MLB Rules & Umpire Ejections - Know the Rule w/ Lindsay of Close Call Sports

Lindsay Imber of Close Call Sports visits BaseballBiz On Deck & analyzes MLB Ejections with a breakdown on the process & the rules that may have been broken. She shares a humorous & informative look at baseball league ejections on the Close Call Sports YouTube channel 

• On YouTube channel, Close Call Sports, Lindsay analyzes recent baseball plays using the MLB  rule book.
• Becoming a member of the Close Call Sports community
• Controversial play w/ Tommy Pham
• Pham's path to home plate was in fair territory
• Home plate collision rule & runner restrictions.
• Rule Changes & Interpretations:
• Mound visit rules, including catcher-initiated visits and unintended pitching changes.
• Pitching Changes & Ejections:
  • Example, involving the Tampa Bay Rays' pitching coach Kyle Snyder and mound visits count. 
  • Explanation of rule requiring an ejection for an unintended pitching change without a replacement ready
• Rule Confusion & Clarification: between MLB's press releases & MLB rule book
  • Importance of understanding the rule book to avoid misunderstandings 
• Hidden Ball Trick: Examples at college, high school, MLB
• Process for creating videos, focusing on ejections & rule situations
• Balance between ejection & educational rule videos for fan education
• "Ejections of the Year Awards" Best Umpire, Ejections of the Year, Promising Umpires, Honorable Umpire, Fill-in Umpire and more.
• Avoidable ejections due to poor game management
  • Avoiding unnecessary confrontations & ejections.
  • Post-game ejection of the Padres manager, Mike Shildt
  • The importance of umpires walking away to avoid conflict.
  • How are ejections evaluated
• Challenges of Automatic Ball-Strike systems (ABS)
  • The future of baseball with robo-umps & potential impact on ejections and game management. 
  • Stress w/ umpires who must still be prepared to make calls if the system fails.
  • Differences between fully automated systems & challenge system
  • Issues with ABS, such as post-game data changes affecting call accuracy.
  • Transition to robo-umps in MLB will be complex & interesting to watch.

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Transcript

239 BaseballBiz On Deck
 Close Call Sports - Lindsay Imber

[00:00:00] Mark Corbett: Welcome to BaseballBiz On Deck. I am Mark Corbett, your host. And with me today, I am very fortunate to have Mrs. Lindsay Imber, and we're talking about a fantastic person playing the Oregon for them, Anaheim Ducks. But even more so she's in my life, certainly in my head, almost every day with Close Call Sports, Lindsay.

[00:00:34] Mark Corbett: I mean, every morning I wake up, I go open up YouTube and say, what has Lindsay got to show me with that, with baseball yesterday, how you doing? 

[00:00:44] Lindsay Imber: It's it's been an interesting few weeks. 

[00:00:47] Mark Corbett: You know, I know you got some stuff going on trying to still get some things resolved with our friends at YouTube and MLB and I won't go much into it.

[00:00:55] Mark Corbett: But no, I keep thinking about Rob Friedman to took a while to get that all worked out. I hope all that goes smoothly. And I want to remind folks, they can support you. Like I will, by the end of the show with gotta, gotta make sure you get the checkbook out there at least now, wait a minute, if I do close call sports, folks, if you're not, if you haven't been paying attention is a great.

[00:01:14] Mark Corbett: Close Call Sports Show on YouTube where Lindsay dissects different plays of the game, usually from just like the night before, at least within the week, she looks from an umpire's perspective. She starts with the rule book. So when it comes to she's a purist and make sure that we, the game is being told the way it should be, or play the way it should be, and that umpires, let's say either hoorah or ooh, uh, on some of the calls.

[00:01:40] Mark Corbett: So looking at that. And Lindsay again, where would I if I want to support you where'd I go? 

[00:01:47] Lindsay Imber: Uh at this point we've people have asked how can I get involved? There are several ways to do it Uh, there's we finally I finally have a patreon Which you would think would be my username on Patreon would be close calls sports, but it's not because I used to have that and that I forgot the password, so, oh, that's out.

[00:02:07] Lindsay Imber: So now it's just Lindsay 7 1 5, which is super like weird, but Okay. Uh, and. We, we can, for like one offs, there's, we're on, I'm on Buy Me a Coffee if you want to just donate a one off, or, um, the YouTube channel itself offers mImberships to the channel, 

[00:02:26] Mark Corbett: which, 

[00:02:26] Lindsay Imber: which go on to help us, I mean, there's, there's different ways, right?

[00:02:30] Lindsay Imber: Pretty much, just go to CloseCallSports.com, there's probably a link to do something there, uh, and if not, you just go to the channel, and in each video description, there's, there are a whole bunch of links to different places. 

[00:02:43] Mark Corbett: I encourage everybody to go ahead and support Lindsay as well. Now that I've done all that pumping up about all that you do and, and make sure we're going to take care of you.

[00:02:51] Mark Corbett: I'd like to say, Huh, when I've been looking at some recent things that you posted online with the different umpires and let's see what was one of the most recent ones you were looking at. I think. I'm trying to think which was, Oh, Tommy fam, Tommy fam coming in hard to, to home. It looks like that the third base coach gave him going in Tommy at a time.

[00:03:14] Mark Corbett: It didn't make any sense to do it. And Tommy is very vigorous and about how he takes a base. Can you, can you illustrate to us how that, how that play turned out? 

[00:03:23] Lindsay Imber: Yeah, this is a, this is a sacrifice fly. And so fam is coming in from third base and we see something that we don't usually see at home plate, which is the runner take a path that puts them in fair territory.

