When I started dating the lady who is now Mrs. Cheesesteak, we talked a bit about young relationships having mystery. Mystery is exciting and fun, you want some mystery.
But there’s good mystery, and bad mystery. If the mystery is “I wonder if he’s banging that coworker?” that’s bad mystery, it doesn’t add to the relationship.
Likewise, there’s good human element and bad human element. Umpires blowing calls is bad human element, it’s not what anybody wants. Eliminating that human element is an unambiguous positive.
I’d posit that most of what umpires are called on to do could be done via current technology: beyond balls and strikes, calls like fair/foul, safe/out, checked swings, and most balks could be automated pretty straightforwardly, IMO.
Judgment calls, such as interference, might be harder to automate, and calls on things like equipment which violates rules harder still – but those are relatively infrequent, compared to the calls I listed in the previous paragraph.
AIUI, you could have unlimited challenges if you’re always right. You only lose challenges when you’re wrong. In other words, two strikes and you’re out.
But honestly, screw the challenge system. Just have the ABS calls fed to the umpire via earpiece so they visually signal strikes. Now they’re going to take away the superimposed strikezone graphic on television to thwart cheating. I like the strikezone display not only for strikes but for things like seeing how far out of the zone a hitter chases. Half measures, bleh.
Correct. I was just using the common shorthand to reference the number of challenges a team starts with. That is also what is shown on scoreboards during games.
For what it is worth, the latest stats I’ve seen on this (and I’m not sure of the accuracy) is that catcher’s get the challenges correct around 56% of the time. Batters are worse at around 44% with pitchers bringing up the rear at around 41%. I’ve heard teams are telling pitchers not to ever challenge and let the catchers take on that task.
That’s interesting. The most egregious missed calls (or at least the ones I notice) are balls way outside the zone called strikes. Presumably only the batters would be challenging those, so it’s surprising batters can’t even get half of those right.
Some hitters will definitely be barred from making challenges. My team is the Yankees and I would only allow Judge and Bellinger to challenge. Juan Soto will probably be really good at it, too. I’ve seen him incorrectly protest strike calls in the past, but sometimes it seemed like a ploy to take away the outside strike. Mind games.
I guess it’ll be interesting, but without the graphic, viewers at home won’t know whether a challenge is a good idea in a lot of cases.
In Triple A I’ve seen fewer batter reactions on bad calls (my subjective opinion). My guess is it is because the ump will just tell them to challenge it if they’re that certain. From reading about it, teams are practicing the challenges and getting batters to try and take the emotion out of it and keep the leverage of the game situation in mind. In watching a lot of these challenge games, what tends to happen is challenges are kept, even when calls might be pretty obviously wrong, until later in the game and later in individual at bats. It seems like I’ve hardly seen any challenges on a 0-0 pitch for example. It will be interesting to see what the stats people will see once there’s a full season at the MLB level though.
I didn’t. I always thought the DH was a silly ploy to just get more offense and home runs and therefore considered the American League’s game inferior.
Following the Mets when I was young, I remember agreeing with a rules interpretation that went against my team. Keith Hernandez used to hold runners on first with one foot over the foul line because it gave him a better angle. But one year the league decided to enforce the actual rule, which said only the catcher could be in foul territory before the pitch and I felt that was correct.
I vividly remember the “Pine Tar Game” when George Brett hit a homer off Goose Gossage. Yankee manager Billy Martin protested on the basis that Brett’s bat had pine tar up the handle further than the rules allowed and he was called out. MLB later gave Brett the home run back, feeling that Martin had used the rule in a way that didn’t agree with the spirit, and certainly only when it benefited his team. And I thought that was a reasonable adjudication.
I feel the new rules changes, while perhaps addressing real problems, change the game inappropriately in the same way the DH did. I’m just not interested in watching this new version of baseball.
