A Plane To Catch?
Especially in the later innings, with two called punchouts back to back on Bautista and Scutaro on pitches some 3-4 inches outside, that was some, well, typical umpiring for Jon Lester against the Jays tonight.
Romero didn’t get the same generosity on the outside corner, and he also got squeezed on the bottom of the zone. It’s tricky because of course the top and bottom change and that box is just an average but for example, two of those calls are to Jason Bay.
The bottom of his zone is measured by the pitch f/x people at 1.5 (even slightly below the average of 1.6) feet above the ground and those pitches crossed the plate well above that at 1.836-1.891 feet above the ground, ~3.5 inches above the bottom of the zone. Pitch f/x makes it look like a much better outing for Romero controlwise – rather than struggling to control his big breaking ball, he was throwing it pretty much exactly where he should.
The Mockingbird 
Do trackbacks only work if they’re from other WordPress blogs, or do Blogger blogs in particular not work, or is there something special I have to do?
Torgen
June 1, 2009 at 3:25 am
No clue!
halejon
June 2, 2009 at 1:07 pm
I think I can hand craft a pingback request assuming the URL is the post URL with /trackback/ at the end.
Torgen
June 2, 2009 at 2:02 pm
Your pingback XMLRPC handler said “Pingback from (my URL) to (your URL) registered. Keep the web talking! :-)”, but I don’t see the trackback link yet. Not sure if it takes time or what.
Torgen
June 3, 2009 at 4:06 am
Looks like it worked.
Torgen
June 3, 2009 at 4:39 pm
[…] The Mockingbird breaks down the ridiculous calls that once again went in Jon Lester’s favour against the […]
Red Sox, who are ya? « Infield fly
June 1, 2009 at 12:30 pm
Look at all of the pitches Lester put around that outside corner compared to how few Romero put there. That’s why he’s getting the calls. And if you look at the location of those “balls called strikes” just off the outside corner and then look at Romero’s graph, you’ll see that Romero put zero pitches in that location – when RR was off the plate, it was further.
I think it’s just a case of Lester showing he could live on that corner and Romero not knowing where his pitches were going. Maddux and Glavine made HOF careers out of hitting the outside corner on the first pitch of the game and then living four inches off the plate for the rest of the game.
ugly duckling
June 2, 2009 at 11:41 am
I agree that Romero certainly didn’t “establish” the zone, but 4 inches should be past the limit of how far it can expand. Cy Youngs get about an inch, and although they didn’t have pitch f/x in Maddux/Glavine’s prime, nobody these days does or should get that much credit. There are two that are over 4, another couple above 3…that just makes hitting impossible.
And whatever happened to establishing the bottom of the zone? It’s funny, Romero actually had a higher % of called pitches that were in the official strike zone. So he wasn’t getting the calls because he was wild, but arguably he was only seeming wild because he wasn’t getting the calls…
halejon
June 2, 2009 at 1:07 pm
I love it when the stats/analysis confirm what I was thinking all along during the game. Ricky Romero wasn’t nearly as bad as his line made it look.
SP
June 2, 2009 at 3:16 pm
Ricky Romero had no command of his pitches, which is what he readily admitted after the game. He’ll get it back, he should stay, but this whole RR got jobbed by the ump stuff, I ain’t buying. Lester got the outer corner (and then some), but Ricky couldn’t get a pitch there.
ugly duckling
June 2, 2009 at 6:30 pm
I seem to remember Lester missing his location by a mile and getting a called strike, so if Romero was missing his spots but they were still in the zone he should have got those calls too.
Torgen
June 2, 2009 at 10:05 pm
[…] he got a favourable strike zone, as shown by The Mockingbird. I think it happened again. (Edit: It did.)Bullpen wuz gud Friday an Saturday, but was not so gret on Sunday, aktualy.As we discussed, there […]
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