Julio Rodriguez, Seattle Mariners.
In what should be a triumphant rookie campaign, Seattle Mariners phenom Julio Rodriguez is struggling. It’s not all his fault. He’s been the victim of several botched called strikes when clearly they weren’t strikes at all. His situation is part of a mounting case as to why calling balls and strikes should be automated.
Before getting into J-Rod specifically, the overall issue of balls and strikes was center stage and under glaring lights on Sunday night. Philadelphia’s first baseman Kyle Schwarber put on quite a show when he went bat-crap crazy after striking out looking in the bottom of the ninth in a one-run game on national television.
The much-maligned Angel Hernandez was the umpire who rung him up on a pitch located a couple of inches off the black. Josh Hader, the closer for the Brewers, was the beneficiary. And as pitchers know, a pitch that can be called a strike when it’s not is the spot they throw to.
Hernandez has been shunned socially, as well as critically held in contempt of competitive baseball for years. Yet MLB has done nothing. He might single-handedly be the reason for the automatic strike zone. And he’s in complete denial. In July 2017, Hernández filed an ultimately unsuccessful federal lawsuit against MLB.
He alleged that racial discrimination (Hernandez is of Cuban descent) kept him from being promoted to crew chief and from umpiring World Series games. Never mind 30 years of incompetency.
Hernandez is by far the worst offender. If it were just him, that’s one thing, but the issue is symptomatic across Major League baseball.
This season, Julio Rodriguez struck out 25 times, which is good enough for the second-highest total of 2022, one “K” behind Atlanta’s Dansby Swanson. Every indication in the young season is that he can’t hit Major League breaking pitches (curves, sliders, others). A dozen of his 25 strikeouts have been on breaking pitches. Twelve more came from fastballs. His other strikeout was on a changeup.
MLB pitchers have caught on. Rodriguez faced a lot of breaking pitches (50.6% of total pitches), while he’s faced fewer fastballs but is striking out at a higher clip on heaters. He also has a higher whiff percentage on fastballs (38.1 vs. 31.4 percent) than on breaking pitches. While these numbers are bad, the eye test tells us something slightly different.
Pitchers aren’t throwing strikes to the Seattle Mainers centerfielder, yet he’s still getting called out on strikes too much. Of the pitches thrown to him, only 5.2 percent have been center-cut (AKA center-center zone), which is 20% below the league average. Even when pitchers don’t throw down the middle, they dance along the edges with Julio.
For proof, J-Rod has been called out on strikes a league-high 14 times this season. Of those 14 times he’s been called out on strikes, according to CBS Sports Plot Chart, he’s been struck out on eight balls clearly outside the zone.
While an argument could be made that 13 of the 14 pitches that have been called third strikes could’ve gone the other way. His first true third strike on an actual, no-doubter happened in Sunday’s game against Kansas City.
The chart below shows the location of Rodriguez’s called third strikes.
Julio Rodriguez’s called strike 3 locations.
How does this happen? How can one player have so many umpire errors compile against them? Old school thinking is that a batter swings at anything close with two strikes. Based on the idea, an umpire is more forgiving to a pitcher with two strikes than a batter with two strikes. However, that theory conceptually wrecks actual place discipline and those that have a strong understanding of the strike zone.
Those watching the Seattle Mariners game on Saturday night saw it. Rodriguez drew a full-count walk on a pitch that was clearly a ball, but he looked back at the umpire as if to ask, are you sure you don’t want to ring me up?
Will there be a correction? No, that’s not how it really works. J-Rod might adjust, but hopefully, he doesn’t. This is clearly a situation where the league, especially the umpires, needs to be more accurate with the strike zone. If not, the specter of automated balls and strikes is hanging over them like the Angel of Death.
While I’m still on the fence about an automatic strike zone, the Angel Hernandez’s of the world and how Rodriguez has been treated regarding called third strikes has me leaning towards automation.
What do you think? Let us know in the comments section below or on social media.
Joe Swenson is cool and writes about many things, all of the time.