I firmly believe technology should judge whether a ball is in the strike zone. The umpire would still need to judge check swings and such but tech does a better job than a person in judging whether a ball was in the strike zone.
Nope.
It’s always been an effort to give the batter a fighting chance to accomplish a difficult task. The way the umpire judges the height of the ball as it passes over the plate is by positioning himself right behind the catcher and watching closely as the ball crosses the plate.
It would actually make the umpires job much easier to say the pitch has to be between 24" and 48" high.
surprised someone has not mentioned the stunt pulled where the St. Louis Browns sent a midget up to bat since his strike zone was so small. Eddie Gaedel was his name.
This thread doesn’t make a lick of sense. Why would it be desirable to move to a fixed strike zone when we now have the technology to make an accurate and fair zone regardless of body type? Maybe instead of a catcher there could be a hoop and if the ball goes through it’s a strike.
Yeah, I’m not sure I get it, either. Given the tremendous degree of accuracy existing technology offers- it works really, really well - adjusting the strike zone for each batter doesn’t seem like an impediment to anything. The rules are fine as they are.
And when the bat hits the hoop?
Remember, it’s possible for a curve ball to hit the back of the zone. Or to hit the front and be caught well below the knees.
It’s a 3D box the shape of home plate, not just the rectangle in front.
I don’t like the idea of throwing to a hoop. The catcher does a lot more than just catch the ball and there’s plenty of drama from a catcher chasing a wild pitch, catching a pop fly, tossing out a base stealer, etc.
Nah, Running Coach nailed it, A hoop doesn’t work.
“You have to have a catcher, otherwise you will have a lot of passed balls.”
-Casey Stengel
Nobody thinks the hoop thing was an actual suggestion. Right? :dubious:
The way you put it, yes. If you didn’t mean it to look serious you failed.
I would be happy if the umpires would agree on a strike zone. I don’t like this “he’s a pitcher’s umpire,” “he’s a hitter’s umpire” stuff. Read the rulebook and call balls and strikes. Why should a game be decided by a umpire’s personal predilections?
I remember a while ago how Eric Gregg completely made a championship game a complete screwup by calling everything thrown inside fair territory a strike.
After many years on the board, I’m sure that there is no proposition so silly that someone hasn’t made it in all seriousness. So if you don’t want a remark to be taken seriously, it’s best to include a smiley.
Serious suggestion: A garage door with the strike zone outlined in masking tape.
Huh? How does this follow?
Sure. But is this desirable? In basketball, it selects for tall players. Fine, I’m not suggesting this is a bad thing. But is this a good thing? And will this improve baseball? And as Colibri pointed out, the point of the strike zone was to put the ball in play by pitching to a location where the batter can strike the ball. Maybe we want to change that. But the with
direction baseball is going, I’m not sure we do.
How is an umpire going to judge that when there isn’t something alongside the plate that indicates 24-48"?
It’s an order of magnitude easier to judge height by watching the ball pass by an object that is the height you are trying to compare against. I’m in the camp that “knee to armpit” is a definition of convenience for the umpire, not the batter. If a fixed strike zone was easier to call, the original rules would have had a fixed zone.
MLB should look into technology involving the use of computer simulated strike zones that take into batter height. This technology could then be superimposed with the use of special video cameras, similar to the simulated strike zones we see on MLB Network and other sports telecasts, except that there’s an official one operated by MLB umpires. Real umps would still need to call people out, approve of time-outs, and otherwise remain involved in the game, so the system wouldn’t outright replace umpires, just improve the accuracy of balls and strikes. Real umps could still track pitches and be a back-up in case of system failures.
How much difference, really? I bet all but a handful of players are in a fairly small height interval, say between 5’9" and 6’4". Some of that differential is outside the strike zone (mostly from the feet to the knees). And players don’t exactly tend to stand straight up at the plate; the typical batting stance tends to shrink the distance between the knees and shoulders a bit, and would do so proportionately to height. Probably about 3-4 inches’ difference between the current strike zones of 5’9" and 6’4" players, assuming they still really use a shoulders-to-knees strike zone. (It’s my understanding that they really haven’t for quite a while now.)
And I’m proposing one.
To be perfectly honest, I’ve always thought a fixed zone would make sense. Yeah, I know, advantages and disadvantages for shorter or taller players. How big a difference are we really talking about? I can’t think of many other instances in sports where the framework of rules is variable by player.
But the reality is it will never happen. No chance. It’s been this way forever and baseball is not going to change a rule that is going to skew things to give one guy even a slight advantage over another.
When I play tennis, we use the honor system and to call the ball “in” or “out”.
Can you imaging having batters do that? “Damn, that caught the corner. Nice pitch.”