Umpire Grade · Blue Notes

Stu Scheurwater

25 games graded behind the plate.

Season Grade

91.8% ± 0.9

Avg Swing

runs / game

ABS Overturns

72/116 calls

3,486 correct of 3,798 graded takes (91.8% ± 0.9, 95%). Best game 96.6% · worst 87.1%. 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 Stu Scheurwater

This season is 3,798 graded takes, which puts Stu Scheurwater's overall accuracy at 91.8% ± 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 760 takes, so ±2.0 points. (the league-wide two-strike effect is about 1 point in 2026.)
any single corner of the zone — about 317 takes, so ±3.0 points. (corner cells are where umpires actually differ.)
whether one pitcher is called tighter than another — about 63 takes, so ±6.8 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

The Road from Regina

The Saskatchewan-born umpire's climb to the majors ran through eleven years in the minors and a debut at Dodger Stadium.

A Dodger Dog on the Concourse

When Stu Scheurwater took the field for his first major league game on April 25, 2014, he was at second base in Dodger Stadium for a Rockies-Dodgers game. Up on the concourse, Elemer Jerkovits — a veteran umpire from Regina, Saskatchewan — had stepped away with his wife to get a Dodger Dog. They heard Vin Scully recognize Scheurwater's debut on the television broadcast. Scheurwater was born in Saskatoon in 1983 and raised in Regina from the age of four, and the road from there to a big-league diamond had already been long.

Eleven Years

He attended Harry Wendelstedt's umpire school and began his professional umpiring career in 2007. What followed was 11 years in the minor leagues, working assignments that ranged from the Gulf Coast League to the Pacific Coast League. He debuted in the majors in 2014. On April 30, 2017, he recorded his first career ejection — Buck Showalter, then managing the Baltimore Orioles, arguing a balk call. Asked about it afterward, Scheurwater chuckled.

MLB hired him to its full-time staff ahead of the 2018 season, filling the vacancy created by Dale Scott's retirement. He became the first Canadian umpire on MLB's full-time staff since Jim McKean, who umpired from 1974 to 2001. After years grinding through the minor leagues, Scheurwater described the relief of full-time status as career security for his family for the next 20 to 25 years.

In 2023, MLB selected him to work third base at the All-Star Game — his first Midsummer Classic assignment. He works behind the plate in 2026, and we have graded 19 of his games this season.

Reporting: Regina Leader Post, Sportsnet, MLB.com, AP News, 980 CJME. 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
WSH @ MIA2026-08-23	B	0.1 WSH	2/3	Borderline went to the battery all night.
SF @ CLE2026-08-19	D	0.1 SF	3/6	Off the corner was close enough tonight.
BAL @ TB2026-08-15	B-	0.5 TB	1/5	A pitcher's-nightmare zone — you had to paint it to get it.
SEA @ NYY2026-08-11	A	0.6 NYY	4/6	Down the middle. Both dugouts had the same zone.
TEX @ TB2026-07-30	B	1.5 TB	3/5	The zone leaned, and the ledger noticed.
AZ @ WSH2026-07-25	D	1.4 WSH	6/7	The challenge cart got its steps in.
BAL @ BOS2026-07-20	B+	0.4 BAL	2/4	The zone shrank when the pitchers needed it most.
AZ @ LAD2026-07-12	A	0.1 LAD	3/3	The zone kept its promises.
TOR @ SF2026-07-08	A	0.4 TOR	1/3	The zone kept its promises.
MIA @ STL2026-06-28	A-	0.3 STL	1/3	Reliable as a Tuesday: no complaints, no headlines.
CHC @ NYM2026-06-24	B+	1.2 CHC	1/2	A tilt to the evening — the numbers say which way.
CWS @ DET2026-06-20	A	0.5 CWS	4/6	The zone kept its promises.
MIA @ PIT2026-06-14	B	0.4 PIT	2/4	Pitchers earned every strike the hard way.
STL @ NYM2026-06-10	C	0.7 NYM	6/7	The challenge cart got its steps in.
MIL @ COL2026-06-06	B-	0.9 MIL	4/7	A workmanlike night — nothing to frame, nothing to fix.
LAD @ AZ2026-06-02	C	0.3 LAD	5/8	A busy night for the machines in the truck.
BAL @ TB2026-05-20	B-	1.1 BAL	6/6	ABS had a long evening on this one.
MIL @ MIN2026-05-16	C+	0.2 MIL	2/3	Pitchers found a little extra real estate.
DET @ NYM2026-05-12	D	0.2 NYM	3/6	Off the corner was close enough tonight.
HOU @ BAL2026-04-30	C	1.0 HOU	3/5	You wanted a strike, you had to earn it twice.
SD @ AZ2026-04-25	B	0.3 SD	0/0	Down the middle. Both dugouts had the same zone.
TEX @ SEA2026-04-19	D	0.0 TEX	4/6	You had to throw it down Broadway to get the call.
COL @ HOU2026-04-15	D	0.2 COL	4/5	The zone shrank when the pitchers needed it most.
TOR @ CWS2026-04-03	B+	0.8 TOR	1/3	The kind of night where the umpire is the least of the story.
COL @ MIA2026-03-29	A-	0.6 MIA	1/3	A steady night's work behind the plate.