Umpire Grade · Blue Notes

Carlos Torres

24 games graded behind the plate.

Season Grade

91.9% ± 0.9

Avg Swing

runs / game

ABS Overturns

42/79 calls

3,243 correct of 3,530 graded takes (91.9% ± 0.9, 95%). Best game 96.2% · worst 88.4%. 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 Carlos Torres

This season is 3,530 graded takes, which puts Carlos Torres's overall accuracy at 91.9% ± 0.9 (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 706 takes, so ±2.0 points. (the league-wide two-strike effect is about 1 point in 2026.)
any single corner of the zone — about 294 takes, so ±3.1 points. (corner cells are where umpires actually differ.)
whether one pitcher is called tighter than another — about 59 takes, so ±7.0 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 79 pitches players chose to challenge, which are the pitches they already believed were wrong. 79 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

From Barquisimeto to Game 1

Carlos Torres climbed from a Triple-A fill-in to a World Series plate assignment.

From Barquisimeto

Carlos Torres was born on September 14, 1978, in Barquisimeto, Lara, Venezuela. He began umpiring in Minor League Baseball in 2009, working his way up to the Triple-A International League, where he spent the 2013 through 2015 seasons. He was a fill-in from that league when he made his major league debut on July 17, 2015, stationed at second base as the Cincinnati Reds hosted the Cleveland Indians. He wore uniform number 37 and was residing in Acarigua, Venezuela at the time, making him one of the few Venezuelan umpires to work a major league game.

Two years passed between that debut and a permanent spot on the MLB staff. He was added to the full-time umpiring roster for the 2017 season. That August, in his first year on staff, he worked a Tigers-Yankees game in which the benches cleared three times. Torres issued five ejections — Miguel Cabrera and Tommy Kahnle among the players, Brad Ausmus and Joe Girardi among the managers.

His first postseason assignment came in 2019, the National League Wild Card Game between the Milwaukee Brewers and Washington Nationals, his entry into MLB's highest-profile October assignments. From there the assignments accumulated: Division Series in 2021, 2022, and 2024, the 2022 All-Star Game, the 2023 World Baseball Classic, and the 2023 League Championship Series. In 2024, Torres received his first World Series assignment, serving as home plate umpire for Game 1 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the New York Yankees.

We have graded 17 of his games behind the plate this season.

Reporting: Wikipedia, Close Call Sports, Baseball Almanac. 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
HOU @ NYM2026-08-29	C	0.5 NYM	2/2	The zone had wings tonight.
KC @ TOR2026-08-25	B	0.2 KC	3/5	Corner-to-corner and then some.
ATL @ MIN2026-08-19	B-	0.3 ATL	2/4	Generous with the corners — the pitchers said thank you.
LAD @ AZ2026-08-09	B	0.3 LAD	0/1	The zone stretched its legs.
DET @ SEA2026-08-05	B-	0.3 DET	2/3	The black wasn't in play tonight.
MIL @ LAA2026-07-31	A-	0.6 LAA	2/4	An honest evening's grade: nothing loud, nothing missed by much.
BOS @ ATH2026-07-27	B+	0.3 ATH	1/1	A steady night's work behind the plate.
CWS @ BAL2026-07-01	A-	0.1 CWS	2/4	Called a fair game and let the players decide it.
SEA @ CLE2026-06-27	D	0.6 SEA	3/4	Nothing off the plate, and not much on the black either.
SF @ MIA2026-06-21	C+	0.1 MIA	0/0	The plate grew a few inches after the first pitch.
NYM @ CIN2026-06-16	C	0.9 CIN	0/3	If it was close, it was a strike. The hitters noticed.
TOR @ ATL2026-06-04	D	0.5 TOR	2/5	The plate grew a few inches after the first pitch.
KC @ TEX2026-05-30	A-	0.1 TEX	0/2	Reliable as a Tuesday: no complaints, no headlines.
SEA @ ATH2026-05-25	B	1.3 SEA	2/4	One dugout got the friendlier version of the evening.
COL @ AZ2026-05-21	C+	1.2 COL	3/5	The corners were friendlier in one direction tonight.
ATH @ BAL2026-05-10	C+	1.4 BAL	4/6	The grade leaned — the ledger says which way.
MIN @ WSH2026-05-06	A	0.9 WSH	1/2	Solid and unspectacular — exactly what the job asks.
PHI @ MIA2026-05-02	B	0.6 MIA	1/2	Pitchers earned every strike the hard way.
COL @ CIN2026-04-28	C+	0.3 COL	2/2	Generous with the corners — the pitchers said thank you.
BAL @ CLE2026-04-16	C+	0.7 CLE	0/2	The zone stretched its legs.
WSH @ MIL2026-04-12	C+	0.7 WSH	4/6	Pitchers earned every strike the hard way.
ATH @ NYY2026-04-08	C+	1.0 NYY	2/4	The zone shrank when the pitchers needed it most.
STL @ DET2026-04-03	B	0.1 DET	0/1	The kind of night where the umpire is the least of the story.
CWS @ MIL2026-03-29	A-	1.0 CWS	4/7	An honest evening's grade: nothing loud, nothing missed by much.