Bryce Harper has become the latest Major League Baseball star to offer his own suggestions for improving umpiring standards.
Harper stated at All-Star Game media day on Monday that umpires who receive the highest rating should be paid more. Furthermore, he believed that those umpires should be given more plate assignments to demonstrate their superior ability to call balls and strikes.
“I enjoy the human aspect of the game; it just has to be done correctly, and I’m not sure what that is,” Harper told Matt Snyder of CBS Sports. “But, if you’re a really good umpire, I believe you should be paid more and umpire more than one game per week behind the plate.” Even if we don’t have a challenge system, I believe having the best umpires behind the plate all the time is beneficial to baseball.”
MLB grades its umpires internally, with those who perform the best receiving the most high-profile playoff assignments. The question of whether graded compensation would raise that standard is fair. However, placing the top umpires behind home plate more frequently would not only increase overall performance, but would also reduce the time spent there by the lowest-graded umpires. Keeping those umpires at the bases, where obviously missed calls may be corrected by replay, is an intriguing concept.
Many MLB players believe that umpiring standards are a problem, but there have been numerous proposals for how to address it. The league appears to be heading for a different approach to the balls and strikes problem.
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