Umpires don’t get into the game for love. Only the perceived worst draw recognition.
Pat Hoberg could be on his way to changing that.
The 35-year-old is the highest-rated home-plate umpire, enjoying a 96.1% accuracy rate on his balls and strikes calls, according to Umpire Scorecards.
Perhaps more notably, he has become a needed antidote to what we’ll call Angel Hernandez Derangement Syndrome – the low-hanging fruit of umpire-bashing that has hatched dozens of social-media accounts aimed at amplifying the men in blue at their worst.
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Umpire Scorecards aims for a more holistic approach, building an evaluation system that takes game data a step further by simulating the likeliest outcomes of a pitch, in hopes of creating a tool fairer than instant Statcast outcomes and perhaps less forgiving than MLB’s internal ump reviews.
Through it all, an evolution has taken place: Some fans looking to validate their frustration with 29-year-veteran Hernandez have stumbled upon another realization:
A lot of these guys are really good – none better than Hoberg.
“He’s suddenly gotten this following,” says Ethan Singer, co-founder of Umpire Scorecards. “He’s got memes about him. People like him a lot.”
And why not? Hoberg leads MLB umpires with an accuracy rating of 96.4% on ball-strike calls, and three umpires have matched his MLB-best 94.9% consistency rating. Umpires, like the players they govern, can get better with age and Hoberg appears to be entering a sweet spot in his career.
He has received postseason crew assignments for three consecutive seasons, including the 2021 NLCS, and a career dream came true when he was named to the crew that called the “Field of Dreams” game in his native Iowa last August.
Now, he’s one of five major league umps hitting at least 95% accuracy this year – that’s 143 of 150 correct calls in a typical game – and perhaps will be beneficiaries of an era where scrutiny of umps – and publicly-available analysis – has never been higher.
“There hasn’t been any oxygen for these umpires that are performing well,” says Singer. “We take the approach of little to no commentary, and treat the data as is.
“I hope people in the umpiring community appreciate.”
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: MLB umpire rankings: Pat Hoberg is baseball’s most accurate ump
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