Unproven assertion. I buy absolutely zero of the arguments about electronic ball & strike calling. It is so much bullshit.
I hate the DH and lights in Wrigley, too. Get off my lawn!
Balls and strikes should be automated. Umpires have historically ignored the rule book definition of the strike zone. They can’t be trusted.
This strikes me as an absurd argument.
Consider any other aspect of the game that’s currently decided empirically. Would the game be improved if we made it “more interesting” by inserting human judgment calls where there used to be none?
Like, what if instead of having a foul pole, we just had the lines on the ground, with a person looking up and deciding if they thought the ball was fair or foul? Better game? More interesting? Maybe instead of verifying that the game balls conform to standard measurements, we should just have a guy toss them up and down a few times, and see if he thinks they’re close enough?
Adding human error and variance to the judging of a game doesn’t make it more interesting.
Sez you. Personally, I think it adds a lot to the game.
I accept instant replay. I don’t like it, mind you. But if you are going to play replays in the stadium, then you have to have instant replay available to the umps.
But if I can’t have 12 beers and spend the game heckling the umps, what’s the point of even going to the game? 
With respect, I think the thing that some people are trying to say in this thread is: it does to us. I totally respect the opinions of those who would enjoy the game more if umpires were replaced with a more objective method of arbitration - and I admit to a bit of trepidation coming in on the opposite side of RickJay in a baseball thread - but I disagree with them. I like it. I think the variance from umpire to umpire is fun (in much the same way that I enjoy the different dimensions and characteristics of the playing field), and fun is not subject to objective analysis.
Nobody’s right or wrong here. I like the game better this way, though, so I’ll oppose an effort to change it. It’s a game, it exists solely to entertain people, so there’s no clear and universal “right” way other than the way that entertains the most people the most.
I’m curious, do you get the same entertainment from officials in other sports? Is it cool for every NFL ref to have a different definition of pass interference? Or is it just something about baseball umpires? Because I much prefer consistency when it comes to enforcing rules in sports. And that’s what players and coaches ask for. If you got your own special strike zone we’ll live with it as long as it applies to both sides.
There are no other sports.
I feel bad about that.
Let me offer a more nuanced opinion; if automatic strike zone machines wee used, I would bet good money that you would not miss it. In fact, I honestly believe that while you truly do believe you’d miss it, within a few years you wouldn’t even notice it was gone. I think a few years after that you would agree it’d be silly to go back.
I know that seems hard to believe but I am quite confident it is so. I am reminded of the droves of hockey fans who insist they’d hate it if the NHL banned fighting - and who completely, obliviously forget that when the playoffs and Olympics roll around and fighting almost totally vanishes from the game. They watch and watch religiously, and don’t even notice there’s no fights. I have lived in Hockeyworld Central my whole life and have never, not once, heard a fighting-in-hockey booster complain when fights go away in the playoffs. So it would be with automatic balls and strikes.
Until Strike F/X can yank the chain on a guy with the same flair as a human umpire, Strike F/X will be less entertaining.
It should also be noted that you’ll still need an ump back there for hbp and catcher interference calls.
There will still be plenty of opportunity for the umps to make completely inscrutable balk calls, too.
(Robot umps now!)
Based on a bit of googling, there’s some talk of using radar to track the ball in space; that would allow for determination of whether it intersected a pentagonal prism strike zone without much trouble.
Beyond that if you went with optical, and put your cameras on the baselines, and another in the center, you’d have enough spatial information to determine whether the ball intersected the prism (the baselines meet at the back point of home plate).
This is the argument that I make. If it’s so much fun, let’s get rid of the bases. We can establish a rough idea of where the bases are supposed to be, have the ump imagine where the bases are, and the players can guess as to where in the umps mind a base is. The same for foul lines. Whee!
And how about the sheer joy of racism influencing the strike zone? Strike Three: Do MLB Umpires Express Racial Bias in Calling Balls and Strikes? - Freakonomics
Whee! Human error is so much fun!
Go re-read the OP. That is exactly what is being suggested. The OP would like to make MLB the same as a pick-up sandlot game, with players making their own calls on everything.
That will work sooo well.
Sure, the idea that “players know” is about as silly an idea as the idea that it’s fun to have an ump blow a call.
I actually agree that batters know the strike zone better than umpires. And that players would be able to call a large majority of out/safe calls correctly without much fuss. But total self-officiating would be a terrible idea for obvious reasons.
I know it’s not the SDMBs favorite sport, but there is one sport with more arbitrariness in officiating than MLB. The NBA.
The officiating is completely arbitrary. Star players get favorable calls, traveling is never called, they obvious use of make up calls, ticky tack fouls called while ignoring blatant fouls, etc. I have pretty much quit following the NBA because I just couldn’t stand it any more. All the players know it, and they just accept it, apparently.
I have to say I would take MLB’s level of historical inertia officiating over the NBA’s blatant favoritism any day, even without instant replay. (But I prefer to have IR. I wish they could have more of it.)
Exactly. When it happens in other sports it’s not a fun little part of the game. It sucks and it pisses people off. I don’t know why individual variances in baseball umpires is any better. NBA officials are the worst, and some would argue even corrupt, but the point is that when the rules are not enforced properly it cheapens the game.
Which parts of the game that are currently decided objectively do you think should be changed to incorporate more human error?
Most people can’t name any such changes, which leads me to conclude that they don’t actually think that human error makes the game better, they simply suffer from status quo bias.
I’m sure there are some people who actually do believe that the optimum level of human error in the game is higher than the current level. And I totally respect that, though I disagree with it. So my question is, what’s the optimum level, and what measurements should we remove to get there? Suggesting that the optimum level of human error is exactly at the current level and resisting any changes is just lazy thinking.
I also think you’re confusing variation with error. Having different-shaped fields is indeed quirky, but it provides variation in a well-defined and fair way. The field is what it is, and it’s the same shape for all players. Human fallibility in judgments isn’t well-defined or fair. If they raised the outfield wall a few feet for some players but not others, it would be decried as bullshit in a way that having some stadia with different dimensions is not. Yet that’s exactly what having people judge the strike zone gets you.
I absolutely hate it when you get a good batter against a good pitcher, in a key situation with men on base, and the pitcher is working the corners, and the batter is fouling off tough pitches, and it’s a real battle, and then the whole thing unravels because some douche of an umpire calls a pitch six inches off the outside corner a strike. I want Pitch/FX, now.
I respect your right to think this, but at least in my case, you’re simply incorrect. I actually do enjoy the human aspect to the officiating in baseball. It’s silly and reductive to insist that because I enjoy one particular type of subjectivity, that I must accept all or even any additional types. I like watching a game and seeing that a given umpire has an unusually large or small strike zone, or an umpire that’s going to give pitchers the low strikes but not the high ones. I like seeing how the players adjust to this.
I entirely accept that you (and others in this thread) don’t enjoy this. I accept that if enough people feel as you do, the game will probably change (enough probably do, and it probably will). But I do enjoy it. Trying to convince me that I don’t or shouldn’t is pointless, because it’s an entertainment. Nothing about it is inherently or objectively enjoyable. Why does it bother you (and others in this thread) that I enjoy aspects of the game that you don’t?
That’s a different argument. You didn’t ask me about any other kind of human error and how it should be addressed. This thread is specifically about the error introduced by having human umpires call balls, strikes, and outs. I am happy with the level of error in that specific area.