He also doesn’t think the people who supervise umpires have anything to do with the pitch f/x data, and that he didn’t think there were any supervisory umpires in Arizona for this series. So it doesn’t seem like there was the close scrutiny that would probably be needed to quickly pull the data off line for nefarious reasons, but you never know.

I agree 100% with you. You can’t blame the umpire for losing the game. There will be bad calls and that’s just part of the game. However, the fact remains the Tigers lost this particular game due to a bad call. I’ll say it again: bad calls are a part of the game as much as home runs from an opponent (I’m obviously not drawing a proportional relationship, just pointing out the bad call is something you have to play around and still win).

This team disperately needs some kind of momentum to build on, and this team disperately needs breaks to start going their way to jump start the momentum, so every thrown opportunity compounds the frustration.

Umpires should also be held accountable when they develop a history of making horrible calls. What that barometer is, I don’t know.

I’ll post again if I hear anything back, or if Jason puts a reply on his blog.

It would seem that MLB is trying to protect its own. For all I know, it might be a deal they have with the umpires’ union, who might be perturbed that everyone can now prove when they make a mistake. It’s like opening Questec to the public.

And his poor 1st base play has been the cause of the retarded infield switch between him and Caberra. This probably contributed to Caberra’s slump as it coincided the switch. And what is so frustrating is that the infield defense did not get any better because we just took a terrible 1st baseman and then made him into a terrible 3rd baseman.

He is now the player I most hate on this roster.

Good point. I am reluctant to bring religion into it, but as you know the gods can be quite fickle.

Heck, we’re all looking for scapegoats on the Tigers roster, why not expand the search?

I guess the only “conspiracy” I was alluding to is that Bucknor is awful and I was entertaining the notion that MLB may not want us to know how awful.

I cited “against-Tigers” examples because those were most germane to me.

This post was more about: umpire makes bad calls, I want to show the bad calls, oops-the bad calls are gone.

Is Billfer really entertaining conspiracy theories? Or is he merely stating facts/observations?

Hopefully we haven’t reached the point where we have to omit facts/observations, simply because they might lead one to the conclusion that 2 or more people took action toward a common goal(conspiracy).

If we are talking about potential predjudice on the part of umpires in general, I may be inclined to agree, in that it is possible that calls go against bad teams more often than against good teams, and this can on occasion affect the outcome of a game.

The best way to negate such disadvantages (real or imagined) is to play ball (and manage) at a level above Class A. The real culprit is that they stink, and everybody, including the umpires, know they stink. The expectation by many (admit it, how many of us were surprised by last night’s choke?) is that they will stink again. My worry is that because this has been going on for so long now, the team believes this as well. I am not making a pronouncement, because I don’t know, and I don’t want to psychoanlayze them, but I do wonder.

And I don’t think Bill is alleging a conspiracy. It’s just weird that the gameday data is gone for this game and this game only. I’m anxious to see if it’s working tonight as it very well could be the gameday data broke in the transfer to the MLB database or something along those lines.