FanNation - The Republic of Sport

Bigalke said 05/29, 12:14 PM
Well, David, I see where you are coming from inre: flopping... but I would tend to believe that, as your topic sentence of this theme states, flopping would be an instance to come down on PLAYERS rather than the UMPS...

So my pick? The wide variance of strike zones in Major League Baseball...

I completely understand that different people have different perceptions. But the rule stands very clearly: the strike zone is defined by the area of home plate and the batter's physique -- from the midpoint between the belt and the shoulders for the top of the zone to directly under the kneecaps at the bottom. While different batters have different heights (we all do, after all) the wide discrepancies between umps regarding the same batters must be addressed...

Flopping certainly is anathema to quality sports competition; but referees cannot always determine, because of the limited number of officials on the court and their position relative to the incident, whether a fall was legitimate or a flop. Conversely, the home-plate umpire is ALWAYS in a position to make the right call... MLB must reform its training methods to ensure consistent strike zones among all umpires...

Bigalke said 05/29, 02:10 PM
The fact that pitchers and catchers are forced to change their game to suit different umpires' proclivities is indicative of a major problem. You rail on about consistency here, but what consistency exists between different officials in the league?

If anything, the NBA's rules committee should come into question, not the referees, for not accurately defining how to recognize a flop from a legitimate foul. But again this is an inexact science at best... some players appear as though they are already preparing for life after sports by training for an acting career... and they are getting very good at it. There is no accurate way to measure what is and is not a flop...

... but there IS an accurate measurement for each batter's strike zone, clearly defined in the rules... and it is UMPIRES (as your KILL the UMP theme begs) who are making the greatest variance in this instance. Pitchers and catchers should have to adjust their strike zone for each BATTER... not each UMPIRE...

We need simply to look at WHO is at fault in the two topics in discussion... PLAYERS are doing the flopping... UMPIRES are adjusting the strike zone as they see fit...

Bigalke said 05/29, 07:02 PM
Everything you continue to argue is a problem with the culture of diving and getting away with it AMONG THE PLAYERS. Again, where's the textbook definition of what constitutes a dive versus a foul? You are playing in a vastly gray area, David...

Whereas with baseball umpires, there IS no gray area regarding strike zones. The rules CLEARLY state the dimensions of the strike zone, & an umpire deviating from those codified dimensions is BREAKING THE RULES. In the NBA, it is the player who breaks the rule when diving, not the referee who might miss the particular non-foul or make the human error of not noticing or wrongly believing something to be a dive when it was a hard foul. The variables placed on an NBA ref (including having to move with the action, an extra twist that a home-plate ump does not have to contend with) are great & errors do happen...

But not having a consistent strike zone amongst umpires is not merely an error... it is a systemic problem of enforcing the rules. If Player A has even a two-foot discrepancy in his strike zone between umpires then it is unfair to both the pitcher/catcher & the batter... unlike diving, this is something easily remedied w/enforcement.