These New Umpires in the MLB(2014) Need to Tighten it Up

Wikipedia has a list of current umpires and I don't recognize a whole helluva lot of them.
Some are vaguely familiar like #87 Scott Barry, #89 Cory Blaser, #94 Lance Barrett, #98 Chris Conroy, #51 Marvin Hudson and #2 Daniel Bellino but the majority of these guys are unrecognizable. And it has to do with their inability to call tag plays at the plate or distinguish a ball from a strike.

That and their ever-changing strike zone. Damn, when are the powers that be going to stick to the rulebook definition of what a strike is and have these improvisation artists adhere to said rules? How can someone just hired have so much leeway in how they do their job? Tighten it up, Powers That Be. It's an outrage!

Will Little, DJ Reyburn, Adrian Johnson, David Rackley,John Tumpane, Quinn Wolcott, Adam Hamari,Pat Hoberg, Chris Segal, Marcus Pattillo,Toby Basner, Gabe Morales, Tom Woodring, Seth Buckminster (got a thumbs down for his attempted at calling balls and strikes in both an A's and Giants game)Jordan Baker, Mike Muchlinski, Alan Porter (who did opening day at Dodger Stadium, so if you saw that game you saw how badly this guy stunk!!), Todd Tichenor, Manny Gonzalez, and finally Vic Carapazza (son-in-law of former AL ump Rich Garcia...so you see that favortism happens in the umpire ranks as with everything else on this planet)all need to be schooled on what a strike is and not leave it to their imaginations as to what is and what is not a strike. It is a head-scratching conundrum when you continually ask yourself who hired this guy? Balls and strikes are a struggle and his positioning on tag plays is giving him no chance to get the call right. Are the people who grade these guys going to take into account that these guys almost always have their calls overturned? Isn't that a reason to give them the boot? That and their willingness to put on some "rabbit ears" so that they can give a player, manager or coach the heave-ho, even though the player, manager, or coach is actually in the right for questioning the inaccuracy of the umps' call. Is anything these new umpires valid? I'd say as of April 22nd the answer is their ball/strike zones and ability to call tag plays are D- at best.

This and a few pitchers who seem to think they have the authority to slow the game down to a crawl is what is making the game of baseball drag to unwatchable proportions.


Kevin J. Marquez

What Happened to Calling Balls and Strikes OR why has a tag play suddenly gotten harder to call?

Unwatchable.

Alan Porter behind the plate is unwatchable.
The home plate umpire in the Los Angeles Dodgers' opening day game for 2014 had no idea what a strike was. Judged based on his body language, if you asked him about his "strike zone" you may as well have been speaking a foreign language because his facial countenance would have reflected total disbelief. As if someone slipped something in his morning coffee and he just couldn't assimilate what the hell was happening.

It is amazing how extremely boring the game of baseball can be when umpires act as if something else besides the game is going on. When the home plate umpire is wearing sunglasses, as was Porter, even though the rules do not permit such "equipment" for the arbiter of balls and strikes it's understandable why they can use their own interpretation of the rulebook strike zone.

Hey, this rule says this and that rule says this but I'm the umpire and I can interpret each and every rule any way I see fit. Which in layman's terms means however they can make it work best for them they will most assuredly interpret the rule in that fashion.

All this moaning and groaning about speeding up the game. How about the umpires just follow the rules they were hired to adhere to? If you call a strike a strike and not leave it to your imbecilic interpretation perhaps the batters will swing and pitchers will throw in more of a rhythm than when they have to rub their eyes or ask where the pitch missed.

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Michael Morse's defensive approach to Adrian Gonzalez' homer was an optical illusion. He (Morse) played that homer like he was 5'6" when the last I looked he stands 6 feet tall and 5 inches. The Giants had to know he was defensively challenged? How could they not know he was so inept?

Earlier in the season some "expert" came on a show on the A's flagship station and said Morse was the worst fielder he ever saw. It was like listening to Bobby Slayton, the comedian, rip into some overpaid ballplayer who didn't know which hand to put his glove on. I mean the guy's statement was a bull's eye. Unfortunately, I cannot remember his name. But his ball busting was point blank bingo.

The 2014 Los Angeles Dodger season opener was simply unwatchable. Alan Porter somehow making it to the big leagues as an umpire and Michael Morse in the big leagues as a left fielder.

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The missed tag play by Eric Cooper in Arizona vs. Giants is unacceptable.

Kevin J. Marquez

Eric Cooper Stunk it Up on April 1, 2014 in Arizona

Eric Cooper. Had trouble with balls and strikes and missed a tag play at the plate. Maybe he smelled good upon arrival for the game but by game's end he most surely stunk.

How tough is it to call balls and strikes?
How tough is it to get into position to make a call on a tag play?

Evidently these are things the people who grade the umpires are still working out. Like with instant replay, in all of the preparation for using replay on questioned calls and it had not been established that on all plays at the plate, these were grounds for a reviewable call.

Anything that causes one team to score or not to score, that is the question. And Major League baseball did not think to implement into the replay procedures. It somehow slipped the minds of everyone involved. They were spending too much time worrying about the "pace of the game." But when it was determined to GET THE DAMNED CALL RIGHT you threw out the "pace of the game."

C'mon people, get your priorities in order. You've may have already cost a team a game (unfortunately it's the team I root for) and you don't think plays at the plate warrant a view from the important people in New York? New York, everything about the need to go to New York smells like low tide at Candlestick or a rainy night at the former Oakland Coliseum, home of the A's and Raiders.

And that smell last night was Eric Cooper, home plate umpire in the Giants @ Diamondbacks. Game 2 of the 2014 season.

Kevin J. Marquez