Umpire Grade · Blue Notes

Brian Walsh

25 games graded behind the plate.

Season Grade

92.7% ± 0.8

Avg Swing

runs / game

ABS Overturns

69/119 calls

3,458 correct of 3,732 graded takes (92.7% ± 0.8, 95%). Best game 96.4% · worst 88.7%. 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 Brian Walsh

This season is 3,732 graded takes, which puts Brian Walsh's overall accuracy at 92.7% ± 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 746 takes, so ±1.9 points. (the league-wide two-strike effect is about 1 point in 2026.)
any single corner of the zone — about 311 takes, so ±2.9 points. (corner cells are where umpires actually differ.)
whether one pitcher is called tighter than another — about 62 takes, so ±6.5 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 119 pitches players chose to challenge, which are the pitches they already believed were wrong. 119 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

Brian Walsh

Eight years in the minors, 339 games as a call-up, and the road from San Pedro to the full-time staff.

On April 18, 2023, Brian Walsh worked first base at Comerica Park for the first game of a doubleheader between the Cleveland Guardians and the Detroit Tigers. It was his first major league assignment. It arrived after eight years in the minor leagues, a career that began when he started umpiring in 2015.

He worked his way through six leagues in those years — the Arizona League, the Appalachian League, the Midwest League, the California League, the Texas League, and the Pacific Coast League — climbing from rookie ball through Triple-A one season at a time. Born in July 1984, Walsh attended San Pedro High School in San Pedro, California, before enrolling at California State University, Los Angeles.

The call-up life that started that April in Detroit lasted roughly three seasons of MLB work. Walsh worked 339 games as a call-up umpire since 2023 before Major League Baseball promoted him to the full-time staff, a move the league announced alongside Tom Hanahan. The promotion capped a rise from fill-in to permanent big-league status. He wears uniform number 60 and works on Crew #26, alongside crew chief Bill Miller, Chad Fairchild, and Chad Whitson.

During his rookie season, on May 30, 2023, Walsh ejected Mariners catcher Tom Murphy and manager Scott Servais in the same game over a check-swing dispute — two of nine ejections he recorded over his MLB career through 2025. We have graded Walsh behind the plate in 17 games this season, and the record on this page is the reason his name is here.

Reporting: Wikipedia, MLB.com, Baseball-Reference.com, Retrosheet.org, Baseball-Almanac.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
CIN @ CHC2026-08-30	C+	0.1 CIN	1/4	Borderline went to the battery all night.
PHI @ SEA2026-08-25	B	0.6 SEA	4/6	Pitchers earned every strike the hard way.
MIN @ SD2026-08-21	B	0.3 SD	1/2	Reliable as a Tuesday: no complaints, no headlines.
COL @ SF2026-08-16	B+	0.7 COL	2/5	Nothing that'll trend, and on this beat that's a compliment.
KC @ LAD2026-08-11	B-	0.3 KC	4/7	The zone had a case of the wanders.
MIN @ MIL2026-08-07	B	0.8 MIL	3/7	Called a fair game and let the players decide it.
WSH @ ATL2026-08-02	B	0.4 WSH	3/4	If it was close, it was a strike. The hitters noticed.
BAL @ DET2026-07-29	B+	0.3 DET	3/6	The zone kept its promises.
STL @ AZ2026-07-18	C+	0.4 AZ	0/2	Nothing off the plate, and not much on the black either.
CLE @ MIA2026-07-10	A	0.2 CLE	2/5	The zone showed up, did the job, and went home. Ideal.
AZ @ TB2026-06-28	B	0.3 AZ	5/7	A busy night for the machines in the truck.
HOU @ TOR2026-06-23	B-	1.5 TOR	2/5	Tonight's zone had a rooting interest.
NYM @ PHI2026-06-18	A	0.3 NYM	4/5	Called a fair game and let the players decide it.
TEX @ BOS2026-06-12	C+	1.2 TEX	3/3	Tonight's zone had a rooting interest.
NYM @ SD2026-06-06	A	0.2 SD	1/3	The zone kept its promises.
COL @ LAA2026-06-01	A-	0.5 COL	3/6	An honest evening's grade: nothing loud, nothing missed by much.
SF @ AZ2026-05-20	B	0.5 AZ	2/4	Nothing off the plate, and not much on the black either.
SD @ SEA2026-05-16	B-	0.1 SD	1/3	Not the sharpest, and the grade agrees.
SF @ LAD2026-05-12	A-	0.3 LAD	3/5	Solid and unspectacular — exactly what the job asks.
WSH @ NYM2026-04-30	A-	0.2 NYM	2/2	An honest evening's grade: nothing loud, nothing missed by much.
MIN @ TB2026-04-25	B+	0.3 TB	5/6	The Automated Ball-Strike System put in some overtime here.
TOR @ LAA2026-04-20	D	0.7 LAA	5/7	The challenge cart got its steps in.
SEA @ SD2026-04-16	B-	0.1 SEA	3/7	Everybody has a Tuesday like this one.
BOS @ STL2026-04-11	B	0.8 BOS	5/5	ABS had a long evening on this one.
CHC @ TB2026-04-06	B+	0.4 CHC	2/3	Reliable as a Tuesday: no complaints, no headlines.