The umpires have benefitted the Yankees with borderline calls every game so far

Royals fans have reason to be frustrated

No umpire is perfect, and by and large Major League Baseball umpires call balls and strikes exceptionally well considering the speed and movement of big league pitches. However, key calls gotten wrong can turn a plate appearance—and even a series—on its head. Unfortunately for the Kansas City Royals, the umpires have benefited the New York Yankees with close calls in every game so far.

This is not merely the claim of a salty Royals fan, as the data is simply there. Umpire Scorecards is a group that does great work in evaluating umpire performance using the same Hawkeye tracking data that MLB uses for all their pitch statistic information. They run that data through an algorithm, compare the results to a huge swath of historical info, and provide grades to umpires. It’s a legit setup.

After every game, Umpire Scorecards posts quick, well, scorecards for every home plate umpire and how their accuracy. They also include which team benefited from borderline calls and which calls were most accurate. So far in the three games of the ALDS, each game has been consistent in two ways: one, the zones have been pretty bad overall, but two, that the Yankees have had the most benefit from borderline calls.

ALDS Game 1 Umpire Scorecard

ALDS Game 2 Umpire Scorecard

ALDS Game 3 Umpire Scorecard

Overall, the run expectancy in favor of the Yankees this series has totaled 1.48 runs over three games. Considering that the Royals and Yankees have both scored the same number of runs in the series, this is a big deal. Additionally, you can see that Umpire Scorecards lists the top three changes in run expectancy by missed call. Of the 9 listed high-impact misses here, 7 of them went against the Royals.

So, what gives? Lots of Royals fans and Yankees haters alike will jump to the conclusion that, combined with the rather egregious missed replay call in game one, the officials are intentionally favoring the Yankees. That’s conspiracy theory talk. As you can also see by Umpire Scorecard’s rating of expected call accuracy, every game featured fewer overall correct calls in general, which has effected both teams. The Yankees dugout even got shushed for yelling about balls and strikes too much in New York. The officiating has just been bad.

The other factor here is that the Royals are giving the umps a lot more opportunities to miss borderline pitches. As Shaun Newkirk noted on Twitter, Royals pitchers have thrown about double the total amount of pitches in what Statcast calls the “shadow zone” as the Yankees have.

Now, the umpires could have been missing calls both ways—but they’re missing calls in the Yankees favor, especially in big spots where the game is on the line. They’ve missed more than one should-be inning-ending strikeout for Royals starting pitchers, for instance, and quickly missed a first-inning ball four against Witt yesterday.

I want to be clear here that blaming the officials for your team losing is itself loser behavior. The Royals have had chances to win, and there are borderline calls every game of the year that teams on the other end have to overcome. There is no “plan” to help the Yankees advance. At the same time, it is still frustrating to watch the umpires be so bad and end up favoring the Yankees time and time again. It’s a bad look for the league, and as legalized sports betting continues to proliferate, fairness and consistency are ever more important.