Whether true or not, there is a perception that MLB umpires have been getting worse at calling balls and strikes, especially this season. Minnesota Twins shortstop Carlos Correa has a suggestion to help them out.
Correa spoke Friday after the Twins were burned by several borderline calls in a 3-2 loss to the Cleveland Guardians. The shortstop suggested that pitchers are throwing too hard and with too much movement for umpires to do a good job, and suggested that giving them access to the same PitchCom system pitchers use might help them to do better with borderline pitches.
“I feel like pitchers are too nasty right now for umpires to see,” Correa said, via Tom Withers of The Associated Press. “I feel like if the umpires knew what was coming and they had a PitchCom they would make calls so much better.
“It’s really hard for them to just be able to call pitches, especially the way the catchers are framing nowadays. If they had a device where it says slider and they are anticipating the slider and they know where it has to start and land for it to be a strike, then we would get so many calls.”
It is an interesting thought from Correa. Umpires, like hitters, do not know what is coming, and can sometimes be fooled by late movement. Letting the umpires in on PitchCom would take away a lot of that guesswork. However, some of the misses this year have been inexcusable, and should not need an idea like this to be rectified.
Correa’s proposal is unlikely to go anywhere, but umpires would probably be more open to it than one other player-proposed solution that popped up recently.
