Tag: Umpire camera

Umpire camera shows how impossible it is to hit Yu Darvish’s 95 MPH fastball with movement

Ump Cam is back!

The 2024 MLB season is officially back, and so is Ump Cam.

One of my favorite innovations has shown us the umpire POV of monster home runs, pitches that dart and fool hitters, and how scary an up and in fastball is.

And on Wednesday, with the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres playing in South Korea on ESPN, we got the Ump Cam view of a 95 MPH two-seam fastball that was a called strike. You can see it move in the middle of heading to the plate, and in slow motion, it’s even more pronounced.

Gotta love Ump Cam!

Ump cam captured Adolis Garcia’s monster Game 7 home run and glorious celebration

Ump cam (and Adolis Garcia) is undefeated.

We’ve seen so many wild views of baseball thanks to ump cam, from scary high and in fastballs to home runs leaving the park in a hurry.

This time? We get a double dose of awesomeness thanks to ump cam and Adolis Garcia, whose home run trots have rankled fans and maybe opponents, too.

In Game 7 of the ALCS, Garcia hit a mammoth dinger that helped his Texas Rangers take down the defending champion Houston Astros at Minute Maid Park, and ump cam captured both his home run and the trot that included a celebration as he started running toward first.

Here you go, and enjoy (except if you’re an Astros fan, sorry about adding insult to injury):

Umpire cam shows how scary a fastball up and in on Jose Altuve can be

LOOK OUT!

We’ve seen so many things thanks to the innovation known as Umpire Cam (literally, a camera on the head of an umpire in both MLB and college baseball): A hit-by-pitch, what a Freddie Freeman home run looks like up close, and how darn hard it is to hit a Spencer Strider fastball.

This time? It’s how scary an up and in pitch for some so-called “chin music” can be.

This came out of Game 4 of the ALCS between the Texas Rangers and Houston Astros, with a pitch that had Jose Altuve jerking his head back and then falling to the dirt.

Yikes!

There was also Corey Seager’s home run with ump cam, much less frightening:

Umpire cam shows how impossible it is to hit a Ranger Suarez 94 MPH pitch

How does anyone hit anything in MLB?

Umpire cam is seriously the best.

It’s proof that regular people who think they could make contact — let alone hit — with a Major League pitcher’s offerings are very wrong.

On the other side of things, there’s also the fact that we’re in awe of hitters like Freddie Freeman hitting homers off incredible pitches that are filmed by ump cams.

The latest edition: The Philadelphia Phillies’ Ranger Suarez threw a two-seam fastball against the Milwaukee Brewers on Sunday night and it looks like it changes direction and fools the hitter for a strike.

Just incredible. How do hitters make contact with anything?!

Sheesh.

Umpire camera footage on Freddie Freeman’s home run is the best of the season

Freddie Freeman sent this one flying and the camera angle was amazing!

If you want the best seat in the house to watch Dodgers star Freddie Freeman hit dingers, you would probably have to become an MLB umpire.

But that isn’t easy and you can’t get that kind of access without intense training, so thanks to modern technological developments, we now have access to the next best thing.

It’s officially known as UmpCam and we have seen the cool development used to illustrate how difficult it is to hit against ace pitchers like Spencer Strider. Fans, obviously, have loved it.

UmpCamp footage offered us a unique angle for this Freeman home run:

If you thought that looked cool, why don’t we try checking it out in slow motion?

That, my friends, is the only way to make this look more awesome:

UmpCam is an official collaboration with RF Wireless that uses a custom POV camera fitted for the umpire mask. It is similar to the NHL RefCam and the goal was to use the technology in “at least 15 broadcasts” this season.

ESPNU has even tried an alternative UmpCast for the College Baseball World Series.

We want more UmpCam as the season continues because it’s amazing.

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