So, the other day I was messing around on the internet, looking up some baseball stuff, and I stumbled upon this thing called Umpire Scorecards. It’s basically this online platform where they grade umpires on how well they called the game. It got me thinking, “Hey, I could do something with this.” I mean, I always get a kick out of those Twitter accounts that post umpire scorecards after every game. This could be fun.
I started digging in, trying to figure out how this whole thing works. Turns out, they use a bunch of data to come up with these scores. They look at things like accuracy, consistency, and if the umpire favored one team over the other. It’s all pretty involved. I found out that they take inspiration from some smart dude named Dr. David Hunter, which sounds legit. And some algorithms are used that were created by the Umpire Scorecards team. This makes their data more convincing.
- First thing I did was just observe. I went to their Twitter page (@UmpScorecards) and checked out a bunch of their posts. They put up a new scorecard after every game, showing how the home plate umpire did. I saw one for a Dodgers game, and the umpire was this guy named Mark Ripperger.
- Then, I got a little more hands-on. I wanted to understand their metrics better. I read through their explanations on how they calculate “favor” and “run impact.” Apparently, these show how much an umpire’s calls affected a team’s chances of winning or how many runs they might have cost a team. It’s pretty complex, but it’s also kind of cool to see how they quantify this stuff. I also found out that some umpires use the “breaking the wrists” criterion, which is interesting.
- Next, I started thinking about how I could use this data myself. Maybe I could track my favorite umpires or see if there are any trends over the season. I’m not exactly sure what I’ll do yet, but it’s fun to brainstorm. For example, I could track which umpire is the most accurate in the game.
This whole umpire scorecard thing has been a neat little project. It’s not something I’d normally spend my time on, but it’s been a fun diversion. Plus, it’s always cool to learn something new about baseball. Who knows, maybe I’ll even start my own Twitter account and share these scorecards. Or maybe I’ll just keep it as a fun little hobby. We’ll see. This is quite an interesting discovery, and it will be interesting to see what happens next.
