In no other major sport do umpires or judges play as important a role in the progress of a game as baseball. Sure, an NFL or NBA referee can call a penalty, foul, or violation on a given play, but in baseball, an umpire’s decision is necessary for the progression of the game – simply, the game cannot continue without the referee’s decision regarding the ball or strike.
If this is the case in baseball, why don’t we worry more about umpires in everyday fantasy baseball? If we’re looking at data every day to try to find that edge in predicting which starting pitcher will throw 10 strikeouts, why wouldn’t umpires be part of that search? After all, they’re the ones calling these strikes, right?
Thanks to Fantasy Labs’ impressive data, we can see exactly how umpires – each one in particular, in fact – affect both hitter and pitcher fantasy performance. To do this, we measure a player’s Plus-Minus (actual fantasy points minus expected fantasy points, calculated by salary) and store them all in a huge database. After a while, some umpires certainly show a tendency to be friendly toward batters or pitchers. First, let’s take a look at the top 10 active umpires who improve hitter values.
| Arbitrator | More less | |
|---|---|---|
| Bruce Dreckman | +2.16 | |
| Chris Conroy | +1.05 | |
| Joe West | +0.74 | |
| John Hirschbeck | +0.71 | |
| Tim Timmons | +0.62 | |
| Ted Barrett | +0.60 | |
| Tom Hallion | +0.57 | |
| Jerry Meal | +0.54 | |
| Dan Bellino | +0.49 | |
| Eric Cooper | +0.49 |
Batters who played in games in which Bruce Dreckman was the home plate umpire saw a historic plus-minus of plus-2.16. It is a lot higher than any other referee – honestly, Dreckman still has a pretty small sample size, so I would expect some regression over time. However, you can still find that there are umpires who are always friendly towards batters.
And if you think that’s crazy, look at the top 10 umpires in terms of pitching value.
| Arbitrator | More less | |
|---|---|---|
| Kerwin Danley | +3.73 | |
| Bob Davidson | +3.38 | |
| Brian Gorman | +3.24 | |
| Ed Hickox | +2.08 | |
| Mike Muchlinsky | +1.82 | |
| DJ Reyburn | +1.79 | |
| Tim Welke | +1.76 | |
| Victor Carapazza | +1.74 | |
| Paul Nauert | +1.64 | |
| Marty Foster | +1.58 |
Wow. These are high numbers. For reference, I talked about the Coors Field effect yesterday – it has historically added more than 2.04 runs to hitters over the expected value.
I think you probably know where I’m going with this, and it’s pretty mind-blowing: A user-friendly launcher The umpire is more valuable in terms of fantasy baseball than the hitters playing at Coors Field.
Take a deep breath, and let’s go even further. The problem with the Coors Effect is that everyone knows it: Rockies stacks at home will generally always be one of the most owned plays of the night. Taking home plate umpires into consideration when choosing pitchers is likely a strategy that very few DFS players adopt, despite the fact that it is actually one of the most valuable factors.
So how do you do this? Granted, this can be a little tricky, as home plate umpires aren’t necessarily always announced with plenty of time to spare before a season series. However, because we know the rotation of the umpiring crew, we can more easily predict who will be behind the plate for subsequent games. In our Trends section you can select any umpire – perhaps select all those with positive pitcher values and create your own trend. Then you can watch each day what matches are in progress for the list. Boom, very few players get any value.
This is also a trend that we are already following as Pro Trend. For example, take a look at Paul Goldschmidt’s player card and you’ll see that “Top 25 Ump for Batters” is one of his trends. And if you want to create your own trend on umpires with more specific criteria – perhaps with pitchers who have a strikeout per 9 innings of over 8.0 – you can do just that.
