Let's fix baseball

The Game Room
161

Here’s my improvement. Fix replay.

Other than balls and strikes, everything else should be reviewable.

Give each manager two challenge flags. If he wants to challenge a call, he throws the challenge flag. He has until the next hitter is in the box ready to take a pitch to do that. No coming on the filed to delay while “his guys” check the replay.

Once the replay is under review, the review booth has 90 seconds to render a decision, or the call stands. No four minute waits with everyone stranding around.

From the top of the 8th inning on, all calls are reviewable at the discretion of the replay office/booth, regardless of challenge flags remaining.

162

When did I ever say the game was perfect? There are always tweaks. The helmet Torres wore the other night pitching for the Padres is one. It made him look like Mike Dukakis in a tank, but the added protection is a good idea.

Balls and strikes are judgment calls and always will be. Even with the zone delineated on the TV screen, there is still a call on whether or not the ball was completely in the zone or not. It isn’t like a race, where there is an objective goal that can be objectively measured. It’s a game, which means there are going to be subjective decisions made by someone, and arguments about same. That’s kinda in the definition. You win some decisions, you lose some.

IMO, taking the umps out of the decision loop about balls and strikes would be such a fundamental change in the game as to make it something else. And not a game I would watch.

**leftfield6 **- Maybe. Let’s give instant replay a season or two to shake down, then re-evaluate. I like it so far, and it hasn’t slowed the game down at all. Decisions are being made as fast as they can. 90 seconds is far too little time to review some plays.

163

Whether or not a ball passed through a rules defined area is inherently objective.

164

Here are my fixes:

Either both leagues have the DH, or neither does. Personally, I don’t think they’re necessary, but I am a realist, and “We’re getting rid of DHs” will be followed immediately by “Today’s game is cancelled because of player action (i.e. an MLBPA strike).”

Electronic strike zone. It shouldn’t be that hard to implement. Of course, you’re still going to have the human element involved with check swings, unless they go to the NCAA rule, which, IIRC, is, “If the bat goes past the far front corner of the plate, it’s a strike.”

Add two more teams, and have four four-team divisions in each league. Each team’s schedule would be 22 games against each division opponent, 12 against each other team in the same league, and 3 against the teams in one division in the other league. The main reason I support interleague play is because this is where most real rivalries exist (e.g. Yankess-Mets, Cubs-White Sox, Dodgers-Angels, Giants-A’s, Orioles-Nationals), but if scheduling the rivalries every year is considered too unfair, then go back to no interleague play.

You want to make the All-Star Game really mean something? Any player voted into the game’s starting lineup that does not play, for whatever reason, is treated as being on a 15-day disabled list. (A player already on a DL would not be penalized unless it was less than 15 days at the break, in which case it is extended to 15.) Let’s see who doesn’t take it seriously now. There’s a reason nobody plays the day before or after the game.

If interleague play exists, then give home field advantage in the World Series to the league that won the most interleague games that year (not counting rivalry games that are scheduled every year). A tie goes to the league that didn’t have it in the previous season.

However, the real fix is, make the game affordable - starting with the parking lot. Not every stadium is served by reasonable public transportation; this was a serious problem when the Giants were still playing at “whatever Candlestick Park is called this week,” as the subway and light rail systems didn’t go within a mile of it. (“The version I heard was,” when they designed BART, the 49ers still played at Kezar, and Candlestick was (and still is) in one of the poorer areas of the city, so it didn’t make sense to build tracks to somewhere where pretty much nobody would go between October and April.)

165

I disagree. Where do you call a ball that is 50% in the strike zone when it passes over the plate? At what point is it not a strike? 25%? 2%? And let’s not even get into what is or is not a swing. An ump is going to be make judgment calls all through the game elsewhere, so what’s wrong with balls and strikes?

TDG - The socialist in me would love to cap prices for damn near everything at the ballpark, but as long as we have private ownership of teams, that is a non-starter. $8 for a mega-brew? $7.50 for a plain hot dog? $20 parking? That’s the true problem with baseball, and it’s why I actively support my local Single A team (Go, Quakes!)

166

0.0000000000%

A STRIKE is a legal pitch when so called by the umpire, which –
(b) Is not struck at, if any part of the ball passes through any part of the strike zone;

If any part of the ball is in the strike zone, it’s a strike. That’s always been the rule as far as I know.

167

My understanding is that if the ball so much as “touches” the strike zone, it’s a strike.
Granted, determining if the seams just made it over the plate is asking a bit much.

