Ryan Wills
25 games graded behind the plate.
3,574 correct of 3,845 graded takes (93.0% ± 0.8, 95%). Best game 98.1% · worst 87.3%. 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 Ryan Wills
This season is 3,845 graded takes, which puts Ryan Wills's overall accuracy at 93.0% ± 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 769 takes, so ±1.8 points. (the league-wide two-strike effect is about 1 point in 2026.)
- any single corner of the zone — about 320 takes, so ±2.8 points. (corner cells are where umpires actually differ.)
- whether one pitcher is called tighter than another — about 64 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 116 pitches players chose to challenge, which are the pitches they already believed were wrong. 116 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
402 Games as a Call-Up
Ryan Wills worked 402 call-up games on the climb to a full-time major league staff.
On April 29, 2022, Ryan Wills was behind the plate for the Mets' combined no-hitter against the Phillies at Citi Field. Working alongside crew chief Jerry Meals, Jansen Visconti, and Vic Carapazza, he missed one pitch out of 154 — a 99.4% accuracy rate, as tracked by Close Call Sports.
Wills came up through the Jim Evans umpiring school and into the minors in 2011, working the Gulf Coast, Appalachian, South Atlantic, California, Texas, Eastern, and International Leagues. He made his major league debut on August 22, 2020, in a Marlins-Nationals game at Nationals Park. MLB would note, when the promotion arrived, that both he and Clint Vondrak had made their regular-season debuts during that 2020 campaign before earning full-time spots. In May 2023, during a bench-clearing incident, he ejected Bryce Harper and manager Rob Thomson on the same day.
The full-time call came in February 2024, when MLB promoted Wills and Vondrak to fill the staff openings left by the retirements of Ed Hickox and Jeff Nelson. By then Wills had worked 402 major league games as a call-up. He wears uniform number 20, previously Tom Hallion's, and is a member of a crew headed by Lance Barksdale, alongside Will Little and Ryan Additon.
We have graded him behind the plate in 20 games this season, and the record on this page is the reason his name is here.
Reporting: Wikipedia, MLB.com, 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ATH @ HOU2026-08-23 | A- | 0.6 HOU | 3/7 | The kind of night where the umpire is the least of the story. |
| NYY @ BAL2026-08-19 | A- | 0.9 BAL | 1/4 | The zone kept its promises. |
| BOS @ PIT2026-08-14 | C+ | 0.3 PIT | 3/5 | Off the corner was close enough tonight. |
| AZ @ CLE2026-08-01 | A+ | 0.4 CLE | 3/5 | The kind of night where the umpire is the least of the story. |
| TOR @ WSH2026-07-27 | A- | 0.4 TOR | 1/4 | Corner-to-corner and then some. |
| CWS @ TEX2026-07-22 | B | 1.1 CWS | 5/8 | A busy night for the machines in the truck. |
| DET @ LAA2026-07-18 | D | 1.0 DET | 4/6 | One dugout got the friendlier version of the evening. |
| COL @ SF2026-07-10 | B- | 0.2 SF | 3/7 | Solid and unspectacular — exactly what the job asks. |
| AZ @ SD2026-07-06 | A+ | 0.1 AZ | 1/4 | Called it the way the rulebook drew it up. |
| SD @ CHC2026-06-29 | B | 0.1 SD | 3/7 | A workmanlike night — nothing to frame, nothing to fix. |
| HOU @ DET2026-06-25 | B- | 1.1 HOU | 2/5 | The corners were friendlier in one direction tonight. |
| WSH @ TB2026-06-21 | B | 0.4 WSH | 2/3 | The zone kept its promises. |
| CLE @ MIL2026-06-17 | C | 0.8 CLE | 2/3 | Corner-to-corner and then some. |
| MIA @ NYM2026-05-31 | B- | 1.2 MIA | 1/5 | Tonight's zone had a rooting interest. |
| TB @ BAL2026-05-26 | A- | 0.1 BAL | 1/2 | The zone shrank when the pitchers needed it most. |
| MIN @ BOS2026-05-22 | A- | 0.2 BOS | 0/3 | The kind of night where the umpire is the least of the story. |
| KC @ STL2026-05-17 | B- | 0.7 KC | 2/2 | One of those nights the challenge system was invented for. |
| SD @ MIL2026-05-13 | C+ | 0.1 SD | 3/4 | The zone shrank when the pitchers needed it most. |
| NYM @ AZ2026-05-08 | C+ | 0.1 NYM | 2/5 | A small strike zone, generously enforced for the offense. |
| WSH @ CWS2026-04-26 | B | 0.5 CWS | 3/8 | The zone kept its promises. |
| MIN @ NYM2026-04-22 | A- | 0.2 NYM | 4/5 | The kind of night where the umpire is the least of the story. |
| SF @ WSH2026-04-19 | A | 0.2 SF | 0/2 | Both benches went home with nothing to say — the rarest kind of night. |
| LAA @ NYY2026-04-14 | C | 0.2 NYY | 4/5 | The zone shrank when the pitchers needed it most. |
| MIL @ KC2026-04-04 | A- | 1.2 MIL | 4/5 | Somebody's pitching staff sent a thank-you note. |
| CLE @ SEA2026-03-29 | A | 1.1 CLE | 1/2 | One side pitched to a slightly bigger plate. |