Best injury so far: The Blue Jays’ Kevin Pillar is out with a strained oblique - caused by a hard sneeze.
ESPN has a strike zone square on the screen the whole game
annoying and distracting. gotdanged casuals man
hopefully it’s just something they’re testing for spring and won’t do in the season
almost as good as an idea as highlighting the puck in hockey
If it’s off in the low, right corner, they’ve been doing that for a few years. Is it right over the plate now?
it’s right over the plate
I’ve been watching on the MLB channels and they’re not doing that.
I’ve only seen it on ESPN (this is the first game I’ve watched on ESPN this year)
I’m thinking it’s TBS that always has it showing in the bottom right corner, but I could be mistaken.
I would enjoy it if the networks made a bigger deal about how bad umpires are at calling balls and strikes.
From what I understand, the umps get a “report card” of their calls matched to the PitchFx data and there has been an improvement.
It’s not like it’s that easy a job to begin with.
85% accuracy is still terrible compared to 100% accuracy we could have if they eliminated the home plate umpire completely. It’s a tough job but nobody has to do it.
You’d still have jobs for home plate umpires; there are other calls to make. They can use Pitch/Fx simply by having an indicator in center field for whether the ball was in or out of the strike zone, allowing the ump to make the signal. He’d still have to make safe/out calls, fair/foul, stuff like that.
The only reason they haven’t done it is inertia, and it’s stupid. Imagine if Olympic sprinting was measured not with electronic timing devices but by a guy just eyeballing it and saying “looks to me like so-and-so won, about 9.8 seconds.”
Some questions about hypothetically changing to automatic, electronic calling of balls and strikes:
What, if any, are the arguments against (besides inertia)?
Would the players, in general, support or oppose such a change?
How feasible (technologically and economically) would it be to implement, not just at the MLB level, but in the minor leagues, college baseball, high school baseball, etc.?
Whatever the tech is I imagine it has to be fairly expensive to be accurate at all. Definitely not worth it at the high school level and probably not even college. Maybe for the CWS only. And as mentioned, you still need a human umpire, so there’s no financial benefit no matter how much the cost scales.
Wish the Red Sox would be more open about their starting catcher, Christian Vazquez. They’re calling it an “elbow sprain”, but you don’t go straight to the 60-day DL with a mere sprain, and you don’t get a second opinion from Dr. James Andrews, the Tommy John specialist, unless that’s what’s about to happen.
If this means the Blake Swihart Era starts a year early, that’s fine. Just say so.
I agree wholeheartedly with the first part of that sentence. And you may very well be right with the second part, but not necessarily. The Giants sent Matt Cain to see Dr. Andrews last year after he was originally diagnosed with bone spurs; after seeing the specialist, the diagnosis was…bone spurs. He had not-Tommy-John surgery, and is ‘just fine’ now.
We hope.
The Red Sox would probably benefit from starting the Blake Swihart Era a little early, judging from the reviews he’s gotten in double-A and below. Hard to imagine that it wouldn’t be more successful than other famous Eras in recent Boston history, anyway:
The Ryan Lavarnway Era (see Get Ready For The Ryan Lavarnway Era - Over the Monster)
The Will Middlebrooks Era (see Will Middlebrooks to join Red Sox tonight - masslive.com)
The Daniel Bard Era (see Audacy Inc: An Audio Universe of Discovery & Connection)
The Jackie Bradley Jr. Era (see Longhorns hold off Brady, 13-10, in District 6-2A baseball action) (I suppose he may still prove era-worthy, but last year was kind of a bust and that’s one crowded outfield…)
The Lars Anderson Era…
I’m hearing UCL tear for Vasquez. If it’s partial, he might try to rest/rehab without surgery. If it’s full, Tommy John it is.