Fresh-Squeezed Opening Day in Texas

Like every other Red Sox fan, I eagerly anticipated yesterday's Opening Day tilt down in Texas. Our first look at A-Gone and Carl Crawford couldn't come soon enough as we all wanted to see if this team was as good in real life as it sounded on paper..because, as Kenny Mayne from ESPN used to tell us, "games aren't played on paper...they're played inside TV sets." Lucky for me there's a TV in my office so I caught the first few innings at work before heading home. Right from the top, I could tell this would be a grinder. Why? One reason and one reason only: Home plate umpire Tim McClellan.

Now, before you dismiss this as just another rant from just another entitled Masshole Red Sox fan, hear me out: McClellan didn't cost the Sox the game yesterday. He squeezed EVERYBODY. Jon Lester clearly didn't have his best stuff, and I'm not blaming his performance on the strike zone. However, losing 3 inches on each side of the plate clearly didn't help. Lester was pissed at McClellan in the SECOND INNING because his strike zone was smaller than a 1st-grader's attention span. C. J. Wilson wasn't too pleased from the looks of it, either. He clearly didn't get a couple of calls in the first inning, and it cost him. So I have to ask: What's the point?

Listen up, Bud Selig. It's the first of April. Teams just spent 6 weeks in Florida and this is their first game in more normal game and perhaps climate conditions. Everyone's still a little rusty. Why subject them to 4 hours of torture that a thimble-sized strike zone creates? We all know that the size of the zone has an inverse relation to the pace of the game. A tight zone disrupts game flow, causes fielders to doze and results in these 4-hour AL-East style suck-a-thons full of sloppy fielding, 10-8 scores and multiple innings by the 10th, 11th and 12th pitchers on each squad. You could just about golf a full 18 holes in 4 hours. Who the hell wants to watch a baseball game that long, that sloppily-played, and in most cases, under less-than-ideal weather conditions?

The fans sure don't. Again, it's the FIRST OF APRIL. Most casual fans forget about baseball after the first NFL regular-season kickoff unless their teams are in a pennant race. It's been a good six months since they've given two shits about baseball. Tim McClellan and his anorexic strike zone sure aren't helping. There's the Final Four still going on. Both the NHL and NBA are in their stretch runs. While yocu're at it, NASCAR is a month into it season. Like no other time of the year, baseball really needs to scratch and claw for its viewing audience in early April. Keeping game pace and flow is critical to engaging the fans. So how do we fix it?

The Solution

Here's what we do, Mr. Selig. Look down the roster of every umpire and go through whatever statistical sources (such as BaseballProspectus.com) to evaluate the OBP for every MLB home plate umpire. The information's there. For the first two weeks of the season, make sure that the 10% of umps with the highest "called OBP" are allowed nowhere near home plate. I'm actually being borderline charitable here. If there wasn't that pesky little nuisance known as "collective bargaining," I'd say fire the fuckers outright, but I guess that wouldn't play too well with the National Labor Relations Board. Perhaps in the umpires' next contract negotiation MLB can work in some performance clauses to rid the game of those that continue to slow the pace of the game, making it next-nigh unwatchable. Mr. McClellan and his grandstanding ilk are literally killing baseball, and they must be stopped. In April. NOW.