[00:03:37] Lindsay Imber: Now you're allowed to do that because the runner sets their own base path. When there is, when they're not being pursued by a ball, like a tag attempt, and they're not trying to run more than three feet away to avoid it. So they're allowed to choose their own path, but we don't usually see runners in fair territory at home plate, 

[00:03:56] Mark Corbett: right?

[00:03:56] Lindsay Imber: Because with the home plate collision rule. The, and you're not, it's unfortunately not in the actual rule book, but it is in all the training materials. And I think there was a memo that was put out because, um, I think it was with the Mets, right? The manager of the Mets was super upset about a similar play similar yet different play that happened.

[00:04:18] Lindsay Imber: In New York and said, hey, the memo says that the catcher is not allowed to go onto the plate, not allowed to go into foul territory. And that refers to a training slash memo item that basically delineates where each person can be and you basically take the foul line. And everything that is on the fair territory side of the inside edge of the foul line is the catchers and everything that is either the foul line or foul territory is the runners.

[00:04:48] Mark Corbett: Right. That 

[00:04:48] Lindsay Imber: is how they set up positioning for plays at the plate with the home plate collision rule now. And that's one reason that it's very rare to see a runner go into fair territory here. And so he's in fair territory on this. And you know, he's running down from third base on a sack fly. So it's a straight dash for him.

[00:05:07] Lindsay Imber: It's not where you're rounding the base and you're going to be in foul territory anyway. So it's at least that that part is not unusual. He's coming from the base. The base is in fair territory. That's going to happen. Okay. But the part that gets controversial is the home plate collision aspect, because he goes straight into that catcher with a kind of late slide, uh, that barely might have gotten to the ground before contact.

[00:05:35] Lindsay Imber: And it's, it's, it's a dissection of the rule. We're so used to talking about the catcher restrictions because they're usually the ones who violate we don't talk about runner restrictions that often. And this was a case of talking about runner restrictions, because this runner. Uh, there are basically 2 main tenants of this rule for runners, which are number 1, you cannot deviate from your path to home plate to initiate contact with the catcher.

[00:06:04] Lindsay Imber: Which actually reminds me of the 4th place slide rule, but I digress. Uh, that's a different level, but, um, that's number 1. And then number 2. Is you cannot cause an otherwise avoidable collision. And in this case, I didn't have a deviation from his path because his. Path was in fair territory. So he would need to go through that to get to home plate.

[00:06:25] Lindsay Imber: That's not a deviation, but this is considered an unavoidable collision with the catcher because of that, not in the official rule, but in all the memos part about fair and foul territory and who gets what, if he had decided to take a path on the foul line or in foul territory, that would have been fine.

[00:06:43] Lindsay Imber: If there was a collision, it wouldn't have been on him, but he decided to take fair territory. The catcher. doing exactly what a catcher should do, set up entirely in fair territory. So when that collision comes, you think, who's responsible for it? Was this avoidable? And the answer is yes. Why was it avoidable?

[00:07:01] Lindsay Imber: Because the catcher ceded the entirety of the foul line and foul territory to the runner. For that reason, the runner is out. 

[00:07:09] Mark Corbett: Well, tell me, fam, you never know what's going to happen anyway. He could have gotten, possibly been safe if he'd gone on the other side of the catcher at that point. And like he's pointed out too, the catcher had actually left the lane fairly open for Tommy to get there.

[00:07:26] Mark Corbett: When you're looking through this year, Lindsay, and there've been changes through the last couple of years, size of the bases, uh, you know, how quickly or how many few times a pitcher can disengage and how many times, uh, batter can basically say, Hey, Tim, I'd like a break here. Some of those things are starting to make a difference.

[00:07:49] Mark Corbett: I know definitely with my Tampa Bay Rays, there was like a week where there was a couple of issues. And. Because I was curious when we talk about mound visits, I was wondering if When I see a mound visit, I thought, well, if a catcher goes out there unsolicited to the pitcher, that's the little mound visit.

[00:08:09] Mark Corbett: And my mindset was, oh, it has to be a coach going out there. It has to be something else. But if the catcher decides to step up and walk out there, bang, that's one of the four that's gone. Is that correct? 

[00:08:22] Lindsay Imber: Yes, that is. There's, there's a really funny video out there. I don't remImber which catcher it was, but the pitch clock's about to run out.

[00:08:29] Lindsay Imber: And the catcher thinks, Aha, I can, I can circumvent this violation. And he sprints out to the mound to get a mound visit in there. And it's like, Oh yeah, no pitch clock violation. You're taking your mound visit. That's fine. 

[00:08:43] Mark Corbett: Now, the one with the Rays, Kyle Snyder came out there and they were out of mound visits and that particular one, uh, the Rays realized that was probably going to be a problem.

[00:08:54] Mark Corbett: So they put another pitcher in to start warming up while there's discussion about whether or not they were going to have to pull the pitcher that was on the mound at that point. At that point, the race pitcher had already, let's see, he'd already faced three batters. So logistically, they could have pulled him out without a problem, 

[00:09:17] Lindsay Imber: right?

[00:09:17] Lindsay Imber: Yeah. So the way that this works is when you are out of mound visits, this is rule. Oh, gosh, 5, 10 M4. I have it here somewhere. Here we go. Speaking of the rule book, right? 5, 10 M4, a manager, a coach who crosses the, this is, it says 2011 in it, but. I somehow have put in last year's rule book. So it's just, it's I haven't seen once.

