I don't care where it is but at least make it somewhere near the defined size. It would be nice if you called a deep zone as well - the area over the plate as defined by the rules - not just the leading edge. But that said, I don't care if you don't give edges, or if you call what tends to be a higher or lower zone in the zone. Or if you only call inside or outside. I don't even care if you think the strike zone is completely off the plate.
Just give pitchers a reasonable zone and the good ones will find out where it is and they'll go ahead and work with it.
What you can absolutely not do is have a strike zone the size of a softball, at waist high in the middle of the plate. Pitchers practice REALLY hard to make sure they don't throw it there.
This last few weeks I have seen games ruined by this type of called zone. Our team has been on both sides of this mess and two weeks a go we watched an umpire team simply refuse to call strikes pretty much all day in one tournament. We watched one game with two pitchers with outstanding control get a combined total of 7 called strikes for a game.
In one game recently we had to bring in our best pitcher to finish a game by throwing ONLY down the middle because the other team just stopped swinging because as their coach said afterwards, he couldn't see the umpire making three strike calls on one batter so why not just come back by taking walks.
Just give pitchers a reasonable zone and the good ones will find out where it is and they'll go ahead and work with it.
What you can absolutely not do is have a strike zone the size of a softball, at waist high in the middle of the plate. Pitchers practice REALLY hard to make sure they don't throw it there.
This last few weeks I have seen games ruined by this type of called zone. Our team has been on both sides of this mess and two weeks a go we watched an umpire team simply refuse to call strikes pretty much all day in one tournament. We watched one game with two pitchers with outstanding control get a combined total of 7 called strikes for a game.
In one game recently we had to bring in our best pitcher to finish a game by throwing ONLY down the middle because the other team just stopped swinging because as their coach said afterwards, he couldn't see the umpire making three strike calls on one batter so why not just come back by taking walks.
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