Thanks for your interest in umpiring. I no longer umpire, but I did so for about a dozen years. Now I am primarily a basketball referee, which I’ve been doing for 20 years.

Probably the best site I can refer you to is NASO, the National Association of Sports Offficials. They have a lot of good material on all sports and back when I was first umpiring ran an article on Dale Eidson, an East Bay umpire with two prosthetic legs. I had the pleasure of meeing Dale right before the article came out, and he gave me a heads-up. Dale had great judgement, and I saw him interfere with play due to his lack of mobility only once as a base umpire.

I think if you type “umpiring” into your browser, you will probaby find all kinds of neat stuff, and if you would like to ask any questions or just chat, feel free to e-mail me at sharksrog@aol.com.

Except my post was better.

Both Freddie Lewis and John Bowker pose concerns as far as keeping their averages up.

Freddie has hit for an amazing .363 BABIP over his career, which seems unsustainable. Bowker has a .285 BABIP, which actually seems low for as many line drives as he has hit (over 25%). Freddie doesn’t hit nearly as many line drives (19%) as John, but he is hitting a phenomenal .786 on the line drives he does hit.

Freddie hits a lot more ground balls than John, and his enjoying a .295 to .212 advantage on ground balls. Some of it is no doubt due to Freddie’s much better speed, but Freddie doesn’t have a lot of infield hits, so either he is hitting his grounders harder and/or he has been luckier at finding holes.

Freddie isn’t a big fly ball hitter, but he’s batting an impressive .270 on fly balls, compared to John’s .224. Freddie is hitting a marveluous .634 on balls hit to the outfield, so his line drives and fly balls are finding a way to get down a good deal of the time. John is hitting .596 on balls to the outfield, which is also exceptionally good—just not quite AS good.

John’s 25%+ line drive rate indicates he is hittting the ball at least as hard as Freddie—just not with as much good fortune. That would seem to bode far better for John than for Freddie. But John’s issue may be that his line drive rate is unsustainable.

Still, if John’s line drives decrease, that might well be offset with better luck on his balls in play. If fewer of Freddie’s balls find holes, I’m not sure where his improvement will come from—unless he can cut down on his strikeouts. But Freddie has already struck out as often (18) in July as in all of June, so he appears to be going the other way.

The one advantage Freddie has over John is that he has hit right up there with John even though about half as many again of his at bats have come against southpaws than John. The offset could be that Freddie will continue to see more southpaws than John, who is only 4-for-28 against them.

My guess is that when the season is over, John will own the higher batting average. But while neither has shown the ability to hit southpaws, Freddie’s slightly better results in that regard would appear to aid him toward being an everyday player, just as John’s younger age would seem to favor HIM.

Freddie clearly has the speed advantage and is also a better fielder. Even more importantly, he is much more adept at drawing walks than Bowker. With over half his strikeouts coming on called third strikes, Freddie would likely benefit from being a bit more aggressive when he gets two strikes. On the other hand, he is also prone to swinging at bad breaking balls in such situations, which also usually results in a strikeout.

John has the advantage of playing first base as well as the corners, but Freddie might be able to learn to field well enough to take advantage of his speed by playing center field, which would place him in a much less demanding position for hitting than first base is.

I think John will hit for the higher average this season, but I think it is almost too close to call as to which player will be the better player over his career. Bowker is younger, but Lewis almost has less experience.

The truth is that neither player might be good enough to play regularly for a good team. If Freddie could become a good defensive center fielder, his chances would appear to be the better. But if Freddie can’t cut down significantly on his strikeouts, the more powerful (despite this year’s almost equal figures) Bowker may become the better corner outfield candidate, albeit it likely in the less demanding left field position.

Freddie’s swing seems made for AT&T Park, in that he will likely get more triples there and probably isn’t going to hit a lot of homers anyway. Bowker’s pull hitting also appears tailored to AT&T, albeit in a different way.

If John becomes a power hitter, I think he wins out in this battle. If Freddie can become a center fielder, I believe the edge shifts to him. Otherwise I am split virtually right down the middle on the twosome. And it seems quite possible NEITHER will become a true everyday player on a good team.

Fortunately both players are reasonably versatile. Unfortunately both bat left-handed, as does the Giants’ top outfield prospect in AAA, Nate Schierholtz.

I actually like Nate slightly the best of the three—although not by as much as before the season began.