Free Friday: Umpire State of Mind
On the plane to Cooperstown for what looks to be a super-fun weekend around the unveiling of the new exhibit, “The Souls of the Game: Voices of Black Baseball.” Will give you a full report… I’m expecting it to be amazing.
Oh, and hey, if you’re going to be in Cooperstown this weekend for the event—I’ve already met a couple of people on the plane who are going up for it—I’ll be at the game on Saturday. I’m not doing anything official, but I’ll be there with Bob Kendrick, so if you want to come up and say hi, please do.
In the meantime, I came across a Baseball-Reference feature that I knew nothing about: If you look at a pitcher’s splits, you can actually see performance by home plate umpire! I mean… that’s incredible. I’m sure I could do a 70-million-word breakdown on this, but this isn’t a long flight, so I thought I would look up some of my favorite great pitchers and try to pinpoint their favorite and least-favorite ump. This should be fun, right? Maybe?
Clayton Kershaw
Favorite ump: Cory Blaser (3-0, 0.58 ERA)
Least-favorite ump: Bob Davidson (1-2, 6.65 ERA)
Kershaw won more games with Greg Gibson calling balls and strikes (7-0), and had a lower ERA with John Hirschbeck (4-0, 0.32), but with Blaser behind the plate, Kershaw struck out 31 batters in 31 innings and walked… one. As for the other side, Kersh had one bad experience with Ed Montague, where he gave up six runs in 4 1/3 innings, but he found it consistently tough with Davidson.
Zack Greinke
Favorite ump: Mike Everett (4-0, 0.66 ERA)
Least-favorite ump: Fieldin Culbreth (3-4, 7.22 ERA)
I’m sure I’ve heard the name before, but I honestly cannot remember knowing that there was an umpire named “Fieldin.” Zack has also had his troubles with Country Joe West (1-3, 5.02 ERA).
Greg Maddux
Favorite ump: John Hirschbeck (9-2, 1.63 ERA, 64–to-7 strikeout-to-walk)
Least-favorite ump: Tim Tschida (1-5, 6.23 ERA)
You will probably not be surprised to know that Maddux also liked seeing Eric Gregg behind the plate (9-1, 2.28 ERA). He also won 13 games with Ed Montague calling balls and strikes.
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Pedro Martinez
Favorite ump: John Hirschbeck (3-0, 1.69 ERA, 30-to-2 strikeout-to-walk)
Least-favorite ump: Laz Diaz (1-3, 7.44 ERA in seven starts)
Hirschbeck and Montague seem to be coming up fairly often among the favorite umps. Batters hit .342 against Pedro with Diaz behind home plate.
Max Scherzer
Favorite ump: Chris Segal (6-0, 1.93 ERA)
Least-favorite ump: Rob Drake (0-4, 7.04 ERA)
Mad Max loved having Country Joe West behind home plate. That happened nine times, with Scherzer going 5-2 with a 2.06 ERA and the league hitting .208.
Justin Verlander
Favorite ump: Rob Drake (5-1, 1.76 ERA)
Least-favorite ump: Eric Cooper (3-5, 5.84 ERA)
For some reason, when Cooper was behind the plate, batters hit .300 and slugged .554 against Verlander, which is just weird. I mean, yeah, it’s just seven games, small sample, but for whatever reason, I imagine Verlander would see Cooper back there and think, “Oh, man.”
Randy Johnson
Favorite ump: Bill Welke (2-1, 1.57 ERA)
Least-favorite ump: Charlie Reliford (1-3, 6.91 ERA)
I tried in this little rundown to pick umpires that were behind the plate several times—Walker only umpired three Unit games. But in those three, Johnson struck out 25 and walked one.
Hey, if you feel like it, I’d love if you’d share this post with your friends!
Tom Glavine
Favorite ump: Greg Bonin (10-0, 1.75 ERA)
Least-favorite ump: Jim Reynolds (0-2, 8.31 ERA)
I picked Reynolds because in his 17 innings behind the plate, Glavine walked nine guys. I think we all know that Glavine relied on umpires giving him just a little bit extra off the plate.
