I bet THIS will spark a conversation...

[th3]

Racial Discrimination Slightly Affects How Pitchers And Umpires Play Ball

 

When umpires and pitchers are a different race or ethnicity, the umpire is slightly more apt to call a pitch a ball, according to an academic research paper. 

http://www.forbes.com/sites/hbsworkingknowledge/2014/02/19/racial-discrimination-slightly-affects-how-pitchers-and-umpires-play-ball/

[Thunderheads]

I'm not going to read this article and I don't feel I have to .... I call bull-puckey

[th3]

its really dumb (and most of the info is from an old article re-packaged)...

[Trakes2]

I don't care if the Pitcher is purple...

 

WHERE DID THE PITCH CROSS THE PLATE!?!?!?!?!?!?

[sdix00]

" Although the effect is small—averaging about one pitch a game—it is consistent and statistically significant"

If one pitch per game is statistically significant, then its time to fire all the umpires and replace them with computers because we have a much larger problem than race.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N900A using Tapatalk

[maninblack69]

If an umpire only misses one pitch a game out of the 300-400 thrown, I'd say they're doing a hell of a job. Definitely wouldn't be statistically significant.

[Replacematt]

One thing this does show...a lot of umpires here don't know what it means to be statistically significant.

[SoCal Lurker]

I'd actually like to see how they did the study.  The article says that the study, which used MLB data, did not find the discriminatory effect in games with the cameras to monitor the strike zone.  But article doesn't say how they evaluated the calls or made the determination that pitchers altered their pitching when the umpire was a different race or ethnicity -- which they found by evaluating games without the cameras.  (Alas, the link to the study took me to a site that needed an actual password to get on to.)

[James Walker]

I don't care if the Pitcher is purple...

 

WHERE DID THE PITCH CROSS THE PLATE!?!?!?!?!?!?

Exactly... A strike is a strike.

[Stan W.]

This was an old study and I remember it from when it was published back in 2011.... from my viewpoint it was horse$hit then and it's horse$hit now......give me a pitcher who can throw strikes and I'll call them all day long.......

[MB_Ump]

This is just bad science. They state that no discimination occurs when cameras are present, ie when objective verifiable data is available. The only time discrimination occurs is when the data available is exposed to the researcher's subjectivity. You would have to also take into account the researcher's lack of a proper angle to view and experience/ability to judge pitches. The nice thing about statistics is that you can throw out anything that doesn't support your hypothesis.