[00:09:49] Lindsay Imber: It's been the biggest for a while. Anyway, I just like to print things out sometimes, you know, because it's fun to just like, thumb through it. So, but I didn't have, I didn't obviously didn't have the cover for 2023. so. That's why it's in here. Manager or coach who crossed the foul line on their way to the mound after the team exhausted its mound visit must make a pitching change unless the pitcher is not pitched to a minimum of three consecutive batters.

[00:10:12] Lindsay Imber: So, yeah, of course that, uh, of course, you know, he, he, he did the three, so that would require a mound visit. Now, the funny thing here is that there is a, there's a little bit of confusion about the ninth inning and the, what they call the extra mound visit that is given. So, uh, They think that, oh, yeah, the 9th inning comes around, we're out of mound visits, and that means that the umpires will just give us another one in the 9th, which is kind of a dumb rule, but that's what people think it is.

[00:10:42] Lindsay Imber: And no, that's actually not what the rule is. It's the rule states that the only time that they're going to give an extra mound visit is specifically if the catcher and the pitcher. Have a cross up in signs or pitch com or whatever if they're not on the same page about something that can be an extra allowable mound visit, but that only applies to the catcher, not the pitching coach.

[00:11:06] Lindsay Imber: So, uh, the whole idea that. This was an extra mound visit that was given in the, in the 9th. It shouldn't have been because the coach is not the catcher. Um, and there is a, you know, putting someone in the bullpen to warm up was a smart move because while all of this, we don't know what's going on stuff is happening.

[00:11:27] Mark Corbett: Right. 

[00:11:28] Lindsay Imber: You have a pitcher that's warming up. And the, and part of the rule about this in five 10 is. If a team is forced to make an unintended pitching change because the pitching coach comes out, and they don't have visits remaining. If they're forced to make an unintended change, and there's no one warming up in the bullpen, then the person who caused that, the pitching coach, is ejected from the game for coming out when they didn't have a replacement ready to go.

[00:12:03] Lindsay Imber: Like, there's still, the replacement still gets Enough time to warm up, but the trade off, of course, is you have to take the picture out and you have an injection of the pitching coach. So, by putting someone in the bullpen that actually sort of. Got them around the role because the way the rule is written is the penalty of an ejection does not apply until the umpires actually dole out the penalty of forcing a pitching change.

[00:12:34] Lindsay Imber: So, by the time the umpires solve the puzzle and forced the pitching change, you already had someone in the bullpen. So, therefore. No ejection. It was very bizarre. 

[00:12:45] Mark Corbett: Oh my gosh. Yeah, I just thought immediately without hearing all the details. I thought You mean Kyle Snyder, the pitching coach is still in the game, you know, with that, before it was all resolved, I thought, I thought for sure they would be sending him out, you know, into the clubhouse, but as you pointed out, there was a whole other element to play because they did have a resume out there going ahead and warming up and was able to pull him in there.

[00:13:09] Mark Corbett: Wow. I saw Corey go out there, man. Oh, Alex core. He was just, he was fuming. He was absolutely fuming for his red socks. And I don't, I don't. Like 

[00:13:18] Lindsay Imber: anything else, the rules contradict themselves. MLB put out a press release saying that if you're out of mound visits, an extra mound visit is awarded for the ninth inning.

[00:13:30] Lindsay Imber: But the rulebook doesn't support that for anyone except for the catcher. So it's very confusing when you have two sources. Which are the same source. It's, it's the league itself saying very different things about the same play and rule. 

[00:13:48] Mark Corbett: Yeah. And that's it. I mean, you show some of that because I'm thinking even while I'm watching the game, I think, okay, there's my observation of what I think is happening out there.

[00:13:56] Mark Corbett: Then there's the umpire who has an observation, but I have no idea what they saw or what they're thinking. There's the guys in the booth up there telling us, you know, what's going on, mispronouncing people's names. And yeah, and then also we have maybe less idea what's going on than the fan in the stands.

[00:14:15] Mark Corbett: And then I got you thankfully, but I have to wait 40, uh, 24 to 48 hours to find out what you saw and break it down. Our, our John boy with, with his. F this and F that, uh, videos, but I am so thankful for you. But there's so much confusion. Do you have an eidetic memory? I mean, you know, 

[00:14:35] Lindsay Imber: no, no, no, you do enough repetition and you get to really learn, like, it's like, um, they're like, I, I do, I, I officiate high school basketball and I remImber like, they added a rule about concussions that you're supposed to direct someone with symptoms of a concussion to leave the game.

[00:14:56] Lindsay Imber: But because you're not a medical doctor or nurse or you're not a medical professional, right? You're not supposed to use the word concussion because you don't want to get into liability for having that opinion 1 way or the other. So, they, the shorthand was just tell the coach that the player needs to go out because of rule 285.

[00:15:17] Lindsay Imber: If you say 285 and you're not technically talking about anything medical. So of course, I remImber the rule, but I remImber the rule number for that reason. Uh, and it's, it's sort of similar in baseball. You just do enough repetition with this stuff and you know that like 601 is going to be where you find your interference stuff, 602 or whatever.

[00:15:36] Lindsay Imber: Uh, you're going to find your box stuff. Five is a whole bunch of pitching stuff. You're going to find definitions used to be rule two. Now they're at the definition of terms that the appendix in the rule. Oh Lord. So it's just you, you get to know it like the umpire rule, like 803, which used to be 903 C, which is the elastic clause effectively.

