God damn it! Stop being so rational. I want baseball to be more exciting. It needs more contact, sharpened cleats, water hazards and laser bats.
Of all the frustrations there are from watching a MLB game, the occasional error by an umpire is way down my list. Let’s start with Mariner batters who don’t watch strike three go by with amazing regularity. Then stop the stupid noise they play at the stadiums (I’m looking at you Oakland).
I’m not one of those who thinks “human error is part of the charm,” but I also don’t think it’s a big deal. I’m amazed how often I see what I think is a bad ball/strike call and then see on reply with the tracker that the umpire got it right. With the current replay rules, I think the game strikes a nice balance and I don’t see a need to change it.
It is only boring when watching it on TV because of the horrible way it is televised and the idiotic prattle of the announcers. If you attend a game you can witness for yourself the defensive alignments and the signs being given by coaches from the dugouts etc etc.
Yeah, I remember reading an article about 20 years ago that showed home plate, the catcher and a batter, and had different colored boxes superimposed showing where various major league umpires’ strike zones tended to be. In general, they were wider, shorter, lower and outside of where the technical “elbows to knees and over home plate” strike zone ought to be.
Seems to me that it would be easy enough to require unobtrusive IR reflectors or something on the players’ uniforms to identify elbows and knees , and then use that along with home plate to define a strike zone.
I go to games and I don’t just sit there through the whole game. Baseball games are usually at least 3 hours long. Paint dries faster than that in the summer sun.
Possibly. But that’s part of the entertainment value.
Besides, over the years, they have experimented with trying to replace the umpires. Robot ball/strike callers, video on the bases, etc. And the umpires are more accurate.
Good call, Blue!
For balls and strikes, yes, get rid of human umpires. They are more likely to make a mockery of the strike zone than to call it exactly as it should be. Different umps with different zones, different pitchers getting favorable calls - it’s ridiculous. Or they miss one and then grant the make up call 2 pitches later. And most of the jawing between players and umpires seems to be over strikes and balls. Just put a robot in there and solve a ton of issues.
And I heard that 67% of statistics are made up on the spot.
The accuracy of ball-strike calling is no where near that accurate. My cite: watch any televised game.
Now, OTOH, I too an not convinced that the robo strike zone is accurate, but it is consistent. I wish they’d go to it full time immediately.
I don’t get my entertainment value from watching ump’s antics. I don’t like blown calls. And how do Angel Hernandez and CB Bucknor still have jobs?
Umpires miss about one in every seven balls (e.g. they call balls outside of the strike zone as strikes.) That includes pitches way, way out of the strike zone, the junk that bounces in front of the plate or sails over the batter’s head. For pitches that are moderately close, they’re very inaccurate.
Pitches IN the zone called as balls are missed about one in thirteen times. So overall, 10% of pitches are missed. On an off day the umpire absolutely can, and on many occasions has, changed the outcome of a game.
Pitchf/x is, by comparison, basically perfect. I’m not sure what “convincing” people need; they’ve been using it for nine years now, it’s gone through all kinds of testing and calibration, and it’s bang on. It is accurate within less than the radius of a baseball.
In general I agree, but Pitch/FX does drift out of alignment and as of a about 5 years ago there was exactly one guy who had just the right touch to adjust it. Hopefully they’ve worked on the software since then and don’t have to drag him out of bed whenever someone complains.
I forgot to mention how you anti-umpites are contributing to the robot takeover. Won’t it be fun when that happens?
<Stephen Hawking voice> Here we are in the top of the 12 millionth inning with the Detroit Droids tied in a scoreless game against the Memphis Machines. As soon as this game is over we’ll move on to game 2 of the season.</>
I for one welcome our new robo ump overlords.
Why bother playing the games at all? Just feed every teams people into a computer - height, weight, performance on standardized tests, etc. and let the computer run 1000000 simulated games between the teams under a million different weather and chance scenarios. Whichever team wins the most trials is listed as the winner of the game. We could play the whole season in the morning, the playoffs during lunch. The World Series could be run in the afternoon with 2 million trials. Wheee! Why bother with stadiums and umps and hot dogs and rally bananas?
It’s worse than that. The strike zone isn’t a 2D polygon-it’s a 3D solid (pentagonal prism). And the ball just needs to have one molecule of itself intersect said solid at any point, and it’s a strike. A pitch then can conceivably miss the front of the zone, but curve back over the rear edge and be a strike (or touch the front, then curve away from it at the back).
I don’t think any of the current electronic strike zones can judge balls and strikes based on whether they move through the solid at some point.
I thought they all did. Don’t they have 2D plots from multiple angles?
Of course umpires will tell you that if you have robot umps, you might as well have robot players. What’s the difference, right?
I can’t find the quote, but I remember one umpire (probably Country Joe West) was told that Questec said he missed around 30 balls/strikes in a game and he said he doesn’t miss that many in a season.
It can’t be overstated how important those guys think they are to the game.
Maybe we don’t get rid of the umpires, but as technology improves, it can help them. Like, say, we can plot a 3D strike zone, corresponding to the batter’s knees and armpits and the plate and when the ball (which will have to have some electronic chips in it) crosses any part of that 3D strike zone, it sends a buzz to the umpire.
Now granted that technology is likely a ways away.
I agree - when NASCAR went to electronic scoring, all the drivers quit, and all the fans went home. No one watches any more, because why bother? it’s all computerized.
And sking dried up and blew away when they went to automatic clocks, rather than some guy with a stopwatch.
Now all we’re left with is figure skating and boxing. Nothing but judgement calls - that’s real competition! None of this new-fangled accuracy thing for me, no siree!
Because they’re fun.
I knew someone would trot out this tired, silly argument. “Oh, if you replace umps with computers, why not replace the players, too! Huh? Huh?”
The reason is because baseball is about the players. It’s about two teams trying to beat each other in a game played by humans on a baseball field. It is NOT about the umpires. Players are supposed to be unpredictable; that’s the fun of it. You’re supposed to be amazed by the Yankees choking away the ALCS, or the Royals coming out of nowhere to win the pennant, or Jose Bautista suddenly hitting 54 home runs and Ken Griffey changing cities and losing it seemingly right at the same time.
Umpires aren’t supposed to be unpredictable because that ruins the drama of the players. When an ump screws up a game it ruins the drama of the contest between the players. That 2009 call in the Yankees-Twins series where the ball was fair twice but called foul - I mean, the ump, Phil Cuzzi, is a major reason the Yankees won the game. That sucks, because the game should have been decided by what the Twins and Yankees did, not by Phil Cuzzi being a shitty umpire. (Cuzzi once gave a guy a walk after only three balls had been thrown.) The best-umped game is the one where you don’t remember anything about the umpires at all. Baseball would be better if Pitchf/x called balls and strikes. It would not be better if you ran it as a computer simulation.
What’s next? “Durrrr, they shouldn’t have electronic time keeping in track and field, what’s the point, replace Usain Bolt with a robot.” Jesus.
Yeah but don’t you want to see Bryce Harper ejected while the umpire is yelling at Matt Williams?
And by the way, does it seem that players are almost always right when arguing balls and strikes with the umpire?