Frame this!

Why umpires should stop calling balls and strikes

Twenty years ago, if you had asked an ardent baseball fan what “framing” is in the sport, he likely would have come up blank. Today, almost everyone who follows baseball more than casually knows about framing.

It occurs when a catcher, upon receiving a pitch, moves his glove into the strike zone in an effort to convince the umpire that a ball was a strike. I consider it a form of cheating.

Sure, framing is a skill. Indeed, at minor league venues I see catchers practicing it before the game. But so is throwing pretending to take a charge in basketball by flopping to the floor. Few condone flopping.

How effective is framing? According to this source, a good framer saves his team 15 to 25 runs per season — thus, more than a run every ten games.

It takes an awful lot of “framed” strikes — in other words, blown calls — to save that many runs. And the number of blown calls related to framing by definition does not include cases (fewer in number, but not insubstantial) when an umpire calls a strike a ball.

In short, umpires are blowing a ton of ball-strike calls.

How many? According to this deep dive into data covering 11 years of major league baseball, MLB umpires made incorrect calls when there were two strikes on the batter more than 20 percent of the time. Moreover, pitches thrown in the top right and left part of the strike zone were called incorrectly more than 25 percent of the time. And even the best umpires made bad calls on balls and strikes almost 10 percent of the time.

Not all of the bad calls are the result of framing. Indeed, it’s difficult for me to believe that, at least as to pitches that are outside or inside, framing is the main cause of missed calls. The umpire has a great view of home plate. Why would he be influenced by looking at where the catcher holds the ball after the fact?

But it doesn’t really matter whether calls are being missed because of framing, because of umpires’ idiosyncratic strike zones, or due to sheer incompetence. Maybe calling balls and strikes accurately in major league games has just become too difficult in this era of 97 mph fastballs and pitchers with six-pitch mixes.

What matters is that far too many calls are being missed.

Baseball has finally addressed this problem — sort of. Some spring training game sites have installed technology that enables a challenge, with a quick resolution, to ball-strike decisions.

The key here is “quick resolution.” I support any reliable technological intervention in sports that doesn’t appreciably delay proceedings. I oppose almost any that does.

Here is how the challenge system works:

The home-plate umpire calls balls and strikes, but something called Hawk-Eye technology determines the exact location of the pitch relative to the batter’s strike zone. This enables players to challenge a ball or strike call they believe the umpire got wrong.

Only the batter, the pitcher, and the catcher can challenge an umpire’s call. Even the manager can’t. Challenges must be made immediately after the umpire’s call, by tapping the cap or helmet. There can be no assistance from the dugout or other players.

Each team starts the game with two challenges. Challenges are retained if successful. No new challenges are granted in extra inning games.

The challenge is adjudicated by the technology. In minor leagues where the system was tried, resolution took 17 seconds on average. About half of challenges were successful. In spring training games I’ve seen, resolution seemed quicker.

The strike zone used by the technology is 17-inches wide, the size of the plate. The top end of the zone is at 53.5% of the player’s height, while the bottom is at 27% of the player’s height.

All position players in spring training camps have had their heights measured, first by a team of independent strength and conditioning personnel conducting manual measurements, then by representatives from Southwest Research Institute using biomechanical analysis to confirm the manual measurements and safeguard against potential manipulation.

In the few games I’ve seen it employed, the system seemed to be working well. Resolution is quick and accuracy is improved. In some cases, umpires had missed calls by two inches.

I hope that by 2026, the system is fully in place for MLB games that count.

But is it enough of a fix? If umpires are missing as many calls as the numbers cited about suggest, then two challenges per team per game aren’t enough to solve the problem of bad ball-strike calling. But if more challenges are permitted, then even though resolution is quick, there will be too many interruptions for my taste.

What I’d like to see is a system that takes the calling of balls and strikes away from umpires. Balls and strikes will instead be called instantaneously by the technology.

The ball or strike call has always been at the heart of the game. This is even more true in this era of long counts. If there’s a way to make sure these calls are uniform and in accordance with the rules of the game — not an umpire’s particular preference — and if this can be done without interrupting the game, then use it.

I’d like to see baseball experiment with technology-based ball-strike calling in the minor leagues as early as next year. If the experiment goes well, I’d like to see it implemented within a year or two after that.

I don’t expect this to happen. I expect, instead, that MLB will rely on its challenge system to minimize the problem of bad umpiring.

I see why MLB wants to give the new system a chance. But barring a major improvement in umpiring, , but I don’t believe it’s enough of a fix.