[00:15:55] Lindsay Imber: And it's like, you just, you know, down rule 9 for scores, but you, you, you get familiar with it enough where you just start knowing all of the things. 

[00:16:07] Mark Corbett: How many episodes do you do a day? How many times are, I mean, I see some you're doing there to like 10 minutes long where they need it. But I'm like, good Lord, did she, did she do another one tonight as well?

[00:16:18] Lindsay Imber: So if there's an ejection, I, I do it right. That's, that's, that's sort of the bread and butter of the channel and it always has been. So ejections generally will always get a video and just depends how many there are every day. And then, uh, then if it's a rule situation, it turns into basically, okay, let's do some research on this.

[00:16:42] Lindsay Imber: And can I put a video out on this thing? And a lot of times injections get in the way of rules videos that I want to do. And it's just like, I, I find that, you know, there's there's there are injections where. I very much understand the whole like, I see the manager. I see your point. The umpire. I see your point.

[00:17:03] Lindsay Imber: I understand how that happens. And then there are other objections that are like, this is dumb. This did not need to happen. And I get quite, I get, I get a little upset about them because it's like. This is a, I feel like this is a video I didn't need to do. I could have done a rules video to talk about something that was actually super interesting and, and, and like help everyone learn something rather than this ejection, which I consider to be kind of dumb.

[00:17:31] Lindsay Imber: So it really depends what happens in the sport for how many videos I do a day. 

[00:17:36] Mark Corbett: Well, you know, one thing you did recently and. That was talking about the hidden, I don't know if it was recent or not, the hidden ball trick and that you had a breakdown of what it was like at MLB, uh, you had what, it was a collegiate.

[00:17:50] Mark Corbett: And I think also high school, if I remImber correctly, and by the way, thank you because you did a great job of showing me the mound and showing the perimeter that that each one allowed a pitcher to work at. Tell us a little bit about the hidden ball trick and what 

[00:18:06] Lindsay Imber: yeah, this was this was a college game.

[00:18:08] Lindsay Imber: It was Clemson and I think they were playing coastal. I'm not their opponent, but in any case, There was a sacrifice bunt, the third baseman picked it up, threw it to first base, they got the runner, the batter runner out, and the other runner advanced to third. And as we're changing the batters, we get a new play going and all of that, the third baseman takes the baseball, or retains the baseball, and keeps it in his glove pocket, hidden away from the view of the runner.

[00:18:44] Lindsay Imber: Um, who may or may not have been paying attention, and goes and stands around third base, just next to the runner, and the pitcher is standing somewhere on the grass behind the mound, and as soon as that runner takes a step off the base, we get a tag, and that's an out because he had the ball, and the, the fun thing about this is there, each level treats it differently, right?

[00:19:11] Lindsay Imber: On what you can and cannot do because in college This pitcher being off the pitcher's mound on the grass is what made the play legal and made it work Because as soon as the pitcher goes on to the mound in college and they don't have the baseball it is illegal It's a balk so It's it's very It's very dependent upon people knowing the rules for the level they're at, because in high school, theoretically, the pitcher could go onto the mound without the ball and be okay, provided that he was more than 5 feet away from the pitcher's 

[00:19:46] Mark Corbett: plate, which, 

[00:19:47] Lindsay Imber: again, depends on the size of the mound, I suppose, because, um.

[00:19:52] Lindsay Imber: I guess there could be theoretically some mounds where the five foot radius puts you onto the grass. I don't know. Just there's so many variables to the field. So that's why high school went with five feet as opposed to the dirt or something. And then professional baseball is the most permissive. The pitcher can go on the mound.

[00:20:10] Lindsay Imber: And do everything except to be on the rubber or a stride or straddling the rubber. You can't simulate being on the rubber. So it depends on what level you're at to know what you can and cannot do. There are some rules that are like this where they're different on all three levels that. I might as well talk about that because we have people working all three and watching all three levels that want to hear the rules differences.

[00:20:37] Lindsay Imber: Uh, they, I, the 1 thing I didn't mention in the video was I'm not so sure that we're going to that hidden ball tricks can work as much anymore. And like, major league baseball, for instance, because the pitch clock would prohibit. The whole cat and mouse game that goes on with waiting for the runner to get off the base.

[00:20:55] Lindsay Imber: So you could really put yourself in jeopardy of getting a violation if you're dedicated to the cause, so to speak. And if you're a runner, it's just, it's very simple. Know the rules of the level that you're at and don't leave your base until the pitcher, I wouldn't even say gets on the mound. I would say wait for the pitcher to get on the plate, the pitcher's plate, because all levels require the pitcher to have the baseball in order for that to happen.

[00:21:18] Mark Corbett: Shouldn't the runner be able to look at one of the umpires and see whether or not that the ball is in the next play is going on. Shouldn't there be something going there? Even if nothing else occurs to them, shouldn't they be able to say, Oh, well, what should they be looking for there? 

[00:21:31] Lindsay Imber: That's what, that's what I always feel for.

[00:21:33] Lindsay Imber: Like when a person misses a base is don't give it away. It's an umpire. You're not supposed to give it away. Same thing for hidden ball trick. You're not supposed to give away where the ball is or where the missed bases or something like that. And that conflicts, of course, with the general instructions to umpires in the book that says, keep your eye everlastingly on the ball, but that's a side point you're not supposed to give it away.

