The Giants appear to have been punished by umpire mistakes more than almost every other team

According to Umpirescorecards.com, the site known for tweeting score cards for umpires each game, the Giants have had roughly 7.5 runs worth of run expectancy taken away by missed calls — placing them at second-worst in the league. Furthermore, 60% of games have favored the other team, the third worst rate. Only the Oakland A’s have been treated worse in both categories.

Of course, these things are never exact and there’s no way to predict how things would have changed if these mistakes were called correctly. But it illustrates that perhaps us Giants fans are not crazy for feeling like the umpires have had a negative impact overall.

In fact, when accounting for Umpirescorecards.com’s data, there are two close games that could have been Giants victories. The May 21st loss in Pittsburgh and last week’s June 19th defeat in Chicago were one-run games with more than one run’s worth of run expectancy lost to umpire mistakes. Again, there’s no way to truly know if those losses would have become victories, but it further solidifies the idea that the Giants could be a couple games closer to .500 in a “just” world.

I’m having fun messing around with this data, and I might see if other teams have similar situations with close games that could have been swayed by umpire error. And I wonder how catcher framing would alter these numbers, as I would imagine the Giants’ favorability numbers would plummet further if Bailey wasn’t behind the dish. But regardless, after 80-plus games of data for each team, it seems clear that the Giants have been fairly unlucky with umpiring.