So, I decided to search for Eddings on Google on a lark (actually, I did it after reading this story Rob found. I clicked through a few pages of Google before I decided I had enough, and I basically ignored all of the stuff about last night's game and any time he is listed as just umpiring. As a caveat, an umpire's name only comes up when there is some sort of a controversy and I do not know how this compares to other umpires. Anyways, let's begin the link tour:

In 2003, in an article about misuse of umpire power, near the bottom Eddings is mentioned tossing Bobby Higginson out (Higginson essentially says Eddings was on a power trip) in the context of "...26 umpires out of a total of 68 with four or less years in the majors; ten of the 17 four-man crews had two of these young umpires while six crews had one and one crew, none." Kirk Gibson was also ejected that game after coming to Higginson's defense.

Eddings was also home plate umpire in an important Game 2: the 2002 ALDS Angels-Yankees series. Eddings is mentioned at the bottom of this article, which declared a wide strike zone the whole night.

In a game on June 15 of this year Braves catcher Johnny Estrada apparently bumped Eddings and was instantly ejected. No idea if this was the proper call or not (the article makes no claim as to whether the bump was on accident or not and whether or not that matters). In a game on August 28 of this year, Craig Biggio (major league record holder in HBP), was hit by a pitch and Eddings, the home plate umpire, declared Biggio leaned into it. Was this a good call? No idea. Biggio flied out and was later ejected for arguing the call.

Bronx Banter discussed Eddings in September 2004 (second paragraph) when discussing Zach Greinke's domination of the Yankees before a full count walk in the 5th, in the words of Alex Belth: " believe it was a fastball, inside at the knees. Though it was called a ball, it looked like a strike from where I was sitting. Greinke and his catcher thought it was strike three as well and they started toward the dugout. Howver, Greinke walked too far, prompting the home plate umpire Doug Eddings to walk to the mound and remind him that although he's mad talented, he is still just twenty years old." After that, the wheels came off for Greinke a bit and he ended up losing.

The White Sox had a mild controversy with Eddings in late August, where Damaso Marte pitched inside twice in a row to Rangers 1B Mark Teixeira. The columnist (from Chicago) says that Teixeira over-reacted to the pitches, which led to Eddings issuing a warning to both benches. This article also was meant to illustrate that Guillen doesn't accept his pitchers going after batters, not that Eddings was wrong in any way.

In 2004, he was home plate umpire for Ben Sheets' 18K game (mentioned in the first comment). It basically argues that Eddings' large (and expanding) strike zone was a big help to Sheets.

So, how big is this guy's strike zone? Well, this year he called the most strikes of any ump, 65.9% when the average was between 62 and 63%. Well, is he consistently higher than the rest or is that just this year? In 2002, Baseball Prospectus looked at umpire K/BB rates for 2001 and determined that Eddings was not just an outlier at 2.97 K/BB, but was .3 (~10%) higher than the next guy (2.67 K/BB).

Will's Minnesota Twins Page points us to a previous post of his (in early June) in which he relates a humorous take on Eddings gaping wide strike zone. A comment on that first link claims that Eddings has a history, quite possibly much larger in scope than I have been documenting.

Finally, in what appears to be a picks website, they claim (in the Bal-TB game) that the home team wins 67% of the time when Eddings is home plate umpire. This was on August 11, so it was about 2/3rds of the season, and by the end of the season, the home team won 53.7% of the time. Pretty striking difference to me.

So, there are some facts, take them as you will. The only things we know for certain are that he has a big strike zone and people like to argue with him. It certainly does seem like this guy is not a Major League caliber umpire, though.