[00:22:00] Lindsay Imber: But, and I, I think it's like this for other sports too. If you look at the official number 1, it will tell you that will probably tell you what's going on. But number 2. Because things move so quickly sometimes, that could be a detriment as well. So, it's not exactly the most reliable way of doing it. This is like the backwards way of like, if you have a 50 50 out of bounds call in basketball, and you don't know what's happening, and you just wait a second, and you see all the players are going that way, and then it's like, okay, I guess we're going that way.

[00:22:35] Lindsay Imber: This is like the reverse of that, but it doesn't work the same. 

[00:22:39] Mark Corbett: Oh, I love it. I again, I encourage everybody to go to see Close Call Sports on YouTube and you get some great stuff on there. Plus, even with this particular thing we're talking about, the hidden ball trick, you give a very good graphic representation of what that looks like for each, whether it be high school, collegiate or pro.

[00:22:59] Mark Corbett: So that's really cool. I like that too. Do you have, yeah. A hall of fame of ejections. Do you, do you have, let's say, these are the ones to, you know, and I look across history, I look over the last few decades and you say, these are the ones. Can you tell me any? 

[00:23:16] Lindsay Imber: Oh, dear. 

[00:23:19] Mark Corbett: Or even this year. 

[00:23:21] Lindsay Imber: Well, well, well, we, what we do every year, we do our postseason awards, the awards that we do every year is the ejection or the ejections one or two of the year.

[00:23:32] Lindsay Imber: Uh, so, for instance, we have, let's see, I've, I've had, well, let's see, 2021's showing up first, so I guess I'll talk about that one. Tom Halley and Andy Green, Jeremy Riggs, Luis Orojas. I don't know why that 1 is showing up 1st, but every year we do postseason awards for ejections as well as, um, just we do.

[00:23:57] Lindsay Imber: Let's see. Here's, here's the list of awards. We give away. We obviously the best umpire of the year is the best umpire of the year. Right? Then we have the directions of the year promising umpires of the year. Bernie Scarra, honorable umpire, fill in umpire, most improved umpire, crew, chief of the year. Most disappointing season, which we don't give as often , but, uh, so yeah.

[00:24:20] Lindsay Imber: So last year's Objections of the year were Doug Ings and Dave Martinez. And that was, that was the one where, where Dave like got down and LL was like. On the ground flat over like home plate seem like I think the pitchers in the dirt, you know, uh, and then the other ejection the year was last year's and Aaron Boone.

[00:24:39] Lindsay Imber: And that's the 1 where Aaron Boone did last year as a straight 3 mechanic classic. Yeah, this year, you know, one of the ejection for the years candidates. I don't remImber exactly. I just remImber that the ejection was probably bad and people seem to really like the result of the eject like the argument or whatever it produced.

[00:24:59] Lindsay Imber: And it's like, I don't like when injections of the year are for the, or for, like, incorrect calls. That's not that's I feel that that's sort of like. Not the goal, but 

[00:25:08] Mark Corbett: yeah, you're not trying to, you know, that's looking for a reason to dis an umpire. I mean, at 

[00:25:13] Lindsay Imber: the end of the day, I suppose 

[00:25:14] Mark Corbett: that's it. I, now I think a lot of folks did get a tickle out of seeing Aaron Boone get tossed when somebody in the crowd behind him was shouting in the umpire thought it was Boone giving grief to the umpire and said, Hey Boone, you're out of here.

[00:25:27] Mark Corbett: And it's like, Hey, no, no, it's his, it's his fella. 

[00:25:30] Lindsay Imber: When I first looked at that and. The umpire had was there was a hot mic and actually he said it out loud, which is kind of bad. I don't care who said it. That's kind of bad. Uh, like, like you, you should, um, there is 1 valid point regarding that ejection that the manager is in charge.

[00:25:59] Lindsay Imber: Of the team, 

[00:26:01] Mark Corbett: right? 

[00:26:01] Lindsay Imber: And specifically the bench coaches in charge of the bench. That's what happens. And you, if, if you don't know any better, she'd start with the manager. And if, and if there's someone else to go from there, then do it. But there is something to be said about that. That is more of a situation that happened in, I think of Cincinnati where the um, um, I think it was Ben may ejected someone from the dugout.

[00:26:30] Lindsay Imber: But didn't know who, and I was like, This was like an Aaron, I thought, everyone thought, immediately of Boone Wendelstedt, once that happened, and I looked at it and I was like, well, this is not Boone Wendelstedt, because it's not a fan, first of all, it was someone in the dugout, we have video of someone in the dugout doing it.

[00:26:52] Lindsay Imber: Something I don't know if it was, if it needed an injection or not, but they did something. So at least we had video of someone in the dugout doing something as opposed to Boone not doing anything and no one in the dugout doing anything and a fan clearly being the one who said something. Yeah. So that's the Cincinnati one.

[00:27:11] Lindsay Imber: What ends up happening with that Cincinnati ejection is the umpires don't know who exactly and so, you know, it's, it's kind of like the New York play, right? You start with, you start with the manager and you work backwards. And that's what they did. It's not, it's not fair, but that's what they did. And they got it right.

[00:27:34] Lindsay Imber: At the end of the day, maybe the person, the bench coach or whoever it was, fessed up to, fessed up to it and was like, and that's kind of, you know, it's kind of, you, you call a bluff sometimes that way. And you hope that the team that you can weed out. The guilty person through that process, but, uh, yeah, the Boone Wendell stat ejection in New York was an example of I do videos on what to do.

[00:28:01] Lindsay Imber: And I do videos on what not to do. And that's a video on what not to do. 

