Umpire Brian Walsh graded poorly after blown calls in Yankees-Astros game
Umpire's plate calls judged to have favored Astros by 1.4 expected runs; Devin Williams and Aaron Boone were ejected
Home plate umpire Brian Walsh received sharply negative evaluations after a Wednesday night game in which the New York Yankees lost to the Houston Astros, with umpscorecards.com concluding his calls favored Houston by 1.4 expected runs.
The game turned heated in the bottom of the eighth inning when Yankees reliever Devin Williams and manager Aaron Boone were ejected after complaining about several missed calls behind the plate. Umpscorecards.com said Walsh’s performance was graded poorly and that the 1.4-run figure "represents the impact of an umpire on a team’s or game’s expected runs." The site added that the number can be used to compare an individual umpire’s impact with other umpires or with his own performance in other games.
Umpscorecards’ assessment made Walsh’s night the most one-sided of the season in terms of runs impacted. The next-largest single-game bias recorded that evening was 0.68 runs favoring Baltimore over San Diego. For Walsh, the 1.4-run figure surpassed his previous largest margin this season, a 1.38-run advantage credited to the Oakland Athletics in a 14-3 game against the Minnesota Twins on June 5.
The site’s expected-runs metric is not an exact science, and umpires’ grades can vary from game to game, but the numbers are increasingly cited by teams, media and fans when controversial calls draw scrutiny. Walsh’s low mark on Wednesday adds to a string of public evaluations that track how plate umpiring may affect game outcomes.
Yankees personnel publicly protested the sequence of calls in the eighth inning, prompting the ejections and postgame discussion, while umpscorecards’ data became part of the broader conversation about the night’s officiating. The evaluations and the game footage together are likely to be reviewed by observers and analysts assessing the impact of Walsh’s calls on the outcome.
Umpire assessments from independent sites like umpscorecards.com are publicly accessible and provide one measure of on-field performance; league offices and teams may use additional internal evaluations and replay review to reach their own conclusions. No official league disciplinary or corrective action related to Wednesday’s game was announced immediately following the contest.