Better Know An Umpire: Ted Barrett

Welcome to Better Know An Umpire, an effort to educate ourselves on the human elements who have ultimate decision-making power over some 2,500 Major League Baseball games a year. (All cumulative statistics are through the 2011 season, unless otherwise stated.)

Name: Ted Barrett

Uniform number: 65

Age: 46

Height/weight: 6-foot-4, 255 pounds (second only to 275-pound Joe West)

First year as MLB umpire: 1994

Total MLB games worked through 2011: 2,132 (home plate: 538)

Previous experience: Pacific Coast League, Arizona Fall League, Texas League, California League, Arizona Instructional League, Northwest League

Career ejections: 50

No-hitters called: Three ( Matt Cain's perfect game, 2012; David Cone's perfect game, 1999; Ervin Santana, 2011.)

Over/under record ( 1999-2011): 182-201

Hated in: Tampa, Atlanta

Notable alleged blown calls: Rangers-A's, August 13, 2011; Angels-Rangers, June 3, 2012.

Claim to fame: Ejected six people (including both managers) during an April 2005 game between Boston and Tampa Bay. That one game accounts for an eighth of Barrett's career ejections.

Scouting report from Major League Umpires' Performance, 2007-2010, by Andy Goldblatt:

Conventional wisdom has it that big, tall umps like Barrett have trouble calling the low strike, forcing pitchers to come up, which leads to more hard-hit balls and higher scores. That's not the case with Barrett.

Scouting report from an angry YouTube commenter:

How about umpire Ted Barrett — who sucks so hard it hurts. Fast-Track shows how blind or corrupt he is. This idiot made at least 50 bad strike/ball calls in Philly/Dodger series. What a decayed moron...

Average K/9 ( 2011): 15.4

Average BB/9 ( 2011): 5.8

Sample PITCHf/x strike zone: October 6, 2011. Barrett's strike zone for Game 5 of last year's ALDS between New York and Detroit was just a tad unpredictable.

True fact: Earned a master's degree in biblical studies from Trinity University in 2007 and is a co-founder of Calling for Christ, an organization created to "love, encourage, and disciple umpires in their relationships with Jesus."

On umpiring: "I had kind of a bad temper early on. When someone had a bad temper, I'd take it personally. I threatened a few players in A-ball. A few managers in the league said, 'Hey, you can't do that or you could get fired.'"

Strike 3 call:

To check out other installments of Better Know An Umpire, click here.