In baseball, there is a surefire way to tell if umpires are doing a good job: nobody’s talking about them.

A solid game means umps had no bad calls, no conflicts with players or managers, no misinterpretations of the rules. Things ran so smoothly they went unnoticed.

The same can be said of police chiefs and police departments. When those two are making headlines, it is rarely a good sign. Last week, this paper ran a story about a “steady exodus” of officers leaving the already undermanned Maui Police Department. It came on the heels of an article about the Maui Police Commission unanimously recommending that newly hired Chief John Pelletier have his salary raised by 29 percent to $205,000 a year.

Under the commission’s recommendation, Pelletier’s handpicked Deputy Chief, Charles Hank III, would get a $45,000 pay raise to $196,600 per year. The two hires from Las Vegas sworn in on Dec. 15 would be the highest-paid Maui County civil servants, far eclipsing Mayor Michael Victorino’s annual salary of $151,979.

Pelletier made his presentation to the Salary Commission last month. Saying a raise to $195,000 would be “fair,” he cited Maui’s high cost of living and real estate, and also compared his current salary to a few similar-size municipalities on the Mainland.

Set against the backdrop of MPD’s attrition rate and lack of contract for rank and file officers, the chief and commission lobbying for such large raises after less than two months on the job is tone deaf at best. The gambit begs many questions. Why did Pelletier and Hank accept the positions if the pay wasn’t high enough? Did they come in expecting to push for a higher rate? Were they promised increases before they were hired?

The Maui Police Commission is sure to face scrutiny from the public. Would it have pushed for the raises if local candidates had gotten the jobs? How much weight did the commission give to recruiting and retaining police officers when it looked to Las Vegas for the department’s top two positions? Did it anticipate or request the shake up that is currently underway?

Multiple sources have told us that morale in the department is at a low. Upper level officers are retiring and a number of patrol officers are weighing transfer to a department on another island. Officers report feeling overworked and underappreciated.

One recent retiree says he felt forced out of his job by the new administration, but after 29 years on the force, he still bleeds MPD blue.

“I want the department to survive and, ultimately, I want this chief to succeed,” he said. “If he succeeds, then the department succeeds.”

It’s the bottom of the first inning and all eyes are on the ump.