Rob Dibble just finished a ridiculous rant on Baseball Tonight. Basically, he asserted that umpires should alter their strike zones depending on the pitcher and hitter in question. Jamie Moyer and Tom Glavine shouldn’t have to “bring it over the plate,” because then they aren’t as successful. In fact, Dibble went so far as to suggest that umpires should watch film of players so as to determine who are the “future All-Stars and future Hall-of-Famers.” C.C. Sabathia is apparently part of this group, and therefore should get a much larger strike zone than those hurlers the umpire doesn’t have in their personal “star” category.

I’m sorry, but this is absurd. The strike zone is the strike zone, and tools like Questec allow everyone to objectively analyze the accuracy of umpires’ calls. Why should Tom Glavine get strike calls on pitches four-to-six inches (or more) off the outside corner? Why should Edgar Martinez get the benefit of the doubt on pitches that are clearly strikes? Because Rob Dibble says so?

The strike zone is part of baseball, and its integrity is vital to the legitimacy of the sport. Altering one’s strike zone for certain pitchers or hitters is not quite as bad as giving one team four outs in an inning, but it is approaching that level of unfairness. Call balls and strikes as they are defined in the rulebook, or at least be consistent between teams and games with your idiosyncracies. Anything less is an affront to the fundamental fairness upon which baseball is built, the back-and-forth battle between pitcher and hitter.