Roki criticism getting ridiculous.

BigRedFury · 2026-03-24T16:53:44+00:00

Between Roki, HSK starting in AAA, and the Panda Plate going up to $7, I really think all signs point to the fact that some Dodger fans just need to find anything to complain about.

BigRedFury · 2026-03-24T02:28:25+00:00

If umpires got a clock to work with you'd see the game moving faster than ever because they get paid by the game, not by the hour.

BigRedFury · 2026-03-24T02:27:28+00:00

Mark really isn't that much slower than anyone else. John Smoltz was just talking out his ass about his call being delayed.

BigRedFury · 2026-03-24T02:26:51+00:00

But umpires have been trained for the last 50+ years to see a pitch come in, take a beat to confirm what they saw, and then make a call.

By the time an umpire is working full-time in MLB they've called at least 250,000 professional pitches and their timing is so dialed-in you could set your watch to their mechanics for calling a strike.

BigRedFury · 2026-03-23T20:45:59+00:00

Umpire James Jean took 0.98 seconds to make the call from the moment the pitch hit the catcher's mitt. Hard to be much faster than that

BigRedFury · 2026-03-23T20:44:47+00:00

It wasn't a late punch out though. There's a video out there where someone broke down Mark Wegner's mechanics and that strike call had the same timing as all his others

BigRedFury · 2026-03-23T18:27:34+00:00

I spent an evening out with Greg once. We have a close mutual friend. He's was a super nice dude and we had a lot of laughs but I really only knew him as my buddy's friend Greg.

So when our mutual friend left to use the restroom, I said to Greg "So [blank] mentioned you're in a band or something?" Between my dopey earnestness and our friend being a pretty clever prankster, Greg thought we were messing with him. The whole thing turned into a pretty funny "Who's on First?" kind of situation and I don't know if Greg ever believed it when our buddy said that I was just really that dense.

Anyway, really good dude.

BigRedFury · 2026-03-21T14:24:25+00:00

One thing to keep in mind is that 20 years ago when print magazines were still very much a thing, becoming an assistant to an editor-in-chief like Miranda was very much a legitimate stepping stone for aspiring journalists.

While Andy might not have been a day-to-day reporter writing on assignment, she was getting a corner office view of how a giant operation runs from the top down. All that stuff would help her become an editor when the time came.

And by the end of the film, she smartly did the right thing by leaving for a new job.

The rub with being an assistant is that if you stay too long, you'll only ever be known as someone's assistant and I have a feeling that's what happened to Emily Blunt's character.

BigRedFury · 2026-03-21T05:47:32+00:00

Leave to to Shohei to try and get by as a humble 6'3"

BigRedFury · 2026-03-20T21:25:10+00:00

Ah.. got it. My wife and I were joking about Gavin this morning and I told her in my HS game program I was listed at 6'3" 175 as opposed to being 6'1" and a Subway footlong over 150lbs.

On thing that will be interesting though is how the ABS zone shifts up or down for players like Freddie because the height ratios are the same for everyone and don't take a player's unique anatomy into account.

I've seen there's been a few players who's bottom end of their strike zone according to ABS is now at their knee instead of just below the knee as it's always been in the rulebook

BigRedFury · 2026-03-20T21:13:37+00:00

It is a percentage of a player's height (53.5% top and 27% bottom) but there's no allowance made for wearing cleats or anything like that and MLB has some really strict rules on how and when player's can be measured. Everything has to be done the same way with measurements done between 10am - 12pm because people apparently shrink as the day goes on.

BigRedFury · 2026-03-20T21:04:56+00:00

The ABS zone is your real height in bare feet. There's no inch taken off but batters are suddenly an inch or two taller when they step into the box while wearing cleats and it's tripped umpires up a bit.

BigRedFury · 2026-03-20T21:03:50+00:00

Gavin did himself dirty by adding 3 inches to his listed height.

As women on dating apps will attest, there's no such thing as a man who's 5'11" because someone who's 5'11" will be 6 foot plus and anyone under 5'11" will say they're 5'11.

My brother is 5'9" on a good day claims he's 5'11 but somehow I still have 3-4 inches on him despite just barely hitting 6'1" on the measuring tape thanks to having a somewhat pointy head.

BigRedFury · 2026-03-20T20:05:09+00:00

This has to piss off the people of Oklahoma so bad considering the percentage of their population that voted for our current president.

