By JW August
As the current MLB playoff picture reaches the final stretch, I find myself asking AI for help on what I think is a tough question: Stats on the success rate for Major League umpires when challenged on balls and strikes.
I am particularly sensitive about the quality of umpires coming to San Diego for the Yankees-Padres series.
It was an umpire’s terrible call in a World Series game that favored the Yankees that possibly changed the history of baseball and has tormented many Padre fans since that black day.
It was Tuesday, Oct. 20, 1998. I would suspect most Padres fans that evening were watching the game on television when the call was made. It was about 8 p.m Pacific Time.
My AI assistant provided me with the estimated time and explained how it figured out the time of the pitch.
It was the 7th inning, Game 1 of the series, Yankee Stadium. Tie Game. Padres reliever Mark Langston threw a changeup right down the middle.
It should have been a strike three to batter Tino Martinez. Instead, the no strike call allowed Martinez to soon hit a three-run homer. Umpire Rich Garcia later admitted he blew the call but blamed the Padres catcher Carlos Hernandez for framing the pitch too aggressively.
So I wanted to see all data on umpires for this season, for this week if possible. I would rely on data from the ABS system (automatic ball-strike) now used in the Major Leagues. It uses radar and high-speed cameras to track the baseball to the exact moment it crosses home plate.
There seems to be a good deal of interest in how it’s working. An example is a study done by researchers from Cornell and Indiana universities titled “Understanding Baseball’s ‘Robot Umpire’ through the Lens of Fluid Technology.”
“Our findings,” the study says, “reveal that treating robots as fluid technologies, rather than as discrete objects, opens new possibilities” for human-robot relationships. However I wanted to know which umpires had the worst results on calling balls and strikes, according to ABS data.
Both the National and American League umpires now work on one timesheet for all MLB games. So anyone from the active umpire list may have, will have, or has called a game at Petco Park.
The best, through last Sunday according to ABS data, is Umpire Dillion Wilson, who faced 22 challenges and lost 7 of them. His percentage stands as the best in the MLB at 31.2% missed calls.
The umpires I would track for the Yankee series are unknown as of now. The MLB won’t reveal what umpires will call the games here until the Yankees finish off the Angels and head south.
But these three umpires have a high losing percentage according to ABS data.
- Andy Fletcher who missed on 67 of 97 challenges. That is 69.1%.
- Andrew Johnson who missed 66 out of 101 challenges, 65.3%.
- Manny Gonzalez who missed 64% of the challenges, or 71 out of 111.
If any of those umpires end up behind the plate for the Yankee-Padre series, you should keep close watch on their calls.
To check on other umpires’ Win/Lose rates, you can go to the ESPN 2026 MLB ABS challenge tracker.