[00:28:05] Mark Corbett: Well, you know, and 1 of the things I hear you. Continuously is making sure as an umpire. Not to get in the way or not to approach a player. In a situation, because if there's something that's already heated, there's no reason to go toward them, you know, if so, I always thought that was good advice.

[00:28:24] Mark Corbett: And I could see where it makes things more questionable, unfortunately, for the umpire, if they decided to take 2 steps forward with a player, who's already maybe being a little chatty. 

[00:28:34] Lindsay Imber: So, game management is it is a huge thing and some people will say that at the minor league level specifically. They're not looking necessarily, I mean call accuracy is important, right?

[00:28:47] Lindsay Imber: But it's not the end all. They're looking for your controllables, like call selection and stuff like that. That, that stuff happens, and you can train on techniques to get better at it, like positioning, but The call is the call, what is the controllable while you're learning how to get the call, right? So to speak are fundamentals of positioning of timing and.

[00:29:18] Lindsay Imber: Especially of game management, some, so some people will say game management can help. Promote you in the minors, because that's so important because theoretic, like, we, there was an, um, you know, there was an umpire in the majors. That was. One of the lower plate scores year in year out, but he was so popular with.

[00:29:37] Lindsay Imber: Everyone because he knew how to manage a game and he would get primo assignments because of it his numbers Were not as good as a lot of people who didn't get those primus prime assignments And it's because the game management was so good because if you can get people to buy in even if you get it wrong then It's okay, somehow, because things are moving smoothly and they're, everyone thinks that they're getting a fair shake, even if the call's technically wrong.

[00:30:09] Lindsay Imber: So, part of that is absolutely, if you're going to game manage, and you want to keep the game fair and flowing and try to keep people calm and all that, don't look for confrontation. It's not, Weird of a concept, but when you're in the heat of the moment, maybe, maybe you, you do seek those things out because that's just how that gets when everything gets hot.

[00:30:34] Lindsay Imber: But I, I just like, not even 30 minutes before, uh, we did, we started our interview. I just did the Bacchus Schilt ejection from San Diego after the game was over when Cronenworth took a call 3rd strike. That was. Off the plate, um, not the most egregious call that I've ever seen, but game situation, it ended the game and it was incorrect.

[00:30:59] Lindsay Imber: And in San Diego, you have the Padres dug out on the 1st base side. You have the umpires room that is next the tunnel to get there is like, next to the visiting dug out on the 3rd base side. So the umpire could have easily walked to third, that third base tunnel area instead, because he had a thing about like, he had a 50 foot head start on the Padres manager.

[00:31:26] Lindsay Imber: Because the dugouts, right and he didn't, he stuck around and he actually, like, the manager was yelling and he engaged the manager or accepted that conversation. And once that happened, I knew the, like, high leverage situation. This is how the game ends. It's a one run game. The time run was like, it's second base.

[00:31:50] Lindsay Imber: There was a, as soon as the umpire decided not to walk away and to actually engage the manager, I thought. This is going to be an ejection because this is like, there's no need to do this. And sure enough, there was, and I spent a good chunk of that video being like, if the umpire walks away and just goes back to the umpire's room work, nothing's going to happen.

[00:32:12] Lindsay Imber: But you know, post game ejections, which are valid in high, in at all levels of baseball, some of them are. Need to happen like some of them like there was a play there was an there was a game years ago Tom Hallyan was working in Baltimore and the final call of the game Which was ball four bases loaded to get the winning run to walk in for Baltimore Aaron Boone did not like that and The way that it works there is the way to get to the umpires room in Baltimore is you walk straight behind directly behind home Plate go through a gate you have to duck down because that's how it's built But you have to go straight behind home.

[00:32:48] Lindsay Imber: It's like you have to walk there You 

[00:32:50] Mark Corbett: Right, 

[00:32:50] Lindsay Imber: and it puts you equidistant between. The dugouts and boom came out of his dugout and immediately went to Hallie and started just yelling at him on his way. I got ejected and just. And it's just, he's just hounding the guys, the guys trying to leave that is a very meritorious post game ejection.

[00:33:10] Lindsay Imber: That is what it is designed for. What it is not designed for is when the umpire voluntarily just decides I'm going to stick around at home plate for the other manager to get to me and to just argue, let him argue because that kind of like, he thinks I have nothing left to lose because I've already lost the game.

[00:33:29] Lindsay Imber: Yeah. So. There's nothing good that happens from staying on the field. That's part of the game management tool is you can walk away from that because you have no further obligations in this game, it's over. Um, and, and that's just 1 of the things that sort of Royals me sometimes is I understand the drive to preserve rapport and relationship build and all of that.

[00:33:52] Lindsay Imber: But there are times and this is not the time for that. There's a reason umpires like umpire interview post games when the pool reporter gets sent in, there is a mandatory 15 minute cooling off period. And the reason for that is. That, you know, twofold. Number one, the umpires need to catch their breath.

[00:34:12] Lindsay Imber: But two, is Emotions are going to be charged right after the game, 

[00:34:18] Mark Corbett: right? 

[00:34:18] Lindsay Imber: Things are going to things are still still percolating the idea with the 15 minute cool off is it gets to a people to a place where you can have a level headed discussion about things gives times for umpires to figure out their thought processes, how to put it into words and it gives the reporters chance to do the same exact thing without coming across as being like adversarial or something like that.

[00:34:44] Lindsay Imber: And so similarly, if you've just had a call that a high leverage call that ended the game, if you don't walk away, you're not going to get a cooling off period. It's all part of that hot mix and that was an ejection. I felt was avoidable and due to game management that wasn't up to par with what I would expect it to be, it did.

