Study Shows Subtle Umpire Racial Bias

QuesTec Seems to Mitigate Effect

A recent study found that in 1% of calls made by home plate umpires between 2004 and 2006 were affected by race. The study, reported by MSNBC suggests that umpires were more likely to call strikes when the pitcher was of their race and balls when the pitcher is of another race. 71% of major league pitchers and 87% of umpires are white. According to the original article, Asian pitchers are particularly affected by this bias as there are no Asian umpires.

What that 1% of calls means is that there will be about 2 such bias-influenced calls during the course of any one game.

Interestingly enough, one of the several factors that seemed to mitigate the effects noted in the study was use of the QuesTec "Umpire Information System," (UIS) in use in baseball since 2003.

The UIS is a system developed by QuesTec that uses a series of cameras and a computer network to record the location of pitches during the course of a game, and presumably increasing umpire accuracy. UIS is used in 11 of the 30 major league parks.

The World Umpires Association (WUA) was authorized by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) as the exclusive bargaining agent of Major League Umpires in 2000 and it was they who challenged the use of UIS as an unfair labor practice in 2003. The issue at hand was the system's accuracy and consistency; it was the intention of MLB to use the system in the evaluation of umpires and if it weren't consistent and accurate, it couldn't be a fair evaluation tool.

According to one site, the UIS can be accurate to within a half inch, although particularly active batters who adjust their stance (and thereby altering the strike zone) during a pitch make it difficult for the system achieve this accuracy. Additionally, because ballparks all have their individual peculiarities, camera angles cannot be perfectly consistent from park to park.