The Third Dimension

I'm trying to soak in as much information as possible about umpiring, and a few months ago, I came across UmpireTeacher.com and purchased their set of instructional videos.  They are produced by a veteran umpire named Bugsy Segal, who does a pretty decent job of teaching the basics.  However, in his two DVDs about the Strike Zone, he discusses an approach to calling strikes that I'd never heard before.  It's an approach that he says was taught to him by the late MLB umpire John McSherry, and he even includes some footage of a clinic run by John McSherry.  (Some of you may remember McSherry as the umpire who tragically died of cardiac arrest on the field just before the start of an opening day game in 1996.)

The video emphasizes the "depth" of the strike zone.  We all know the width of the zone is determined by the width of the plate, and the height of the zone – although it varies by different league rules and divisions – is determined by the stance of the batter.  For the sake of this blog post, let's just say the height of the zone is from the knees to the chest of the batter in his stride.  But very rarely do we talk about the third dimension, or the "depth" of the strike zone, so I found the discussion in the video interesting.

The main point in the video was that the pitched ball should stay in the zone for most of the time that it crosses the depth of the zone.  For example, see the diagrams below:

This makes sense, and I agree with it.  But what was surprising from the video is that they claim the depth of the zone should be determined by where the batter is standing, and not by the position of the plate.  For example, if the batter stands in the middle of the batter's box, the zone is where you would expect it to be, as shown in the first diagram below.  However, if the batter sets up in the back of the zone, they believe the zone should move with him, so that the strike zone is now as pictured in the second diagram, and not directly above the plate as shown in the third diagram.

Bugsy's non-traditional approach to the strike zone taught at UmpireTeacher.com.

This is clearly a non-traditional approach, as most 3D diagrams of the strike zone show a prism directly above home plate, like this:

In the MLB rule book definition, "The STRIKE ZONE is that area over home plate the upper limit of which is a horizontal line at the midpoint between the top of the shoulders and the top of the uniform pants, and the lower level is a line at the hollow beneath the kneecap. The Strike Zone shall be determined from the batter’s stance as the batter is prepared to swing at a pitched ball"  (emphasis mine). 

So, in my mind, Bugsy's approach in the video seems to be inconsistent with the rules.  However, I understand the reasoning.  If a batter is back in the box, and a pitch crosses the plate at the height of the batter's knees but then crosses the batter an inch below the knees, and the umpire calls a strike, he could very well get some grief from the bench.  Moving the zone forward or back depending on where the batter stands in the box will probably make more strikes look like strikes (and likewise for balls) from the perspective of the benches.  So this approach offers the "path of least resistance," which is a very tangible concept in umpiring that I'll talk more about in a future blog post.

What's your opinion?  Please post a comment below.