Last week, in Part 1 of this study, I explored the effect bad umpiring on ball/strike calls has had on Colorado Rockies hitters – both individually and as a team – thus far in 2014. The headlines, in brief, were:

1. Corey Dickerson, screwed by the umps more than anyone on the team, may be even more awesome than we think he is.

2. Brandon Barnes, as professional baseball players go, is bad at hitting baseballs; and he may be even worse than his bad numbers suggest, because that guy has been helped by the umps more than any other Rockie.

And, perhaps of most interest…

3. Collectively, the Rockies’ hitters have been adversely affected by non-robot umps more than all but two teams in the league.

However, while that is indeed quite interesting – at least to me – it would be unfair for you, me, or Dick Monfort to blame the umpires for 2014 based solely on the hitters being screwed. We need to know what the umps have done to the pitchers, too. If those who mete out pitching justice have given our hurlers charity in equal proportion to the extra tax they’ve levied on our hitters… well then we’re just back to blaming Bill Geivett, thin air, and Tulo’s genes.

So, how has Rockies pitching fared in the Ump Games? Well, since my preamble on approach and methodology is explained in Part 1, as well as in a piece from early in the season, I’ll get right to the results. First, the story for individual pitchers.

Tyler Matzek is the Corey Dickerson of our pitching staff. And as with Dickerson, Rockies fans might be well served to temper their ump-rage with some optimism for the future. If Tyler Matzek can survive his rookie season as well as he has while being squeezed by the umpires this bad, that bodes well for the future, when you’d expect his bad umpire luck to regress to the mean. Especially considering the fact that finding the strike zone has been Matzek’s historic weakness, I’m personally totally pumped to see how much better the kid will be when the umpires (eventually (presumably)) give him at least a normally-flawed zone.

Really, the same reasoning would apply to a lot of the guys at the bottom of this list. Extra bad umpiring can’t explain away the bad seasons put up by Logan and Bettis, but it obviously hasn’t helped them either. Since the Rockies need to see guys like this rebound to have any hope of being a relevant team next year, I’m heartened to see that at least they haven’t been artificially propped up by the pitch-callers.

Alright, so what about the team as a whole? Well, one of the first things you might have noticed about that table is that there are a lot more names below the line than above. So you might also have already guessed what I’m about to reveal. I’ve truncated the tables to show just the top and bottom teams (and ties), the league average, and our Rockies.

Pitches Out of the Zone – TEAM Called Strike Relative to Average New York Yankees 10.4% 1.4% Most Charity Boston Red Sox 10.4% 1.4% League Average 9.0% Colorado Rockies 7.6% -1.4% Chicago White Sox 7.2% -1.8% Least Charity Pitches In the Zone – TEAM Called Ball Relative to Average San Diego Padres 12.2% 4.9% Least Screwed League Average 17.1% Colorado Rockies 18.4% -1.3% Minnesota Twins 21.7% -4.6% Most Screwed Net Effects – TEAM Help Out of Zone Help in Zone Total Help San Diego Padres 1.3% 4.9% 6.2% Neutral Colorado Rockies -1.4% -1.3% -2.7% Minnesota Twins -0.4% -4.6% -5.0%

That total net effect places the Rockies 6th from the bottom; the 6th most screwed group of pitchers in the league.

(A quick sidebar before I present the grand conclusion: The spread between the most and least screwed teams on pitches in the zone is higher than expected. It’s higher than any of the four team-wide data sets I studied (in and out of zone, for both hitters and pitchers) by about an extra two or three percentage points on either extreme. I checked and rechecked the numbers in ESPN Stats and Info to make sure I hadn’t erred in harvesting them; I did not. I don’t know how to explain the larger spread in this one particular area, especially since there wasn’t a corresponding spread for the hitters “in the zone.” If you think you might have a plausible explanation, I’d love to read your thoughts in the comments section.)

Remember, the Rockies were 3rd from the bottom on the hitting side, so we may now deem it wholly fair for Rockies Nation to be mad at the umps. (I didn’t break up the blown calls by umpire, but I’m going to go ahead and assume Joe West is the worst. Because Joe West is the worst.) How mad should we be, exactly? Here’s the grand total net effect, on both sides of the ball, this time presented in un-truncated form:

Total Net Effects – TEAM Total Help – Hitters Total Help – Pitchers Total Help Milwaukee Brewers 2.8% 4.8% 7.6% San Diego Padres 0.3% 6.2% 6.5% San Francisco Giants 1.2% 3.8% 5.0% Tampa Bay Rays -0.2% 4.3% 4.1% Seattle Mariners -0.4% 3.5% 3.1% Houston Astros 0.9% 1.9% 2.8% Arizona Diamondbacks -1.8% 4.2% 2.4% New York Yankees -2.0% 3.9% 1.9% Boston Red Sox -0.1% 1.9% 1.8% Los Angeles Angels 0.4% 1.3% 1.7% New York Mets 1.3% 0.1% 1.4% Pittsburgh Pirates -1.0% 1.8% 0.8% Cleveland Indians 0.4% 0.1% 0.5% Cincinnati Reds -0.2% 0.4% 0.2% Baltimore Orioles 0.5% -0.5% 0.0% Neutral Atlanta Braves 2.2% -2.3% -0.1% Oakland Athletics 2.0% -2.4% -0.4% Los Angeles Dodgers 0.6% -1.5% -0.9% Kansas City Royals 1.6% -2.6% -1.0% Detroit Tigers 1.9% -3.0% -1.1% Texas Rangers 0.3% -1.4% -1.1% Washington Nationals 0.0% -1.8% -1.8% Chicago White Sox -0.3% -1.7% -2.0% St. Louis Cardinals -0.6% -1.4% -2.0% Philadelphia Phillies -1.2% -2.4% -3.6% Miami Marlins -0.2% -3.6% -3.8% Colorado Rockies -1.8% -2.7% -4.5% Minnesota Twins 0.4% -5.0% -4.6% Chicago Cubs -1.2% -4.3% -5.5% Toronto Blue Jays -3.2% -2.9% -6.1%

Well there you have it. There are only three teams in the league more ump-hurt than the Rockies. As I mentioned in Part 1, it’s impossible to know how much this has impacted the bottom line. The percentages are small, after all. On the other hand, this represents over a 1,000 total blown-in-the-other-guy’s-favor pitches than the average team, and it’s an almost 3,000 pitch difference between the Rockies and the Brewers, the most ump-helped team in the league. I’m not smart enough to quantify the game impact, but stated in these terms, it’s hard to think it doesn’t make some difference.

To be clear, and putting all joking aside, I am in no way suggesting that this is THE problem with the 2014 Rockies. Whatever the impact of unevenly distributed bad umpiring, it doesn’t make a team as awful as the Rockies a good one. The Blue Jays, who are actually still “in it,” and who have been even more screwed than the Rockies, might have a right to cast blame in this direction; the Rockies front office does not. But on the list of things that have conspired against them, a list that includes harms both self-inflicted and otherwise, add one more of the latter sort.