Austin Jones
18 games graded behind the plate.
2,559 correct of 2,720 graded takes (94.1% ± 0.9, 95%). Best game 97.5% · worst 90.6%. Grade is accuracy on taken pitches vs the rulebook zone; ABS is the Automated Ball-Strike System challenge record (how often the robots overruled the call).
What we can't say about Austin Jones
This season is 2,720 graded takes, which puts Austin Jones's overall accuracy at 94.1% ± 0.9 (95% interval). That interval is a large share of the whole league's four-point spread, so this grade is a reading and not yet a ranking — we print it, and we do not place it against umpires with a full season behind the plate. Everything finer is further out of reach still:
- how the zone moves with two strikes — about 544 takes, so ±2.0 points. (the league-wide two-strike effect is about 1 point in 2026.)
- any single corner of the zone — about 227 takes, so ±3.1 points. (corner cells are where umpires actually differ.)
- whether one pitcher is called tighter than another — about 45 takes, so ±6.9 points. (a given pitcher is worked once or twice a season.)
And a note on the number itself: an accuracy figure is a rate plus a convention for what counts as a miss. Ours grades every taken pitch against the rulebook zone as the feed reports it. Others are more forgiving — UmpScorecards counts a call wrong only when the pitch was at least 90% likely to be a strike — so two sites can print the same percentage about the same umpire and not mean the same thing by it. How the grade is built.
The overturn rate is a different kind of number and does not belong beside the grade: it is accuracy on the 63 pitches players chose to challenge, which are the pitches they already believed were wrong. 63 is enough to print it with its own denominator, which is what we do — but it still ranks umpires by how often they are appealed, not by how often they are right.
The road to the plate
Two Roads From Charleston
Austin Jones and his twin brother Tyler started in the Gulf Coast League in 2014. A decade later, both had reached the majors.
Two Roads
In 2014, Austin Jones and his twin brother Tyler worked a game together in the Gulf Coast League. Both were at the start of professional umpiring careers. Both would eventually reach the major leagues — Austin in 2024, Tyler a year later in 2025 — a rare climb for twin brothers in the same trade.
Austin was born in Charleston, South Carolina, and attended Fort Dorchester High School in North Charleston. The road from the Gulf Coast League carried him through the 2022 World Baseball Classic Qualifiers and onto a 2023 Double-A crew that included Jonathan Parra and Jen Pawol. Parra and Pawol each went on to make their own major league debuts, with Pawol becoming the first woman umpire in MLB history. Jones umpired his first major league game on July 22, 2024, and worked 35 games as a call-up that season before taking on nearly a full schedule of 122 major league games in 2025.
His first game behind the plate came on July 25, 2024 — a Texas Rangers game against the Chicago White Sox. In that contest, Rangers pitcher Max Scherzer struck out nine batters to move into the top ten on the all-time MLB strikeout list. Three days into his big league career, Jones was behind the plate for a game that turned into a milestone for someone else.
We have graded Jones behind the plate in 14 games this season, and the record on this page is the reason his name is here.
Reporting: baseball-reference.com, baseball-almanac.com, postandcourier.com. Umpire data: MLB StatsAPI, via the Fever engine.
By the Desk · filed 2026-07-24 — the profile reads as of its filing; the grading record above is live · every fact in this piece comes from a sourced research pack and clears an independent fact-check, and nothing is edited after filing.
The games
| Game | Grade | Favor | ABS | Blue Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NYM @ TB2026-08-31 | B | 0.3 TB | 0/1 | Solid and unspectacular — exactly what the job asks. |
| SEA @ HOU2026-08-15 | A | 0.1 SEA | 2/3 | Called it the way the rulebook drew it up. |
| TEX @ LAA2026-08-11 | B | 0.1 LAA | 1/1 | Off the corner was close enough tonight. |
| CLE @ CWS2026-08-07 | A+ | 0.1 CLE | 0/2 | A clean sheet behind the plate — the kind of night nobody posts about. |
| AZ @ LAD2026-07-10 | A | 0.6 LAD | 3/4 | The kind of night where the umpire is the least of the story. |
| TOR @ SF2026-07-06 | B | 0.6 SF | 0/4 | Squeezed the edges; the hitters didn't mind at all. |
| TB @ KC2026-07-02 | A | 0.9 KC | 0/0 | A workmanlike night — nothing to frame, nothing to fix. |
| MIA @ STL2026-06-27 | C+ | 0.6 STL | 2/3 | A small strike zone, generously enforced for the offense. |
| CHC @ NYM2026-06-24 | A | 0.3 NYM | 1/4 | Down the middle. Both dugouts had the same zone. |
| BOS @ CLE2026-05-31 | B | 0.1 BOS | 4/8 | Pitchers found a little extra real estate. |
| MIA @ TOR2026-05-27 | B+ | 0.4 TOR | 1/1 | The zone kept its promises. |
| ATL @ MIA2026-05-21 | A- | 0.6 MIA | 1/3 | Nothing that'll trend, and on this beat that's a compliment. |
| ATH @ BAL2026-05-09 | A- | 0.1 ATH | 0/2 | Down the middle. Both dugouts had the same zone. |
| MIA @ LAD2026-04-29 | A | 0.3 MIA | 3/6 | Down the middle. Both dugouts had the same zone. |
| ATH @ TEX2026-04-25 | B | 0.6 ATH | 1/2 | A steady night's work behind the plate. |
| NYY @ BOS2026-04-21 | A | 0.3 NYY | 1/4 | Textbook top to bottom — a quiet masterclass. |
| TB @ CWS2026-04-16 | A- | 1.3 TB | 5/9 | Hawkeye did more talking than the umpire tonight. |
| HOU @ SEA2026-04-10 | C+ | 0.4 HOU | 3/6 | Squeezed the edges; the hitters didn't mind at all. |