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National Baseball Hall of Famer Chipper Jones has had it with one particular MLB umpire after a recent game between the Chicago Cubs and Detroit Tigers.
Jones, who has been quite active on X recently regarding baseball, took the time to eviscerate MLB umpire Doug Eddings during the Cubs’ 6-1 victory on Saturday.
During the game, several calls were missed by the umpiring crew, including Eddings behind the plate. Pitches that should’ve been called balls were instead strike-three calls by Eddings, and Jones believed the umpire’s performance was one of the worst he’s seen.
In fact, Jones believes Eddings is among the worst in the game today.
“Not only one of the worst umpires in the league for going on 2 decades… but consistently one of the most confrontational. Toxic combination!” Jones wrote on X.
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Other than the strike-three calls, Eddings also never asked for help when calling Kyle Tucker for a strike during his at-bat after what appeared to be a fully checked swing.
Jones, though, knows about Eddings given his time with the Atlanta Braves from 1993-2012. Eddings began working in MLB in the late 1990s, and he worked 14 postseason series, including two World Series.
Jones didn’t specify his own experiences with Eddings, but they didn’t sound too positive.
The X account @UmpireScorecards posted Eddings’ results from the Cubs-Tigers game, where his overall accuracy was 92%, and he had an 80% called strike accuracy with eight of his 40 called strikes ruled “true balls.”
Umpiring in MLB has been a long-debated topic, especially considering the technological advancements that have been made in sports elsewhere.
MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred says the league will propose an automated ball-strike challenge system for use in 2026. It was tested during spring training, and it seems the feedback was positive.
Pitchers and hitters were able to tap on their head to challenge the ball-strike call made by the home plate umpire. If the rule goes through, it’s expected that each team gets afforded two challenges they can use during the game, making when to use it part of their strategy.
While it’s a massive change to the modern game, the human element of umpires will still apply, and Jones clearly wants to see better from Eddings moving forward.
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