Per Campbell: LINKAs much as seeing Abad come in to a game made me cringe earlier this season, he has been sharp as of late... That said, I like the 'Xavier Cedeno story' and hope he does well!
What's the Xavier Cedeno story?
I don't know his "story," other than he was going very well down in OkC. Lefties were 1-34 against him. He made two very good pitches to Abreu today to get ahead 0-2, but then he started nibbling, which played right into Abreu's modus operandi of drawing walks and which you can't do against Abreu.
It's remarkable what amazing at bats Abreu gets.
He does, but he is also like the Maddux of hitters. Two of the next four balls Cedeno threw might have been strikes to a different hitter. If it was Shafer in the box, he probably would have been rung up.
That's a great analogy, but I can tell you that big league umpires watch film of their own calls behind the plate and analyze them, so Abreu has probably earned his stripes in this regard by taking pitches that, in fact, are balls most of the time. Maddux also earned the benefit of the doubt. Cedeno is nowhere close to that spot, so when he's facing Abreu, he has to throw real strikes.
Come on, Happy.If umpires are watching film of their games and using that, there's NO way they're calling those 6-8 inches outside pitches strikes. Those weren't benefit of the doubt calls, they were fucking horseshit calls.
Mark: I've been told by a big league umpire that they study calls and look at things like FoxTrax to see how they did. I would guess that it only requires tape work when they're behind home plate. On the whole, maybe it was just blowing smoke up my ass because all, and i mean all, of the umpires that I knew were heavy drinkers after the game. I learned very quickly to not try to keep up with an umpire when it comes to alcohol.
They may look at the video, but I find it VERY hard to believe that they use the data for anything other than realizing they suck and laughing about it.
Mark: I've been told by a big league umpire that they study calls and look at things like FoxTrax to see how they did.
MLB should get some real accountability or just go by the technology. I realize that neither will ever happen though.
I could be convinced that the good umpires might do this, but I don't believe for a minute that ALL of them do this. If they actually do, then they either suck at not sucking or, as Mark sort of said, they are trolling MLB.