I mentioned in a recent post that Glavine is one of my all-time favorite people because of the time he saved me as a younger reporter, and several of you asked me to tell that story. I thought I’d told it too many times, but maybe not? Here goes:
I was a young reporter for The Augusta Chronicle when the Braves rather suddenly, and somewhat inexplicably, got good in 1991. Augusta is about a two-hour drive from Atlanta, and we didn’t really have the budget to cover Atlanta sports. But I talked them into letting me drive over to write a story about the Braves’ rise. They allowed me to go. I might have slept in my car, I don’t remember for sure.
Anyway, it was the first big-league game I ever covered… and I was nervous. Really nervous. And those nerves multiplied exponentially when I chose a seat in the front row of a pretty empty Fulton County Stadium press box. At some point pretty early in the game, another reporter came up to me and asked me if I was a member of the BBWAA. I had no idea what he was talking about. I had been given a credential to the game, and the paper had paid for some sort of membership in some sort of minor-league baseball media organization.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Well, you can’t sit here. The front row is only for BBWAA members.”
And when I said that I might be a member—I wasn’t sure—he whipped out his BBWAA card and kind of put it in my face and said, “You need one of THESE to sit in the front row. One of THESE!”
I have told this story so many times to so many sportswriters that quite often someone will come up to me even now, 33 years later, and say: “One of THESE!”
Anyway, I sheepishly moved back a row (nobody ended up sitting in my old seat) and I realized that I had absolutely no idea what I was doing and no real business being there. But I’d covered enough other sports to know that when the game was over, I needed to go down to the clubhouse and try to interview some players. So when the game ended, I followed the other reporters down to the clubhouse, and I was in there, and then… I absolutely froze. I have never been any good at approaching strangers, and that’s true even now, even after almost 40 years of doing this stuff. So I was just standing there, building up my courage, when I felt a tap on my shoulder.
It was Tom Glavine.
“You OK?” he asked me. That tells me that all the anxieties and fears I was feeling must have been pretty apparent on my face. I told him that this was my first big-league game, and I wasn’t sure exactly what to do, and he told me: “Come on over to my locker and we’ll talk.”
So that’s what I did. Tom was so great—it’s funny, looking back, Tom seemed so much older than me, but he was born just eight months before me—and I wrote a story that essentially was just a long Tom Glavine quote, and I will be indebted to that man for the rest of my life.
Two other points: (1) I don’t know if I have ever told Glavine this story. I’ve talked to him a few times since then, but I don’t think any of those encounters really gave me the opportunity to thank him. I have to do that. (2) The editor at the paper asked me the next day why I wrote so much about Tom Glavine. He did not pitch that day.
Brandon McCarthy
Favorite ump: Paul Nauert (2-0, 2.39 ERA, 21-to-2 strikeout to walk)
Least-favorite ump: Chris Conroy (0-4, 18.97 ERA)
I’m obviously just scattershooting here for Free Friday—this really does have the opportunity to be a more detailed and ordered essay—but I had to include Brandon, and now I’m going to ask him if, indeed, he hated when Chris Conroy was behind the plate, because, man, those are pretty stark numbers. Brandon was lucky enough to draw Angel Hernandez six times (three of them starts) and he was 1-4 with a 4.82 ERA.
OK, it looks like we’re going to be landing soon, so I’ll leave it there.
JoeBlogs Week in Review
Monday: Back In the Saddle Again.
Tuesday: Nerding Out on Bat Tracking.
Wednesday: Penned In.
Thursday: Fame 43: Clayton Kershaw.
Great post Joe, thanks. Two notes:
1) PLEASE post what Brandon says about Chris Conroy, would love to hear his comments
2) I would highly recommend telling that story to Tom Glavine if you get the chance, it will make your day. I had a situation happen like that with Bill Laimbeer – it’s a long story I won’t tell here, but it has to do with a children’s charity I was involved with while he was with the Pistons. It resulted in one of the coolest and most heartwarming things I ever heard. Many years later, our daughters were in an AAU basketball tournament and I had the chance to tell him the story. I think a lot of athletes do promos and charity work and may not really understand the impact they have; it was a good feeling to let him know that he made a difference
Raise your hand if you read the title and assumed this column was going to start by talking about last night's atrocious ending to the Baltimore/Chisox game, abuse Angel Hernandez a bit, perhaps reference the infield fly call in the 2012 Cards/Braves playoff game, and conclude with a misty-eyed tribute to Don Denkinger.