now, if I see an ump copping an attitude, indicating bias for/against a team or any particular player or coach, etc., I think someone should get that guy off the field for future games. Beyond that, you just have to have faith that it all evens out in the end.
Admittedly, it never seems that way!
P.S.
My pet peeve is the HPU who announces at the pregame meeting at the plate what "my strike zone" looks like. No one has a personal strike zone. The powers that be met and developed this thing called a rule book, and it specifies what the strike zone is. The HPU's job is to apply the rules as written, and he is not empowered to substitute his judgment for the rule book.
But I've learned to bite my tongue when someone says that crud.
One time I did pull the rule book out of my back pocket and I said, "I see. Is there anything else in here that we won't be using today?"
That game did not go well. 
Matt13 posted:WashBarn posted:We're seeing so many low and/or outside pitches off the plate this season it's crazy. How should players prepare to hit balls at their knees 9 inches off the plate? Understanding that with 2 strikes you need to be in big time protect mode -but being down 0-2 on 2 badly called strikes is a tough place to be.
To be honest, I'm not sure I generally put much stock in an assessment such as this.
I know there are horrible umpires. I also know that very few people can see the zone inside and outside with any measure of accuracy. I know I've been accused of ringing batters up on pitches "a foot off the plate" when I can tell you with 100% confidence that they were on the black, at worst.
Keep in mind that on a properly-lined field, 9" is 3" into the other box. Most fields I see at the HS level put the lines too close to the plate, which means we're looking at maybe 6" into the box. Please forgive my incredulity.
Matt13 - Can you give me a refresher on the "plate" dimensions anddescribe what the black portion is designed to do? Also, when you talk about 6" off the plate, are we talking about the "white"?
Love nothing more than some kid toeing the line, leaning in and getting rung up on a low/inside strike. Correction - do love it even more when they back out like they were about to get pegged while getting rung up.
This is not an excuse for poor umpiring..........but understand that in HS baseball, you often don't get the best umpire.........just the most available umpire.......
With 3-4:30 or so start times, the umpires who are available are often retirees......and often sub varsity gets lesser quality umpires........and the chronic shortage of umpires does nothing to lessen the problem.
I often have far better umpires working evening 13-14 yr old games because of the starting times....
Plus we all acknowledge that in all levels there are people who just aren't suited to be in Umpiring
2017LHPscrewball posted:Matt13 posted:WashBarn posted:We're seeing so many low and/or outside pitches off the plate this season it's crazy. How should players prepare to hit balls at their knees 9 inches off the plate? Understanding that with 2 strikes you need to be in big time protect mode -but being down 0-2 on 2 badly called strikes is a tough place to be.
To be honest, I'm not sure I generally put much stock in an assessment such as this.
I know there are horrible umpires. I also know that very few people can see the zone inside and outside with any measure of accuracy. I know I've been accused of ringing batters up on pitches "a foot off the plate" when I can tell you with 100% confidence that they were on the black, at worst.
Keep in mind that on a properly-lined field, 9" is 3" into the other box. Most fields I see at the HS level put the lines too close to the plate, which means we're looking at maybe 6" into the box. Please forgive my incredulity.
Matt13 - Can you give me a refresher on the "plate" dimensions anddescribe what the black portion is designed to do? Also, when you talk about 6" off the plate, are we talking about the "white"?
Love nothing more than some kid toeing the line, leaning in and getting rung up on a low/inside strike. Correction - do love it even more when they back out like they were about to get pegged while getting rung up.
The plate is 17" wide, not including the black (which is technically not considered part of the plate.) The outside of the batter's boxes should be 6" from the white.
For HS: Let's inject some reality here, though. If only called the white in HS, we would never get out of there. Thus, I'll give a tiny bit more inside, and a bit more outside--never more than a ball, though, at the absolute max (when I'm in a game where i have to buy strikes.) Thus, if the outside pitch touches the line on a proper field, it's never a strike to me. That's the expectation in my neck of the woods, and I rarely have any complaints and zero negative evaluations (which I would hope, given I'm in the state tournament every year except my mandatory off year and I evaluate.)
For college: I would say that the liberal outside strike has been more of an issue in college than in HS. Pitchers are better, catchers are better, and batters are better at reaching that pitch. I don't give that pitch more than a ball off the plate, but there are plenty who do (and we have been told repeatedly to reign it in a bit.) This was one of the things I was thinking about when I started my thread on the college zone and people's perceptions of it.
Generally speaking, some umpires suck, but very few suck as bad as fans think they do (exceptions include the "my zone" guys Midlo mentioned).
