Minor League Diary: May 7

The Men in Blue

News item: Barons manager pulls team off field.

News item: Delmon Young throws bat at umpire.

News item: Derek Zumsteg at USS Mariner points out this event in the recent Oklahoma-Round Rock game. Some nice quotes from the audio: “Incompetence should not be a reason to keep the inning going.” “That is so incompetent that it’s not even worth me getting a stroke over.” “These umpires are such fools that they cannot even get (ejected Oklahoma manager Tim Ireland) off the field.” “Write the league, E-mail them, call them...”

News item: Ottawa manager Dave Trembley blasts replacement umpires.

Personal observations:

On Friday night, the Mudcats’ Kevin Randel hit a ball down the right field line. I couldn’t see where the ball landed, exactly, but I’ve watched almost 100 games from that vantage point since I moved to Carolina in 1998, and from the trajectory of the ball there was absolutely no doubt in my mind that it would land foul. It did, as I confirmed later with someone downstairs who had a good view of the play - but the umpire at first base initially made no call, and then half-heartedly signaled fair. Randel steamed into second with a double. Gary Jones was livid, and was tossed. Carolina went on to score six runs in the inning, overcoming a 4-1 deficit.

One inning and a 1:22 rain delay later, with the score now tied at 7 all after some shoddy fielding by the Mudcats led to three Baybear runs, Carolina’s Edgar Gonzalez took a pitch for a called strike. Mudcat manager Luis Dorante protested the call (briefly), along the lines of “that pitch hasn’t been a strike all night” - an accurate assessment. Nothing especially untoward was said - and by this point in the game, you could hear virtually everything that was being said on the field, given that the time was approaching midnight and most of the fans had left. Order was restored, but only briefly. Within, say, 30 seconds after retaking his position behind the plate, the home plate umpire turned to the 3B dugout and ejected Mudcat pitching coach Rich Gale. Gale came blazing out of the dugout, screaming “For what? For what?” and it took about another five minutes to restore order.

On Saturday night, the plate umpire’s zone was ludicrously small AND inconsistent, and both starting pitchers (Ben Julianel and Roger Deago) struggled to find something, anything, that would be called a strike. Both pitchers had nearly a 1-1 ratio of strikes to balls (the norm is somewhere around 2-1 in favor of strikes) and rang up big pitch counts that led to both pitchers being pulled after five innings despite pitching effectively. The umpiring was bad enough to draw a comment from Patrick Kinas, Carolina’s radio voice, after one pitch down the heart of the plate was called a ball.

News item: Minor League umpires reject 12 percent raise.

Pat O’Conner, a minor league official, said recently:

to be honest the umpiring in many cases has been as good or better than it was before. I’m not going to kid you and say it has been better in every instance, but generally it has been at least as good.

To be honest, Mr. O’Conner, your statement is horsehockey. The replacement umpires have two problems, apart from being inconsistent:

1. They don’t make calls instinctively; they have to *think* about every call they make. When you don’t make a call intinctively, chances are that by the time you do make it someone is going to be unhappy about it.
2. They don’t know how to keep a situation from escalating out of control.

With all due respect to Mr. O’Conner, the quality of play on the field IS being affected by these shortcomings of the replacement umpires. It’s noticeable to everyone who watches more than an occasional game, and it’s not just my opinion; I hear it expressed time and again at the ballpark, from people whose job it is to watch minor-league games. And it’s having an effect on prospect development, both the pitchers and the hitters.

The professional minor league umpires are far from perfect themselves, of course. But most of them have been trained by the umpiring schools and in the minors for several years, and they have learned to deal with on-field situations, to make calls instinctively, and to at least be consistent in the calls they do make. There is, in fact, a night-and-day difference between what I saw a year ago and what I’m seeing today. And the longer it takes for the powers that be in minor league baseball to recognize this, and to realize that they might be winning a battle with the AMUA over the bodies of the minor-league players whose development is being hurt by poor umpiring, the worse it’s going to get.

Speaking of Delmon

The International League has yet to announce the length of Delmon Young’s suspension. I have to wonder: just exactly why are they waiting? It’s been 10 days.

Prospect Notes

I saw Cesar Carrillo pitch for the first time this week. Carillo popped a couple of pitches in the mid-90s, which was better than I had been led to expect, but wasn’t especially sharp, allowing 5 runs (4 earned) in 5 1/3 innings and being taken deep by Jamie Athas and Jonathan Aceves, neither of whom is known for power hitting. His mechanics are solid, but his breaking stuff wasn’t working especially well, and I think he needs that working to be effective. He’s definitely got a major league arm and stuff, though - he’s not *just* a finesse pitcher. Baseball America also has a summary of the game.

George Kottaras did not have a particularly good series. I still like him, but some of the negatives showed up here; the Mudcats’ lefty pitchers handled him fairly easily, and he had trouble blocking pitches (which he did very well when I saw him last year). On the plus side, he threw well, which was a bone of contention in 2005 (although I didn’t notice any problems when I saw him at the tail end of ‘05).