Five Game Suspension for Guillermo Martinez

MLB has given Blue Jays hitting coach Guillermo Martinez a five-game suspension for ‘making contact’ with umpire Doug Eddings. Personally, I think Martinez missed making contact by about 6 inches but that was close enough Eddings to call it striking him.

Coaches shouldn’t make contact with umpires.

In the video of the lineup card exchange, I don’t see contact being made, but then the video is from a long way away.

But then if I was Eddings I wouldn’t want this news story to keep going because when you have more stories about it, people will mention that Eddings missed a season-high 29 calls in Tuesday’s game. As you remember the strike zone for right-handed batters seemed to extend a foot off the far side of the plate.

The Jays took the brunt of the terrible strike zone. Umpire Scorecards tells us that the calls favoured the White Sox by 2.03 runs. The 64% called strike accuracy stands out to me, as it is just slightly better than what we’d expect from using a coin to call strikes.

We have seen a lot of bad umpiring this season, but that game was a step beyond anything we’ve had so far.

Bring on the Robo Umps.