Bill Miller
26 games graded behind the plate.
3,771 correct of 4,052 graded takes (93.1% ± 0.8, 95%). Best game 96.4% · worst 88.6%. 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 Bill Miller
This season is 4,052 graded takes, which puts Bill Miller's overall accuracy at 93.1% ± 0.8 (95% interval). That is a real measurement against a league spanning about four points end to end. It is not enough for anything finer, and here is the arithmetic rather than our word for it:
- how the zone moves with two strikes — about 810 takes, so ±1.7 points. (the league-wide two-strike effect is about 1 point in 2026.)
- any single corner of the zone — about 338 takes, so ±2.7 points. (corner cells are where umpires actually differ.)
- whether one pitcher is called tighter than another — about 68 takes, so ±6.0 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 117 pitches players chose to challenge, which are the pitches they already believed were wrong. 117 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
The First Challenge
The umpire behind the first ABS challenge has been on major-league fields since 1997.
Opening day, 2026. The Yankees and the Giants on the field for the first game of the season, and Bill Miller behind the plate. He called a strike, and the call was challenged under the new ABS Challenge System — making Miller the first umpire to have one of his calls challenged under the system. The review upheld Miller's strike. Whatever the challenge system becomes in the years ahead, its first moment passed through a man who has been on major-league fields since 1997, when he worked his first game in the American League.
Miller was born on May 31, 1967, in Vallejo, California. He graduated from UCLA with a history degree in 1989 before his road led him to professional umpiring. He was promoted to crew chief before the 2014 season, and in 2019 he was named president of the Major League Baseball Umpires Association, succeeding Joe West in that office. He wears uniform number 26 on major-league fields.
The assignments on his record are the kind a career builds toward. Five World Series — 2010, 2013, 2017, 2020, and 2023. Nine League Championship Series. A steady run of Division Series and Wild Card games across the years. On June 3, 2017, he was the home-plate umpire when Edinson Vólquez threw a no-hitter for the Miami Marlins against the Arizona Diamondbacks.
We have graded Miller behind the plate in 20 games this season, and the record on this page is the reason his name is here.
Reporting: Wikipedia, Baseball Reference. Umpire data: MLB StatsAPI, via the Fever engine.
By the Desk · filed 2026-07-23 — 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CIN @ CHC2026-08-28 | C | 1.0 CIN | 8/8 | The Automated Ball-Strike System put in some overtime here. |
| MIN @ SD2026-08-23 | A- | 1.7 SD | 0/4 | The grade leaned — the ledger says which way. |
| WSH @ TEX2026-08-19 | A | 0.0 WSH | 2/3 | A clean sheet behind the plate — the kind of night nobody posts about. |
| KC @ LAD2026-08-12 | B | 0.5 LAD | 1/4 | Called a fair game and let the players decide it. |
| WSH @ ATL2026-07-31 | A- | 0.2 ATL | 3/4 | Reliable as a Tuesday: no complaints, no headlines. |
| BAL @ DET2026-07-27 | B+ | 0.7 DET | 2/3 | Nothing that'll trend, and on this beat that's a compliment. |
| CIN @ SEA2026-07-22 | B- | 0.6 CIN | 5/7 | This one went to video review more than most. |
| STL @ AZ2026-07-17 | B+ | 1.8 STL | 5/6 | A few too many trips to the challenge cart. |
| LAA @ TEX2026-07-09 | C+ | 1.0 LAA | 2/4 | One side pitched to a slightly bigger plate. |
| AZ @ TB2026-06-27 | A | 0.2 TB | 1/2 | Both benches went home with nothing to say — the rarest kind of night. |
| HOU @ TOR2026-06-22 | A | 0.6 TOR | 5/8 | The Automated Ball-Strike System put in some overtime here. |
| KC @ WSH2026-06-17 | D | 0.6 KC | 5/7 | The players kept asking for a second opinion — and kept getting one. |
| TEX @ BOS2026-06-13 | A- | 0.8 BOS | 3/6 | The kind of night where the umpire is the least of the story. |
| COL @ LAA2026-06-02 | A | 0.1 COL | 2/4 | If umpiring had a highlight reel, this wouldn't make it. That's the compliment. |
| HOU @ CHC2026-05-24 | A | 0.0 HOU | 1/3 | The zone showed up, did the job, and went home. Ideal. |
| SF @ AZ2026-05-19 | A- | 0.1 AZ | 4/5 | Called a fair game and let the players decide it. |
| SD @ SEA2026-05-15 | A | 0.0 SD | 0/3 | Textbook top to bottom — a quiet masterclass. |
| ATL @ COL2026-05-03 | B | 1.8 COL | 4/6 | Somebody's pitching staff sent a thank-you note. |
| WSH @ NYM2026-04-29 | B- | 0.0 WSH | 1/1 | Everybody has a Tuesday like this one. |
| MIN @ TB2026-04-24 | B- | 0.8 MIN | 0/2 | Pitchers found a little extra real estate. |
| CWS @ ATH2026-04-19 | A- | 0.9 ATH | 6/9 | Hawkeye did more talking than the umpire tonight. |
| SEA @ SD2026-04-15 | B- | 0.3 SD | 3/5 | A pitcher's-nightmare zone — you had to paint it to get it. |
| BOS @ STL2026-04-10 | A | 0.3 STL | 0/2 | Called a fair game and let the players decide it. |
| CIN @ TEX2026-04-05 | A- | 0.5 TEX | 1/1 | Down the middle. Both dugouts had the same zone. |
| DET @ AZ2026-03-31 | C | 0.2 DET | 6/9 | The players kept asking for a second opinion — and kept getting one. |
| NYY @ SF2026-03-25 | D | 0.2 NYY | 0/1 | Pitchers found a little extra real estate. |