I’m with you on this.
The refusal of MLB to just FIX the officiating issues is so odd.
I mean, this is only one of several obvious fixes. Why are there only four umpires on the field? Why doesn’t the rule book define what a swing is? Why aren’t some video reviews automatic? Why do they not use camera tech for fair/foul calls like tennis uses for in/out? Don’t they have billions of dollars coming in?
Yeah, this a particularly frustrating aspect of watching a game. The umpires are routinely wrong and it’s not really their fault. Define it and then use tech to judge it. Why haven’t they?
As we’re now into Spring Training, I created a new thread here:
Is there a list of notable unsigned players?
Google isn’t supplying a current list. Every link I find is from earlier in the offseason, or lists where everyone has already signed, and doesn’t say who’s still available.
What bugs me is that in the postseason when we have 6 of the buggers, the 2 outfield ones aren’t parked directly under the fair poles, like the 2 NFL officials are during a field goal or extra point. Since they’re only out there to rule on whether balls which zip past the poles are fair or foul, or are over the fence or not (ahem Jeffrey Maier), then they shouldn’t be a mere 50 feet behind the 1st and 3rd base umps. If Rich Garcia had his f. ass out there that day, then the home run in question would have certainly been overruled.
Technically, they are there to make additional fair/foul calls at the line, but I don’t understand why those are not carefully scrutinized by cameras anyway. I also don’t know why there aren’t officials specifically examining checked swings.
A premier professional tennis match, like at Wimbledon or the US Open, has TEN officials on the court (in a space much smaller than a baseball diamond playing a sport with simpler rules.) Additionally, they add technology to make calls as fast as they can come up with it. They place priority on getting the calls RIGHT, to minimize the chances that anything other than the skills of the players determines the outcome. If some tennis official were to say “sure, we could get calls right using HawkEye, but gosh darn it, officials blowing calls are part of the game!” they’d be packaged off to an insane asylum. Same with other sports - when tennis first came up with Cyclops, a bunch of other sports were like “we gotta get in on some of this.”
But in baseball people actually say “nah, they fucked up when Babe Ruth was around so let’s keep fucking up.” It’s immensely stupid, just mind-bogglingly crazy. I don’t want umpire error deciding who wins playoff games, and that is a thing that has happened, more than some are willing to admit. I want BASEBALL PLAYERS deciding who wins playoff games. I don’t want to know who the umpires are, actually.
Of course tech should not be adopted until it is demonstrably much more reliable than humans and can be incorporated without fucking things up with delays. But given where we already are would it really be all that hard to have the scoreboard say STRIKE or BALL instantly?
How many matches do they work at Wimbledon? MLB plays 2,430 games a year. Given the number of umpire crews and their average salary I’m estimating adding 2 umps per crew would cost $12 million a year not including travel room and board. It’s not our money so who cares right? Someone cares. And we are talking about a position where they will very rarely make a difference
$12 million is one tenth of one percent of league revenue.
A million here a million there, pretty soon it adds up to real money. They still aren’t going to put out the money where there is very little perceived need.
Hey look the quote bubble is back!
Max Scherzer on the automated ball-strike system
The strike-zone gets very small indeed without pitch framing and bad umpiring.
His catcher Kirk is very good at pitch framing, to the point where Scherzer himself got fooled yesterday:
https://x.com/goldyhappens/status/1894525271757525421?s=46&t=AiLHtA5Wigyk9pEvsLYPaA
Pitch framing is a ‘skill’ that shouldn’t exist, and won’t if they ever go fully automated. In that version of baseball, catchers could focus solely on controlling the ball. Theoretically, it would lead to a reduction in passed balls and wild pitches.
Totally agree.
A wild pitch is the result of the pitcher, not the actions of the catcher. A catcher may prevent a wild pitch with a great stop on the pitched ball, but he’s not going to cause one.
And I don’t think I’ve ever seen a passed ball where the catcher missed the pitch because he was trying to move his mitt back into the strike zone. YMMV
I saw it plenty of times last year.
It’s less likely to affect wild pitches than passed balls, but it’s a matter of setting up anyway that is comfortable and without worrying about snatching the ball up, down or side to side to make it appear in the zone. However it shakes out, the profession of catching will change.
There has been a huge increase in catcher interference since the catchers now get as close to the batter as possible to block the view of the strike zone in order to frame better.
Baseball has done a lot of A/B testing in the minors on automated strikes, and the challenge system was way more popular with players, coaches, and fans than full automated calls, so it makes sense to go that root. Best I can tell the preference is somewhat related to still having he human element, but also that the automated system isn’t perfect, and is subject to human calibration and questions like what exactly constitutes a strike. With challenges the change is a lot more seamless with only a small disruption when a challenge is called.