During and after yet another playoff victory for the Yankees over the Twins, the main story line for TBS and ESPN wasn’t Andy Pettitte’s terrific pitching performance or Berkman and Granderson’s offensive production…no, instead it was the strike called ball to Berkman in the 7th inning before his go-ahead double. What TBS and most other media outlets failed to report is during that at bat, the first pitch called a strike was actually a ball and for most of the night Pavano benefited from a very friendly strike zone. Below is the strike zone from tonight’s game (via Brooksbaseball.net):
Hunter Wendelstedt had a bad night
(Each pitch is represented by a single dot. Green dots are balls and red dots are strikes. Pitches marked as belonging to a particular team (for example “min” or “nya”) are designated with different shapes. These teams represent the pitching team, not the batting team. So, a pitch marked “nya-Called Strike” was thrown by a Yankees pitcher)
- Twins pitchers had 14 balls called strikes
- Yankee pitchers had 2 balls called strikes
- Twins pitchers had 6 strikes called balls
- Yankees pitchers had 5 strikes called balls
So while the media won’t let the facts get in the way of a good story, its clear the Yankees and not the Twins got the short-end of the strike zone stick last night.
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M. B. Rozell
Kevin Rozell
Good work Eduardo
Good report man!! Gotta love the one-sided sportscasting!!
My son and I BOTH noticed he was calling a lot of balls “strikes” on the Yankees and they didn’t complain. I was wondering if Gardenhire went out to argue THOSE pitches. Glad they ran him. Everything on the plate on the left side was called a ball, and everything on the right side, off the plate, was being called a strike.
And yeah, what’s up with the “impartial” announcers? They spent most of the night trying to strategize how the Twins could get themselves back in the game and reverse the momentum. What kind of shit is that?
Nicely done and written, Eddie.
How about an entry on the “Normalized Strikezone Plot” for the Mets? :)
Frankly, this seems like a rather naive interpretation of the MLB strike zone, and one that you’ve chosen to fit a particular narrative. As is evident from the figure, the umpire’s strike zone in this game extended particularly far inside, but not very far outside. You may prefer that every umpire called precisely the black square outlined, but that’s not how it works. As any player will tell you, the most important thing is consistency, and the strike zone called is fairly consistent—the discrepancies you outline are entirely the product of Twins pitchers taking better advantage of the inside of the plate than the Yankees.
No shit, poindexter. All you did was verify in Rhodes Scholar speak what we’ve already said. It’s the announcers that had it wrong.
David,
Sure the ump was consistent…consistently bad in missing balls for strikes and visa versa, but the main point was that while the media was fixated on the pitch to Berkman and their narrative was the “poor twins got jobbed” in actuality it was the Yankees who got the less favorable calls throughout the game. Moreover beyond the strike zone the Yankees have had several calls go against them (e.g. Golson catch, Young called safe on triple when he was out, Mauer check swing not called strike 3 when he clearly swung, etc…) but those instances don’t fit the “Yankees get all the calls” narrative and are thus ignored.
Mystic7,
I think the TBS guys were rooting for the twins b/c they want a series to go the distance…so if the Yanks were down 1-0 they would probably be rooting for us….I usually dont let that stuff bug me but the way they kept harping on the Berkman pitch drove me nuts…especially since they clearly ignored the first pitch in that AB that was called strike even though it wad several inches off the plate.
Great post Eddie. This puts the data behind what we all saw with our own eyes. TBS became fixated on the Berkman pitch that was on the inside corner not called. Yet they failed to mention in that same at bat the second pitch was called a strike when in fact it was 6 inches off the outside. They also failed to mention all the calls Pavano got off the corner all game.
Even Berkman after the game summed it up perfectly when he said Hunter was calling pitches off the plate outside to lefties all night and he also said he WASNT giving the inside pitch. Now even ESPN is playing this up this morning. A real shame the media is not presenting both sides of this. Not once have i seen this mentioned except here. Really sad.
Fantastic job Eddie. The medias take on that one borderline strike has been comical.
Guess what. On MLB Tonight (last nights edition) they were discussing Carl Pavano’s “game plan” for pitching to the Yankees. They said he wanted to start each batter off with a strike his first time through the lineup, which he did. The problem was they also showed the K-Zone graphic as they showed each first pitch, and 6 of the 8 pitches, which were called strikes, not swing and misses, were BALLS. According to K-Zone! OK TBS?
The medias take on that one borderline strike has been comical.
Any idea where I can get a full TV replay of this game?
I’ve looked on line but no luck.
I was with 3 other guys and there was a TV shot some where around the middle to later part of the game that did a TV shot of the 4 of us… it was close enough that we have all heard from many people they saw us on TV.
I’m trying to find it some where…. Any idea where I can?