Umpire Joe "Cowboy Joe" West will serve as crew chief for the American League Championship Series matchup between the Orioles and Royals, MLB announced Thursday. Rob Neyer pointed out, however, that West objectively ranked as one of the worst strike-callers in the game this year.
West made correct calls 83.91 percent of the time, according to Businessweek's handy ump rater, the third-worst mark in all of baseball. And if you narrow it down to only umps who had a reasonable sample size (more than 1,000 calls) West was the second-worst in the game.
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