Last Night’s Umpire Scorecard

I was looking forward to seeing Nick Mahrley’s umpire scorecard.

As we saw, he was terrible. He was equal opportunity awful, but he was terrible. He didn’t favour either team.

He had a huge strike zone. If he called it a ball, you knew it was a ball because it had to be a foot and a half off the plate to be called a ball.

The amazing thing is that he wasn’t just bad on pitches on the outside of the plate. Or high. He gave 5 extra inches around all sides of the plate. High, low, left, right...if the pitch was within walking distance of the plate, it was a strike.

Commentators tell us, “as long as it is the same for both teams, all is ok”. Wrong wrong wrong. Players deserve to have the same strike zone every game.

A 74% ‘called strike accuracy should be grounds for firing.