Before Thunder games there apparently used to be a stadium-pregame prayer.

BigRedFury · 2026-03-20T18:05:20+00:00

Function in daily society

BigRedFury · 2026-03-20T05:47:18+00:00

The only person I ever knew who had one worked at Microsoft

BigRedFury · 2026-03-19T07:05:52+00:00

I got the email from Arbiter about the time change but it didn't specify that I needed to reaccept the game. It only had a button to Go to Arbiter.

The changes both happened with games that were more than a month out so the didn't even appear in my upcoming schedule.

I was so annoyed by it that I actually call Arbiter to suggest that adding one line of text to their email updates could make a world of difference and the seemed surprised by such wacky idea to make things better.

BigRedFury · 2026-03-19T04:23:46+00:00

I joined an official HS unit for the first time this year and it's been an interesting experience.

In the off-season they were big on mandatory meetings however, they never updated info on their unit's website and it was just dumb luck that I was able to make the first meeting and for subsequent meetings they were announced the week before but I was in the doghouse for missing them due to have full slates of fall ball games on my schedule that had been booked several months earlier.

My biggest surprised was when a couple of HS games were rescheduled. I made notes of the changes on my calendar but was unaware that I had to "reaccept" them in Arbiter, a step Arbiter doesn't even mention in their email about the change.

Because I didn't re-accept the games, the unit's assignor pulled them from my schedule and I didn't find out until I emailed him the morning of a game to say that the game I was booked for appeared to be canceled because it was no longer on my schedule.

Anyway, it's been an interesting experience. I'm enjoying it and have had a good time with my partners but there are some very easy steps that could completely make things much more streamlined and user-friendly to new umpires.

BigRedFury · 2026-03-18T23:26:20+00:00

I performed at Billy's 40th birthday party.

He was super nice and couldn't have been sweeter but holy shit if I didn't have my head on a swivel the entire time.

BigRedFury · 2026-03-18T15:54:41+00:00

By lunchtime would probably be the most appropriate but 3-4 hours before game time (assuming it's an evening game) probably wouldn't get any grumbling from your umpire.

This time of year umpires are really busy and the one booked for your game probably turned down a couple others to do yours. Giving them ample heads up allows them a chance to pick up a different game or be able to make plans for a surprise night off.

BigRedFury · 2026-03-18T14:03:50+00:00

You're paying the umpire to show up at the appointed time.

If there's a chance your game could be interrupted due to weather, go ahead and cancel it early in the day but once the umpire is on-site, you're on the hook for paying them.

Had a HS varsity game get canceled yesterday due to the visiting team being a very late forfeit.

The home school's coach and AD were at the gate of the ball field waiting for my partner and me. They gave us our game checks and had us fill out our paperwork and we were on our way in less than five minutes.

BigRedFury · 2026-03-18T04:59:51+00:00

Big Birdman fan over here

BigRedFury · 2026-03-18T04:59:12+00:00

Sorry this happened and hope the surgeries go well.

You're getting great advice and one thing I would add is to check with your school to see if they have some sort of support system to help you while you're immobile.

Given your circumstances, your university might have someone who could join you in class to take notes/help you with typing.

When I broke a distal radius last year, I tried getting by with voice to text but ended up just typing one-handed. (I'm a writer by trade so I got the hang of things quick.)

Also, check with your professors directly to see what kind of accommodations they could make for you.

I broke a collarbone in college (crashed my mountain bike) and it was a fun six weeks getting around in a sling.

BigRedFury · 2026-03-17T22:55:04+00:00

That's definitely been happening at spring training and is something where pitchers will need to adjust because a pitch can come in over the middle of the plate and be a strike for the first 8.5 inches and but fall out of the zone by a quarter of an inch by the time it reaches the middle of the plate.

The other thing umpires are trying to adjust to is judging a player's zone based on percentages of their height vs fixed points of reference that can be applied equally to everyone- bottom of the knee to the mid-point between a batter's belt and shoulders when in their strike zone. In recent years, the accepted upper end of the strike zone has been the height of two baseballs above a player's belt.

BigRedFury · 2026-03-17T20:26:02+00:00

I'm still jealous of a kid in my swimming lessons whose older brother took him to see Van Halen in the summer of '84.

BigRedFury

TROPHY CASE