umpires Page 1 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
MLB approves ball-strike challenge system for next season
Automated ball-strike challenges are coming to Major League Baseball next season.,A Tuesday vote from the MLB Joint Competition Committee, an 11-person group that includes six team owners, four players and one umpire, made the proposed rule change official. ,"The previous rule changes that have been...
Ball-strike challenge system likely in 2026 pending Tuesday vote
Automated ball-strike challenges are coming to Major League Baseball next season.,The particulars are pending a Tuesday vote from the MLB competition committee, an 11-person group that includes six team owners, four players and one umpire.,The system was tested in spring training and at the 2025 All...
Veteran MLB ump named World Series crew chief
Veteran umpire Mark Carlson will serve as the crew chief of the World Series, which begins Friday in Los Angeles as the Dodgers meet the New York Yankees.,This will be the third World Series and first as crew chief for Carlson, who has more than 25 years' experience as a Major League Baseball umpire...
Out! Wimbledon replaces line judges with electronic line calling
Electronic line calling will replace line judges at Wimbledon beginning in 2025, officials at the All England Lawn Tennis Club announced Wednesday.,Wimbledon now joins other tournaments worldwide to use the electronic system following a trial during this year's competition. The technology will be in...
Deadspin’s deep dive into umpire stats: accuracy and consistency are key
Umpires are supposed to get every call right to the point where they have virtually no impact on the outcome of the game. Therefore, whenever an umpire does affect the outcome of a game, people start to take notice. ...
Joe West’s 'record' is a testament to inertia
I wasn’t aware that the Major League Baseball Umpires’ union had a Twitter feed. I mean, why wouldn’t they? You also might, for a very brief moment, ask if it’s an outlet where the union might help explain some controversial calls or the like. But then you’ll quickly remind yourself that this these ...
MLB Ump Brian O'Nora is even worse at sex solicitation than calling balls and strikes
Brian O’Nora opted out of umpiring in the 2020 season, and baseball hardly missed him. According to Bloomberg Businessweek’s Umpire Auditor, from 2012-19, O’Nora had a correct call rate of 87 percent, the same percentage as notoriously lousy umps Joe West and Kerwin Danley, and a point worse than th...
With Umpires Opting Out of the MLB Restart, is Now the Time for the Robots?
The robots will eventually come to Major League Baseball. But maybe we should start to consider them immediately....
You're Out...of Your Mind! ‘Cowboy’ Joe West Doubts COVID-19 Deaths, Won’t Opt Out of MLB Season
To the shock of absolutely no one, Joe West made a bad call....
Hold Everything! Angel Hernandez Finally Gets a Call He Can Handle
Remember The Late Shift, the early HBO original movie that chronicled the fight over The Tonight Show chair between Jay Leno and David Letterman? Both men battled for the show upon news of Johnny Carson’s retirement. In one scene, Leno, feeling the show slip away from him and also feeling like he’s ...
![MLB Umpire Rob Drake Is Prepared To Shoot People In Defense Of Donald Trump [Update]](https://images.deadspin.com/tr:w-900/yvdhgaxqhu32sn4bgymi.jpg)
MLB Umpire Rob Drake Is Prepared To Shoot People In Defense Of Donald Trump [Update]
Major League umpire and apparent MAGA fiend Rob Drake posted and deleted a tweet late Tuesday indicating that he would be purchasing an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle on Wednesday in order to wage “CIVAL WAR” should Congress impeach peabrain president Donald Trump. Going to go out on a limb here and ass...
Umpire Joe West Sues Retired Catcher Paul Lo Duca Over Bribery Allegations
Umpire Joe West has had his share—some would say more than his share—of failures. You would be well within your rights to describe him as unreliable, ornery, confrontational, or an occasional obnoxious textualist. He’s been all of those things! But one thing West will not hesitate to sue your ass ov...
Irritable Lance Lynn And Persnickety Umpire Confuse The Hell Out Of Each Other
Texas Rangers pitcher Lance Lynn did not have an especially fun time facing the dreaded Yankees Wednesday night. For starters, Aaron Judge and Gleyber Torres socked another couple dingers off him, and he got next to no run support, and wound up taking the loss. To make matters worse, home plate umpi...
Umpire Rob Drake Makes Compelling Case For Umpire Robo Drake
The way the robo-umpire experiment down in the Atlantic League is configured, it should not especially threaten the jobs of human umpires, who are still tasked with communicating balls and strikes and acting as a failsafe against computer glitches. That’s good news for all human umpires, but perhaps...
Keon Broxton Earns Ejection With Badass Long-Distance No-Look Glove Slap
I prefer to live in a world where the action that got Keon Broxton ejected from Monday night’s Yankees-Mariners game was 100 percent intentional. What’s more, I prefer to live in a world where Broxton becomes the Homer Simpson of the no-look glove-slap, and goes around flinging gloves across the fac...
The Robot Umpire Is Moving Up In The World
The Atlantic League announced Tuesday that their experiment with an automated strike zone will continue for the remainder of the season, starting Thursday night. The system mostly worked; players and managers were happy with it; even the umpire who gave it its inaugural run at the Atlantic League Al...
Aaron Boone Explains What It Means To Be A Fucking Savage In That Fucking Box
Yankees manager Aaron Boone’s post-ejection rant was an all-timer. Upset over generous called strikes for the Rays on both Aaron Judge and Brett Gardner—two men of disparate sizes and thus strike zones—Boone jumped in front of an ejection aimed for Gardner, who was busy jackhammering the bat rack an...
Aaron Boone Melts All The Way Down, Torches Umpire With Incredible Rant
Aaron Boone did not make it very far into in this afternoon’s Rays-Yankees game. In just the second inning, umpire Brennan Miller had apparently been a bad enough job calling balls and strikes by Boone’s measure that he stormed out of his dugout and absolutely ripped into Miller. Brett Gardner had j...
Don Mattingly Is Ready For Robot Umpires
Marlins manager Don Mattingly watched his team get very nearly no-hit by electrifying Padres ace Chris Paddack Wednesday night, in what would’ve been the first no-hitter in Padres history. Paddack gave up his first hit, a solo dinger to Starlin Castro, in the bottom of the eighth inning, and eventua...
Robot Umpire Performed About As Well As Human Umpire
Robot umps have finally made their way into pro baseball, and by all accounts they seem primed to make Angel Hernandez just a little less horrible at his job. A system known as TrackMan made its professional debut on Wednesday during the independent Atlantic League’s all-star game....