The plate umpire and the strike zone
Umpires differ measurably in the size of the zone they call. A larger zone produces fewer walks, faster counts and lower scoring.
Every plate appearance passes through one person's judgement, and small consistent differences in where the zone ends accumulate across roughly three hundred pitches a game.
The effect is real and small — a fraction of a run between the most extreme umpires, and much less between typical ones.
Here is the catch. It is easy to over-weight precisely because it feels like inside knowledge, and a small effect applied confidently is worse than no adjustment at all.
What to do with it. Treat it as a tiebreaker on a total you already liked rather than as a reason to take one.
The archive
What the published price did in MLB
2,496 games in MLB that are over and carried a price when we wrote them up, between March 26, 2026 and October 29, 2026. Each count sits beside what it is out of, and the share is the one divided by the other.
| What | How often | Out of | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| The shorter price won | 1,395 | 2,457 | 56.8% |
| The favourite covered the handicap | 1,033 | 2,496 | 41.4% |
| The total went over | 1,191 | 2,496 | 47.7% |
| The home side won | 1,305 | 2,496 | 52.3% |
- Points in a game, on average
- 8.84
- Winning margin, on average
- 3.52
How wide the games were
Over 3,372 finished games in MLB with a score — a margin needs no price, so this sample is wider than the one above.
- Half were decided by this or less
- 3
- One in ten by this or more
- 7
- The widest
- 22
How they ended
Over 3,339 finished games in MLB whose result line says how it ended — the feed's own one-line verdict, not a reading of the play.
| What | How often | Out of | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Went past regulation | 246 | 3,339 | 7.4% |
| Called before the end | 9 | 3,339 | 0.3% |
137 games landed exactly on the number — the handicap or the total — so they are in the counts they are out of and in neither result.
The prices counted here are DraftKings', as they stood when we last wrote each game up — one snapshot per game, near kick-off for almost all of them, and never a closing line. So this says what the published line did, not how it moved on the way there.
A season that happened. Nothing here predicts the next game, and none of it is advice.
Counted November 6, 2026.
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