[00:35:05] Lindsay Imber: You had an ejection that just didn't need to happen. 

[00:35:09] Mark Corbett: I always wonder about that. As far as trying to keep some level headedness when you've got somebody screaming in your face, I think about, there's an image years ago of, of Lou Piniella, practically nose to nose with a, with an umpire. You know, or, or more recently looking at Pat Murphy, uh, with, with the Brewers and looking at his intensity with a profile shot of him and face to face.

[00:35:33] Lindsay Imber: Well, like here, like, part of the issue is this, right? If it's a simple ball strike or whatever, like, that thing at the end of the game in San Diego, the ejection itself was probably justified. The manager left the dugout to argue balls and strikes. That is a violation of one of the standards for removal.

[00:35:49] Lindsay Imber: So, the ejection itself was probably justified, but it was, in my opinion, unnecessary. It could have been avoided. And so that's a, there's a two, that's a two prong test for ejections for me, like, yeah, the ejection was justified, but there was a way to avoid it that you didn't take. And, you know, when we evaluate umpires at lower levels, that's a lot of times, some things that we'll look at is.

[00:36:13] Lindsay Imber: If, if, you know, technically correct is 1 thing, but you don't need to do it every time. Yeah, so I I looked at the Pat Murphy. Uh, there was one play. What was it? It was the backswing contact in the unintentional backswing contact play in Milwaukee where. Uh, Ryan Adidon was the plate umpire and, you know, as soon as the batter's bat on the backswing hit the catcher's head and the ball went away, and some say the ball went away before that happened, which is, I think that's correct.

[00:36:50] Lindsay Imber: But the rule is as soon as there's unintentional backswing contact, whether or not it has an effect on the play, which is super weird for a rule book, they usually don't come in absolutes like that. But this particular part of the rule book does as soon as this happens, you call a dead ball. That's how the rules are written.

[00:37:10] Lindsay Imber: It's not about interfering with the throw because it's not interference. The rule, the rule book is very clear that unintentional backswing contact is not interference. So the, the test that we do for interference, who did, who did the player interfere or impede? Who you had in order for interference to happen, you have to interfere with someone, right?

[00:37:31] Lindsay Imber: Right. That test. Does not work for unintentional backswing contact because unintentional backswing contacts not called on the interference. It's called on the contact. So it's just little nuances in the rules like that. If you don't know the rules, which a lot of managers. Tend to not exactly know the rules, uh, then you're going to get arguments and I always find it's very difficult to, to talk to someone who doesn't know the rule.

[00:37:58] Lindsay Imber: And if, if, if umpires are mic'd up, sometimes a lot of conversations will with a manager about a weird play like that will be very much like. The umpire explaining the rule to the manager who doesn't buy it and it's like, well, you're arguing with the rule book now, which is kind of. A move it's a decision, uh, but I, I, I look at a lot of these plays and the rule book.

[00:38:25] Lindsay Imber: I, I, I tell people open up the rule book, a PDF. As it were control F, and write common sense, and you're not going to find any responses for that. There is no common sense in the rule book. 

[00:38:43] Mark Corbett: I like that. I have 1 more question for you, and that is. Once we see the robo umps, we see the quest tech or whatever that's measuring calling the balls and strikes and not the umpire, do we think we'll see less objections to who's going to argue with the machinery that some servers somewhere.

[00:39:04] Lindsay Imber: Like we've seen what we've seen some Robo ump objections in the minor leagues over the, over the year or two or whatever it's been that they've been testing it. People will still argue just to argue in the Atlantic league. One of the first ejections with, due to, it was Trackman back then, right now it's Hawkeye.

[00:39:25] Lindsay Imber: But one of the first ejections in the, in the Atlantic back when they first started doing it was Frank Viola. And his argument was the umpire called a strike that looked like a ball, but the computer said strike, so called it a strike. And Frank's whole bit was, that's wrong. You should have overruled that.

[00:39:45] Lindsay Imber: Which defeats the purpose of a robot umpire. Overruling is reserved for a pitch that bounces in the dirt and then goes through the strike zone and the thing says strike and it's like, uh, no, it bounds. What people don't understand about the electronic strike zone system right now is it misses pitches.

[00:40:01] Lindsay Imber: Sometimes the computer misses real time pitch tracking and sometimes they can add it after, like post production, and sometimes it just misses it. And you're not going to get it back, uh, back in the Atlantic league, there were times where, uh, some of the umpires have reported that the system missed as many as, as 50 percent of the pitches in the game.

[00:40:23] Lindsay Imber: And remImber it was, it was, this was early technology. So it's gotten better since then. They would say calling a fully automated ABS game, automated ball strike system game is more stressful than just calling a human element game because You have to still call every pitch in your head, just in case the computer fails.

[00:40:49] Mark Corbett: Right. 

[00:40:50] Lindsay Imber: While still listening for ball or strike. And if you don't hear one of those, You know that the computer missed it, 

[00:40:59] Mark Corbett: right? 

[00:40:59] Lindsay Imber: And you have to call it yourself. So you, so it's so stressful because you have to do all of these things, figure out the timing. When do I know for sure that the computer did not see this pitch?

[00:41:12] Lindsay Imber: There are so many, that's why I like the challenge system better because. The umpire calls every pitch, just like normal, and we're already used to a challenge system with replay review. And what ends up happening is if there's a pitch to look at again. They have time in case the computer had some sort of funky thing.

