John Tumpane
25 games graded behind the plate.
3,457 correct of 3,713 graded takes (93.1% ± 0.8, 95%). Best game 96.2% · worst 88.8%. 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 John Tumpane
This season is 3,713 graded takes, which puts John Tumpane'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 743 takes, so ±1.8 points. (the league-wide two-strike effect is about 1 point in 2026.)
- any single corner of the zone — about 309 takes, so ±2.8 points. (corner cells are where umpires actually differ.)
- whether one pitcher is called tighter than another — about 62 takes, so ±6.3 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 104 pitches players chose to challenge, which are the pitches they already believed were wrong. 104 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
John Tumpane, No. 74
Born in Evergreen Park, Illinois, he worked through the minor leagues before reaching the majors in 2010 and his first World Series assignment in 2025.
Minute Maid, August 2015
On August 21, 2015, John Tumpane was behind the plate when Houston's Mike Fiers threw a no-hitter against the Dodgers at Minute Maid Park — the first no-hitter in Astros franchise history at that venue. By then he had been calling major league games since his first on August 2, 2010, and umpiring in the minor leagues since 2002, when he began in the Gulf Coast League.
The road from there ran through the New York-Penn League, the South Atlantic League, the Florida State League, the Eastern League, and the Pacific Coast League. On July 1, 2016, he was promoted to the full-time MLB staff, joining the crew of Jeff Kellogg.
He was also pressed into games the schedule never anticipated. On July 24, 2012, Tumpane rushed to Busch Stadium in St. Louis when umpire Eric Cooper became ill during the third inning of a Cardinals-Dodgers game, stepping in as third base umpire. In 2013, he worked the World Baseball Classic Qualifier 4 in Chinese Taipei, serving as first base umpire for the final in which the host nation defeated New Zealand to clinch a spot in the main tournament. He has worn uniform number 74 throughout his major league career.
In 2025, Tumpane was named to his first World Series assignment.
We have graded him behind the plate in 19 games this season. More games will widen that record or hold it steady, and we will know by October.
Reporting: MLB.com, Retrosheet, Wikipedia. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| HOU @ NYY2026-08-27 | A | 0.4 HOU | 2/3 | Down the middle. Both dugouts had the same zone. |
| ATL @ MIL2026-08-22 | A- | 0.5 ATL | 1/2 | Solid and unspectacular — exactly what the job asks. |
| DET @ PIT2026-08-18 | B- | 0.1 PIT | 2/2 | Everybody has a Tuesday like this one. |
| TOR @ PHI2026-08-07 | C | 0.8 PHI | 5/8 | A busy night for the machines in the truck. |
| SF @ SD2026-08-02 | C+ | 0.2 SD | 7/9 | The robots earned their keep tonight. |
| NYY @ PHI2026-07-24 | B+ | 0.3 NYY | 3/4 | Called a fair game and let the players decide it. |
| TB @ TOR2026-07-20 | D | 0.0 TB | 0/0 | Corner-to-corner and then some. |
| DET @ TEX2026-07-05 | C+ | 0.1 TEX | 6/8 | The players kept asking for a second opinion — and kept getting one. |
| MIN @ HOU2026-06-30 | B+ | 0.2 HOU | 6/8 | The robots earned their keep tonight. |
| ATL @ SF2026-06-26 | C+ | 0.2 ATL | 2/2 | The zone had a case of the wanders. |
| NYY @ TOR2026-06-12 | A- | 0.4 TOR | 5/8 | Hawkeye clocked in early and stayed late. |
| CIN @ STL2026-06-07 | A- | 1.3 STL | 2/4 | Two dugouts, and only one of them smiling. |
| CWS @ MIN2026-06-02 | B+ | 0.2 CWS | 4/4 | Down the middle. Both dugouts had the same zone. |
| BOS @ CLE2026-05-29 | B | 0.1 BOS | 3/5 | Down the middle. Both dugouts had the same zone. |
| STL @ CIN2026-05-23 | B- | 0.1 CIN | 3/5 | Reliable as a Tuesday: no complaints, no headlines. |
| TOR @ NYY2026-05-19 | B+ | 1.2 TOR | 1/3 | One dugout got the friendlier version of the evening. |
| BAL @ WSH2026-05-15 | A- | 1.0 BAL | 0/2 | The grade leaned — the ledger says which way. |
| ATL @ LAD2026-05-10 | B | 0.8 LAD | 2/4 | Pitchers earned every strike the hard way. |
| PIT @ AZ2026-05-06 | A- | 0.2 PIT | 0/1 | Nothing that'll trend, and on this beat that's a compliment. |
| NYM @ LAA2026-05-02 | A | 0.6 NYM | 1/3 | A steady night's work behind the plate. |
| NYY @ TEX2026-04-27 | B | 0.1 NYY | 2/5 | Solid and unspectacular — exactly what the job asks. |
| AZ @ BAL2026-04-15 | A- | 1.0 AZ | 2/4 | The strike zone picked a side, and wasn't shy about it. |
| CLE @ ATL2026-04-12 | B | 0.7 CLE | 0/3 | Solid and unspectacular — exactly what the job asks. |
| MIL @ BOS2026-04-07 | A- | 0.2 MIL | 0/3 | Called a fair game and let the players decide it. |
| LAA @ HOU2026-03-27 | A | 0.6 LAA | 1/4 | A workmanlike night — nothing to frame, nothing to fix. |