when they are asked if it was a check swing or a strike? The call can be very important.
Yet, it seems that call would be difficult to make. It is not an optimum angle to view it.
I guess we have to live with it. Or is there another solution?
The first and third base umpires are not called upon to judge whether or not the pitch was in the strike zone. The only call they make is whether or not the batter swung at the pitch. It’s often difficult for the home plate umpire to judge whether or not the batter went around, since he’s partially screened by the catcher. But the umpires down the base lines have an unobstructed view of the batter, so they are able to make that call if the home plate umpire can’t…but only the home plate umpire can make the call of whether or not the pitch is in the strike zone.
Why don’t you think it’s an optimum angle?
From my experience, it’s a horrible position from which to make a call on a check swing, unless it’s an obvious swing. The borderline swings just happen too fast from too far away to do much else besides flip a coin in your brain and make that call. Short of cameras or some type of high tech solution, I think we’re stuck with it.
Granted, MLB umpires would be much better judges of it then someone like myself, and like all other calls, they get far more right then wrong.
Do you think it’s the position, or the fact that most 1st/3rd base umps just aren’t focused on that aspect of their job? (I honestly have no idea - it seems like a pretty good angle to me.)
If you look at the geometry of it, ideally you need to would be perpendicular to the batter/pitcher to have the optimum view.
Usually when I’m watching in the stands, I have a pretty good idea of whether or not the batter went around or not. I don’t see why it would be any different for a highly-trained umpire standing only about 100 feet from the play.
It actually is a very good angle to view it for a four umpire team. For three, usually good unless one of the umps has to go into the infield. Two umps, it’s only good with no one on base and a right-handed batter.
It’s a pretty good vantage point, but since it’s not a reviewable call it really doesn’t matter. If the field ump doesn’t have a strong feeling that it was a swing he can just back up the plate ump and say that there was no swing.
It clearly is not the ideal view. The best view would be standing to the side, not up the baseline.
The reason the umps are where they are is because it’s been done that way for generations; there’s no other reason. It’s more or less the best way to deploy a four-man umpiring crew. For this particular call, it does not work very well, but having the umpires where they are works better for most calls.
There are probably twenty ways I could think of just off the top of my head that you can improve the way MLB games are officiated. The first would be that there should simply be more officials. There should be an official whose specific job it is to watch for swing/no swing calls, as the OP is asking about. There should be outfield officials whose job it is to make determinations regarding home runs, fair and foul calls well down the line, etc. If a tennis match can have ten or eleven officials, why can’t a baseball game?
I’m still not understanding this. To count as a swing, the bat has to cross the baseline. Why is standing on that baseline not the best spot?
(The best spot would really be directly above the plate, but until they stationumps on cranes, I’m not counting that.)
There is no such rule and, in fact, that isn’t even the unofficial interpretation. The unofficial, working interpretation today is that the line described by the bat became parallel to, and crossed, the plane of the front of the plate. And that has exceptions.
Thanks for pointing this out. Surprisingly, the rule book does not define what constitutes a “swing”.
When I was umpiring, our instructions were: from our position behind 1B or 3B, did we see the end of the bat pointed at us? If so, that’s a swing.
And with that as the criteria, those umpire positions are perfect for judging a check swing.
Interesting. I probably got that impression based on the location of the umps. And probably some uninformed announcers at some point.
One can understand the announcers’ confusion when the rulebook doesn’t even say what a swing is.
I have personally heard of perhaps a dozen different interpretations. When I was a kid it was whether or not you “Broke your wrists,” e.g. flipped them over in swinging, which is unenforceably hard to see and doesn’t work anymore anyway because many baseball players don’t swing a bat like that now.
jsc1953’s standard of “can I see the end of the bat” is, if you think about it, a reasonable tactic for an ump to take. If the bat is pointed at you there’s no doubt it crossed the plate; it’s clearly way too far to really be called a checked swing. But it’s not a rule, just an easy way for a ump to think about it.
And of course there are reasonable exceptions. For instance, suppose a batter commences a swing but the ball is thrown at his head. He spins away from the plate and the ball, holding his bat against his shoulder, but as he spins around the bat will, technically, “Swing” across the plane of the plate. Is that a swing? To my mind, no, it is not.
And this would be in line with the rulebook definition of a strike, which says that it’s a strike if the batter “offers at*” a pitch and misses. If you’re bailing out, you didn’t offer at the pitch.
(Although note the inconsistency: if the ball hits the bat accidentally while the batter is bailing out, it’s live, or foul, as the case may be.)
*Is there a definition of “offer”? Hah.