168

A STRIKE is a legal pitch when so called by the umpire, which—
(a) Is struck at by the batter and is missed;
(b) Is not struck at, if any part of the ball passes through any part of the strike
zone;
(c) Is fouled by the batter when he has less than two strikes;
(d) Is bunted foul;
(e) Touches the batter as he strikes at it;
(f) Touches the batter in flight in the strike zone; or
(g) Becomes a foul tip.
The STRIKE ZONE is that area over home plate the upper limit of which is a horizontal
line at the midpoint between the top of the shoulders and the top of the uniform
pants, and the lower level is a line at the hollow beneath the kneecap. The Strike Zone shall
be determined from the batter’s stance as the batter is prepared to swing at a pitched ball.

Strikes and the Strike Zone are well defined by the rules, yet called differently by every single umpire in the biz.

I will agree that check swings are an issue, however, they do not apply to every single pitch, and do not require batters and pitchers to study umpire tendencies in order to adjust their strategy for each game.

169

Agree that the rule is clear. Still don’t see the problem. You are going to either have to have someone making the determination of whether or not a seam touched the zone (an umpire on the spot) or you have to computerize the whole area to a degree that the game is lost.

I’m just not seeing a problem here, especially with instant replay. Major goofs get overturned, and you are going to win as many as you lose as far as strikes/balls. It’s a wash there, so why bitch other than for the joy of bitching?

170

Who says you have to computerize the whole area? They don’t computerize a tennis court, but they can determine in or out very precisely. You still have the home plate umpire, he’s just going to relay the Ball/Strike call from the computer, rather than make that determination personally. Hell, if you wanted to computerize it, you could frame the area with infrared lasers, and nobody would be the wiser.

When the ball is outside the strike zone, the batter shouldn’t be punished because the umpire wasn’t in a good position to see it, the reverse is true for the pitcher. Getting calls wrong doesn’t make the game better.

171

Greg Maddux would roll over in his grave over this discussion over strike zones.

172

Seeing as he’s not dead, more like screaming and clawing at the lid.

173

They’ve tried stuff like that before. It would be about 3 hours before every catcher in the league figured out a way to spoof the machine. :stuck_out_tongue:

Then there’s the question of hiring, vetting and policing the guys that dial in the lasers for each and every batter, each and every pitch.

174

Having sat right behind home plate when Maddux was pitching, I can assure you there would be quite a few “god damns” mixed in with the screaming and clawing.

175

I agree with this.

And the thing is, most of the technology and infrastructure to do this already exists. Here is a really interesting article that details the PitchTrax technology that generates this kind of image and data that we have all seen during baseball broadcasts. The article does touch on a few errors and inconsistencies, and also ways to address them. But in the final analysis, it is far more accurate than umpires.

Oh, and the system is already installed in every MLB park. Just saying.

176

I’m not unreasonable, if it isn’t technically viable, it’s not an option. Viable means that the gameplay is at most trivially affected by the change, and the system is proven to be accurate.

177

Well, you didn’t use the P-word, but the sentiment is there.

Sounds like perfection has been achieved, according to you.

178

I’m not sure what that has to do with it. If any part of the ball crosses any part of the strike zone, it’s a strike. The ball doesn’t have to be completely in the zone.

You are creating distinctions that don’t exist.

In a footrace, one runner crosses before the other, and that runner wins. That’s a “decision,” but it happens to be one that we have decided to use technology to determine accurately. Baseball is a sequence of equally determinable things; either the runner got there first or the ball did. The ball either passed though part of the strike zone or it did not. The fielder caught the ball or he trapped it. These are factual things, not matters of opinion. They are a sequence of objective goals. The only question is how much effort and technology we want to put into being correct about the facts.

My honest opinion is that if we replaced home plate umpires’ judgment with Pitchf/x, within three years nobody would notice anymore and within five people would think it insane to go back to the way it was.

179

Plus, if you’re the kind of person who is worrying about the decline in offense and increase in strikeouts the last few years (and I’m not saying anyone here is, but there are people out there writing articles to that effect), fixing the strike zone would almost certainly make some contribution in those areas as left handed hitters stopped getting routinely screwed off the outside corner.

180

Why are you making me defend umpires? :stuck_out_tongue:

“Pretty much” isn’t “perfect.” I’m not saying improvements can’t be made. I’m saying that the majority of the “improvements” suggested in this thread are total horse-muffins. I am a hard-core conservative when it comes to baseball. I hate the DH, I think they should rip the lights out of Wrigley, and instant replay is a great idea (I’m conservative, not crazy!)