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Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Ejections: Vic Carapazza (1)

HP Umpire Vic Carapazza ejected Tigers first baseman Miguel Cabrera for arguing a strike three call in top of the 6th inning of the Tigers-Twins game. With one out and two on, Cabrera took a 1-2 changeup from Twins pitcher Glen Perkins for a called third strike. Replays indicate the pitch was located knee high and over the heart of home plate, the call was correct. At the time of the ejection, the Tigers were leading, 5-2. The Tigers ultimately won the contest, 9-7.

This is Vic Carapazza (85)'s first ejection of 2011.
Vic Carapazza now has 5 points in the Umpire Ejection Fantasy League (0 Previous + 3 AAA + 2 Correct Call = 5).
Vic Carapazza was not drafted in 2011.

This is the 36th ejection of 2011.
This is the 16th player ejection of 2011.
Prior to his ejection, Cabrera was 1-3 in the contest.

Wrap: Tigers at Twins Wrap

Video (1): Cabrera ejected by Carapazza
Video (2): Ejection (alternate, at 0:40)

Pitch f/x courtesy Brooks Baseball
*Note: Brooks Baseball is promoting a Sabermetrics seminar hosted by those at the Jimmy Fund with all the money collected going to cancer research, the link to the seminar can be found here.

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12 comments:

  1. Cowboy JerryMay 11, 2011 at 12:48 PM

    Welcome to the show kid.

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  2. Jon TerryMay 11, 2011 at 1:14 PM

    Arguing balls and strikes, visually demonstrative, yup, that's an ejection. And yeah, what's the point of a pitch track application if you tell your fans you don't believe. Second time I've heard that this month.

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  3. AnonymousMay 11, 2011 at 2:33 PM

    Those announcers are so wrong. Since when does a hitter have a beef with the umpire when he calls a strike in the strike zone?

    If anything, I was expecting someone from the Twins to get ejected from this game. There was an at-bat early in the game when Scott Baker threw 4 out of 5 pitches to a batter, and Carapazza called 4 of them balls. The Tigers definitely had an advantage in his strike zone early.

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  4. AnonymousMay 11, 2011 at 2:41 PM

    Kid? It's Miguel Cabrera, I'm fairly certain he's already earned his 'welcome'. Leyland showed great class there, I thought.

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  5. clement30May 11, 2011 at 3:00 PM

    Good ejection, the actual heave-ho is avalible at 0:40 in this video:
    http://mlb.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=14700811 (Perkins comes on in strong relief)

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  6. Jeremy DircksMay 11, 2011 at 3:46 PM

    I can't speak for Jerry, but I'm guessing his "kid" was referring to Vic Carapazza.

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  7. AnonymousMay 11, 2011 at 5:00 PM

    Why even have a K Zone if you discount its results?

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  8. AnonymousMay 11, 2011 at 8:34 PM

    You can totally tell by Leland's reaction that he knew exactly why Cabrera was ejected and had no problem with it.

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  9. AnonymousMay 11, 2011 at 8:55 PM

    I'm not implying that the call was incorrect on that paryicular strike,but what I'am complaining about is Carapazza's strike zone.He was all over the place. Let the chief umpire review this game.

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  10. BrooklynUmpMay 12, 2011 at 6:21 AM

    I'm not really sure what Cabrera was looking at. The pitch was at the knees, right down the middle of the plate.
    I love when people say the umpire was "all over the place." What exactly does that mean? Did he call both low and high strikes? Did he call inside and outside corner strikes? What a travesty! The strike zone is not standard. It varies from batter to batter, and to say an umpire is all over the place is silly. The pitcher selects the location; the umpire calls it.

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  11. LindsayMay 12, 2011 at 9:28 AM

    @BrooklynUmp, good points. What we have to remember about Pitch f/x, too, is that the plot is a normalized strike zone: the left and right bounds are easy enough to understand, but the top and bottoms change from batter to batter. On the plot, the upper and lower bounds are always at 1.5 and 3.5 feet, but this is slightly misleading. Because we're looking at a normalized plot, the "2-foot vertical zone" might be stretched or compressed from batter to batter. The bottom of the zone always corresponds to the computer's interpretation of the hollow of the batter's knee; the top of the zone always corresponds to the computer's interpretation of the midpoint between the batter's shoulders and top of the uniform pants. It is supposedly accurate to within an inch (which explains what we at UEFL refer to as "borderline calls").

    Here's something to remember... the zone technology used on TV may be either of an unnormalized plot or of a normalized one (like our Pitch f/x). K-Zone, for instance, is generally normalized (when used in replay), but can also be unnormalized (when used live). The overlay type plots you sometimes see on ESPN where they place a box over the actual plate, next to the batter, is generally unnormalized. We've all seen it, the zone never seems to actually line up with the batter's knees or midpoint. For that reason, I never put too much stock into any TV strike zone - I always call it an estimation of the actual strike zone, rather than a zone itself.

    The pitch f/x data we use is accurate because it is a normalized zone, but even then, it is a 2D plot. Home plate and the strike zone are 3D - they have depth. That is something pitch f/x tries to represent in 2D by averaging, but ultimately, that's where the +/- 1 inch accuracy figure comes from, and for a knuckleball pitcher that runs the bounds of the entire zone with one pitch, pitch f/x does its best to guess... but it's ultimately one dot, representing just one location where that ball was at home plate.

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  12. LindsayMay 12, 2011 at 10:55 AM

    RE: "Welcome to the show, kid."

    This was Carapazza's first MLB ejection.

    ReplyDelete