{"id":62253,"date":"2014-04-06T09:00:02","date_gmt":"2014-04-06T14:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=62253"},"modified":"2014-04-09T13:25:26","modified_gmt":"2014-04-09T18:25:26","slug":"umpires-and-expectation-bias","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2014\/04\/06\/umpires-and-expectation-bias\/","title":{"rendered":"Umpires and Expectation Bias"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Here\u2019s Matt Holliday. It&#8217;s strike three and it was three bad calls.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2014\/04\/2.gif\" data-rel=\"lightbox-image-0\" data-rl_title=\"\" data-rl_caption=\"\" title=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-62255\" alt=\"2\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2014\/04\/2.gif\" width=\"390\" height=\"215\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Holliday\u2019s body language speaks clearly, and his reaction is understandable. The pitch was wide, even wider than the first two pitches, both of which the umpire miscalled as strikes. \u00a0 Here&#8217;s the data:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2014\/04\/1.jpg.png\" data-rel=\"lightbox-image-1\" data-rl_title=\"\" data-rl_caption=\"\" title=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-62254\" alt=\"1.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2014\/04\/1.jpg-500x333.png\" width=\"500\" height=\"333\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2014\/04\/1.jpg-500x333.png 500w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2014\/04\/1.jpg.png 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The PITCHf\/x technology that makes this graphic possible, whatever its value or threat to umpires, has been a boon for\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Sabermetrics\">sabremetricians<\/a>\u00a0 and social scientists.\u00a0 The big data provided can tell us not just the number of bad calls but the factors that make a bad call more or less likely.<\/p>\n<p>In the <em>New York Times<\/em>, Brayden King and Jerry Kim <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2014\/03\/30\/opinion\/sunday\/what-umpires-get-wrong.html\">report<\/a>\u00a0on their study of roughly 780,000 pitches in the 2008-09 season. Umpires erred on about 1 in every 7 pitches \u2013 47,000 pitches over the plate that were called balls, and nearly 69,000 like those three to Matt Holliday.<\/p>\n<p>Here are some of the other findings that King and Kim\u00a0 report in today\u2019s article.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u00a0Umpires gave a slight edge to the home team pitchers, calling 13.3% of their pitches outside the zone as strikes.\u00a0 Visitors got 12.6%.<\/li>\n<li>The count mattered:\u00a0At 0-0, the error rate was 14.7%, at 3-0, 18.6% of pitches outside the zone were called as strikes, and at 0-2, only 7.3% of pitches outside the zone were called as strikes.<\/li>\n<li>All-star pitchers were more likely than others to get favorable calls&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>&#8230;especially if the pitcher had a reputation as a location pitcher.<\/li>\n<li>The importance of the situation (tie game, bottom of the ninth) made no difference in bad calls.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>It seems that expectation accounts for a lot of these findings. It\u2019s not that what you see is what you get. It\u2019s that what you expect is what you see. We expect good All-star pitchers to throw more accurately. \u00a0We also expect that a pitcher who is way ahead in the count will throw a waste pitch and that on the 3-0, he\u2019ll put it over the plate.\u00a0 My guess is that umpires share these expectations. The difference is that the umps can turn their expectations into self-fulfilling prophecies.<\/p>\n<p><em>Cross-posted at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/why-umpires-make-bad-calls-2014-4\" target=\"_blank\">Business Insider<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<span class=\"ft_signature\"> Jay Livingston is the chair of the Sociology Department at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/profilepages\/view_profile.php?username=livingstonj\">Montclair State University<\/a>.  You can follow him at <a href=\"http:\/\/montclairsoci.blogspot.com\/\">Montclair SocioBlog<\/a> or on <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/#!\/JayLivingston\">Twitter<\/a>.<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here\u2019s Matt Holliday. It&#8217;s strike three and it was three bad calls. Holliday\u2019s body language speaks clearly, and his reaction is understandable. The pitch was wide, even wider than the first two pitches, both of which the umpire miscalled as strikes. \u00a0 Here&#8217;s the data: The PITCHf\/x technology that makes this graphic possible, whatever its [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":258,"featured_media":62256,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[274,37,108],"class_list":["post-62253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-methodsuse-of-data","tag-social-psychology","tag-sports"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2014\/04\/1a1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/258"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62253"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62253\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62336,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62253\/revisions\/62336"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}