[00:41:34] Lindsay Imber: If the computer missed it, you're just going to see the like, Oh, we don't have data on this. The call is going to stop. stand pretty much. But if it's one of those situations where the real time call was a little weird and there's some fix that can get put in after the fact, usually it's quick enough that they can do that in time to rule on a challenge.

[00:41:56] Lindsay Imber: And what's, what's really interesting, if you ever, get into the API for individual games with MLB and look at pitch data, you'll notice that the strike zones top and bottom SC top SP Z bot will change after the game is over. And sometimes we'll change again. overnight. And it's like, well, which one is the real one?

[00:42:22] Mark Corbett: Wow. 

[00:42:23] Lindsay Imber: Because if you're calling, if the computer's calling in real time, or even on challenge during the game, you're going to get the initial preliminary one. And then you're going to find out after the fact that it's not that I like, you know, it's the classic example of game seven of the world series three to count and all, you know, all the stuff.

[00:42:42] Lindsay Imber: Right. And the thing ends because of a call that's super close, but it's Robo on who called it. So Who are you going to be mad at? And then you find out the next day, due to post game processing, that the numbers changed and actually that was the incorrect call. What can I do? 

[00:43:02] Mark Corbett: Well, this sounds like it'd be a very interesting time when it finally makes it to the MLB show.

[00:43:08] Lindsay Imber: Yeah, what people don't realize is that it's Hawkeye. It's the same technology from tennis, kind of. And the tennis one is easier because you're looking for a ball hitting a surface. And it's a, it's just one plane. And that's kind of they know how to track that just fine because it's, you're looking for that data point and you're not watching when you're watching the challenge replay or whatever, you're not looking at what happened.

[00:43:38] Lindsay Imber: You're looking a simulate at a simulation of what they think happened their best fit their best guess, which may or may not be the 100 percent truth. But as long as there is buy in and everyone accepts it as the truth. Then it will succeed, uh, even if it's not accurate. That's the same, that goes the same thing with human umpiring, by the way.

[00:43:57] Lindsay Imber: If everyone buys in and accepts it, it will succeed, even if it's wrong. And that's the same exact thing with Hawkeye. In baseball, you have 3D, and you have complicating factors. Like in tennis, you're just looking at ball and ground, and there's a painted line, and all, all of these things can be easily mapped.

[00:44:18] Lindsay Imber: In baseball, you're looking at a ball in a 3D space, which is variable based on the batter's height and how they stand. Because even if you have two like six foot tall players, they could, they could have different stances and thus different strike zone heights. And you have a complication, complicating factor of the batter trying to maybe check his swing or doing something with the pitch.

[00:44:44] Lindsay Imber: The, the, the tracking technology can sometimes confuse the ball and the, like the cup of the bat. Cause it's a similar circle type image. You get some complications like that. They've, one of the ways they fix that is, or, and it's not the best, but they try is to capture pitch data somewhere in front of home plate, 10 feet, whatever, whatever it is these days, but they capture it like.

[00:45:11] Lindsay Imber: Some distance in front of the plate and based on variables like spin and break and all of that, they simulate where the ball most likely would have ended up. Right. And that becomes what you see. 

[00:45:25] Mark Corbett: Oh, my gosh, Lindsay, geez, my knees. I want to go back to just kicking the robo lumps to the side of the road, because I, yeah, I'm sorry, but yes, I feel like I'm watching the show instead of a game then, you know, meaning the, the video game, the show, and it's being all predicated there by a computer.

[00:45:45] Mark Corbett: So I'm fight computers enough in my life. As you've seen on this show earlier, can't get more mad on because of my incompetency. But anyway. Uh, I can't, I want to come back and say thank you for everything that you're doing for all of us fans and help us enjoy the game, not just while we're watching it, but the next day and giving us some insight.

[00:46:04] Mark Corbett: I was like, you know, the one thing that drives me nuts is you as a fan, you don't know what's going on. You don't hear everything being called by that umpire. If there's a discussion down there for, for 10 minutes and you don't know until you get back in the car and listen to the radio and maybe they got it right.

[00:46:19] Mark Corbett: That's why I am so thankful for you because I can, I know that you'll cover some craziness that's happening every day out there and we get to enjoy it. So I'm going to encourage everyone to once again, make sure they're watching Lindsay on Close Call Sports and make sure you support her as well. And tell us again how they can support you.

[00:46:39] Lindsay Imber: Yeah, and just going on to any of our videos, the YouTube channel is called Close Call Sports, so it's pretty easy to find. The website is close call sports.com, so that is also easy to find. And then from those places, there are various links to like Patreon or Buy Me a Coffee. Or our discord server, which is a very fun community to be in because you get to chat real time with other baseball people, trying to figure out what's happening in each game.

[00:47:05] Lindsay Imber: You learn umpiring techniques because we have umpires on that on that discord who are some of our fans too. And It's a great place. We have people who are, who just start out at becoming umpires to learn how to officiate the game and they ask questions and people answer them. And it's, it's a really lovely time.

[00:47:23] Lindsay Imber: So, um, and you can make video requests. Through there too, and I see them, I look at them. So, um, there are many ways to get in touch. All 

[00:47:33] Mark Corbett: right, well, great Lindsay. So again, thank you for all you're doing and I'll make sure. Then I include all this in the show notes about where to be able to access all that.

[00:47:41] Mark Corbett: So thank you very much. Keep continue what you're doing. And my goodness, I can't say enough. I enjoy everything you're doing. So keep it up, kiddo. Thank you.

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