Ump show: Brian Walsh's vendetta against Yankees is backed up by cold hard facts

We imagine that, across the many years that Brian Walsh spent attempting to become a major-league umpire, he heard no shortage of fans accusing him of badly blowing calls or even rigging games in favor of a specific team.

However, we get the sense that Walsh’s voicemail box has never sounded how it likely did following Wednesday’s New York Yankees-Houston Astros game. Walsh came under immense scrutiny after blowing several calls in the Astros’ 8-7 victory, with Yankees manager Aaron Boone even getting in Walsh’s face and telling him, “You [expletive] stink.” 

The numbers don't look good for umpire Brian Walsh

The @UmpireAuditor X/Twitter account reported that Walsh missed 21 calls, 15 going against the Yankees. Although the Umpire Scorecards X/Twitter account determined that Walsh missed 16 calls, their data showed that Walsh’s grades favored the Astros by +1.4 runs.

Per Baseball Savant, Walsh missed 10 calls that were inside the zone, nine of which went against New York. He also missed 11 calls outside the strike zone, six of which went against the Yankees.

Some of Walsh’s more egregious moments on Wednesday night involved various missed strikes from Yankees reliever Devin Williams, who walked three and allowed four earned runs in an eighth-inning collapse. Walsh also controversially called Yankees second baseman Jazz Chisholm Jr. out on strikes to end the game.

Walsh ejected Boone and Williams for arguing balls and strikes, and Williams didn’t hold back during a postgame media scrum.

“When you’re making good pitches, which I was, not getting those calls really changes the course of an at-bat,” Williams said. 

Williams later added, “It’s just ridiculous to have the inning that I had and then Jazz got the bat taken out of his hands on a pitch that was a lot further from the zone than pitches I was making.”

Brian Walsh continues blowing calls during Astros games, and the league should be concerned

The Yankees weren’t alone in sharing their disgust with Walsh’s outing. New York Knicks star Josh Hart urged the league to suspend Walsh in an X/Twitter post, a take that Chisholm reposted and emphatically agreed with. As of publication, the league had not reprimanded Chisholm or Williams for publicly criticizing an umpire.

Interestingly, this isn’t the first time Walsh has turned heads for a questionable strike zone in an Astros game. Walsh called Diamondbacks All-Star second baseman Ketel Marte out on a game-ending strikeout during an Arizona-Houston game on July 23. Houston won 4-3, though not without controversy, as the clip of Marte’s strikeout made the social media rounds.

Walsh’s strike zone also left Orioles announcers speechless in an 11-4 Toronto Blue Jays victory on July 28. That means there have been three instances in less than two months where Walsh has blatantly missed obvious balls and strikes, and two of those games involved the Astros.

Blown calls are a part of sports, though leagues have tried to rectify that by embracing replay where appropriate. However, umpires will continue to miss calls until Major League Baseball fully implements the automated ball-strike system — and even then, the ABS has a challenge system in that situation. 

While Umpire Auditor and Umpire Scorecards provide detailed analysis, these are independent evaluations and do not constitute official MLB assessments of Walsh’s performance.

By no means are we accusing Walsh of breaking any rules or intentionally favoring the Astros. At the same time, it’s nonetheless extremely concerning that the Astros played in and won two games where Walsh struggled to correctly call balls and strikes. At least the Blue Jays-Orioles game ended in a blowout. Both the Yankees-Astros and Astros-Diamondbacks games were decided by one run and ended on a called strikeout. 

“We go back, watch video, try to get better,” Yankees catcher Austin Wells told reporters. “I hope that those guys are going to do the same."