It is hard to call strikes accurately and consistently. Good umpires approach the job with awareness of one's perceptual limits, concentration and humility.
The catcher and the plate umpire have the best view of the three dimensions of the zone abd the whole flight path of the pitch.
Other observers--coaches, fans, base umpires--sometimes have more accurate views of one dimension than the plate umpire (e.g., the base coach faced by the batter can know that a pitch is above or below the zone, a fan directly behind the outside corner can sometimes know a pitch stayed outside the whole length of its path.
However, these observers can never know for sure that a pitch was a strike because the ones who can judge up-down can't judge in-out, and the ones who can judge in-out can't see when the up-down was right.
Most observers show little awareness of the depth of the zone.
Umpires look to see any part of the ball in any part of the zone.
Fans simply cannot see the brilliant top-of-ball/bottom-of-zone/front-of-zone and cb-nicks-outside-corner/bottom-of-zone pitches that look horrible to them.
The cues most fans and coaches use provide irrelevant information about where the ball was after it passed the zone.
Despite the perceptual limitations of the umpire's vantage point alluded to by Matt, there is no substitute for tracking the whole flight of the ball from release point to mitt with a stationary head. People who can't do that from where they stand should be circumspect about denouncing those who can.
Sometimes you can know we're wrong, but most of the time you can't.
And that would be true even if your perception weren't distorted by your desire to see the ball either in or out of the zone.
From what I've seen this year, high school umpiring is definitely better than travel ball umpiring...but there's good and bad in both.
Pre-game meeting a couple of years ago:
Ump - "Coaches, I'm giving two baseball off the plates?
Me - "Why?
Ump - "Because I want the kids to swing."
Me - "This is travel ball and I can promise you that they're swinging."
Ump - "I'm giving two baseballs off the plate, Coach!"
Me - "Why do we have a plate again?"
Needless to say two baseballs became four baseballs and both coaches essentially just set catchers up off the plate to see how much he'd give. It wasn't fair to either team because the pitches were unhittable.
My biggest peeve with high school umpiring is that some make the calls on the bases too fast and don't let their brain process what just happened. IMO, the best umps take a second or two to let their brains sort it out versus anticipating a call.
hshuler posted:IMO, the best umps take a second or two to let their brains sort it out versus anticipating a call.
Bad timing (too quick) is the number one issue I see when I evaluate or on the field and it's a problem for everyone at times.
hshuler posted:From what I've seen this year, high school umpiring is definitely better than travel ball umpiring...but there's good and bad in both.
Pre-game meeting a couple of years ago:
Ump - "Coaches, I'm giving two baseball off the plates?
Me - "Why?
Ump - "Because I want the kids to swing."
Me - "This is travel ball and I can promise you that they're swinging."
Ump - "I'm giving two baseballs off the plate, Coach!"
Me - "Why do we have a plate again?"
Needless to say two baseballs became four baseballs and both coaches essentially just set catchers up off the plate to see how much he'd give. It wasn't fair to either team because the pitches were unhittable.
My biggest peeve with high school umpiring is that some make the calls on the bases too fast and don't let their brain process what just happened. IMO, the best umps take a second or two to let their brains sort it out versus anticipating a call.
2 baseballs is touching is touching the Edge of the batter's box. A true strike is one ball off the plate. Matt just stated above that his limit is touching the box i.e. two balls off the plate.
real green posted:hshuler posted:From what I've seen this year, high school umpiring is definitely better than travel ball umpiring...but there's good and bad in both.
Pre-game meeting a couple of years ago:
Ump - "Coaches, I'm giving two baseball off the plates?
Me - "Why?
Ump - "Because I want the kids to swing."
Me - "This is travel ball and I can promise you that they're swinging."
Ump - "I'm giving two baseballs off the plate, Coach!"
Me - "Why do we have a plate again?"
Needless to say two baseballs became four baseballs and both coaches essentially just set catchers up off the plate to see how much he'd give. It wasn't fair to either team because the pitches were unhittable.
My biggest peeve with high school umpiring is that some make the calls on the bases too fast and don't let their brain process what just happened. IMO, the best umps take a second or two to let their brains sort it out versus anticipating a call.
2 baseballs is touching is touching the Edge of the batter's box. A true strike is one ball off the plate. Matt just stated above that his limit is touching the box i.e. two balls off the plate.
Of course, this all comes down to what we're defining. When I describe it, I'm talking about the distance between the ball and the plate--thus, one ball between the edge of the plate and the ball itself, which would put the outside of the ball at just under six inches, but the inside at just under three inches.
