May 10, 2024 - News
Baseball umpires aren't as bad as you think this season
Add Axios as your preferred source to
see more of our stories on Google.
Despite what you may have heard — or think you've seen with your own two eyes — Major League Baseball umpires are actually doing pretty well this season, at least when it comes to calling balls and strikes.
By the numbers: League-wide, baseball umps have a nearly 94% accuracy rating so far in 2024, per unofficial metric-keeper UmpScorecards.
- That's down a bit from 2023 but up from 90% or so in 2015.
How it works: UmpScorecards' accuracy stat tracks the percentage "of called pitches called correctly by the umpire."
- See more about their methodology here.
Zoom in: There's a decent gap between the best- and worst-performing umpires so far this year.
- The top ump, Derek Thomas, has a 96.1% accuracy rating across six games and 1,027 called pitches.
- His lowest-ranked counterpart, John Bacon, is at 90% — but has only overseen a single game, in which he called 201 pitches.