Can We Talk?

After a loss to Atlanta Wednesday, ex-White Sox third baseman Todd Frazier, now of the Mets, has had it with plate umpires and their ever-changing strike zones.  “I’d like to sit down with [Commissioner Rob] Manfred or anybody at MLB and talk to them about it,” Frazier told reporters after the game, “because it’s rubbing everybody the wrong way.  You [and you know who you are, men in blue] have to do better than that.”

Frazier went on to say he’s already had a sit-down with an ump he claims miscalled five pitches on him during a recent game.  “I respect him for doing that.  But at the same time, when you look back and see this kind of stuff where they’re blatantly not strikes, I just can’t sit back and let it go anymore.  Something has to be said.”  Maybe he could say it to Joe West.  Now, I’d like to be a fly on the wall for that conversation.

With that fondness for outside breaking balls in the dirt, Frazier is the wrong guy making the right point.  Major-league strike zones change game to game, and it’s not enough to say pitchers and hitters simply have to adjust.  Ballplayers learn their trade with a uniform knees-to-armpits strike zone as their template.  Umpires can’t all of a sudden say, “Throw it here”; “Don’t throw it here”; “This is a strike today”; “This isn’t a strike today.”  Madness that way lurks.

Just ask Todd Frazier.