Robot Umps?

[godwulf]

It's unusual to hear an "old time" Baseball guy advocating something as non-traditional and (I guess you could say) radical as this, but Bob Brenly has been going on lately about utilizing existing technology to greater advantage, and to a greater extent than just using instant replay on boundary calls. He's been saying that maybe it's time MLB starting using QuesTec - or whatever they're calling it now - instead of continuing to let human umpires do their error-prone and inconsistent-at-best thing behind the plate. And I have to say I think I agree with him.

I have heard guys saying things like, "No umpire ever made a team lose a game", and my reaction has always been, "That is so much crap." Maybe umpires do make more good calls than bad, but those bad calls can - and frequently do - come at critical moments in a game, and result in, for example, a team that is rallying going down with a strike three call on a ball eight inches off the plate. That is simply unacceptable, and I have watched it happen to my own team at least twice this season alone.

What possible reason can be offered not to use the technology if it is available? I liken it to the electronic touch pads in competitive swimming. They don't have a fat guy walking along the edge of the pool, squinting down at the water, saying "THAT guy was first!" Baseball may not be quite so much a game of millimeters and milliseconds, but it IS a game of inches and lines and written rules, and the rule book strike zone DOES exist, despite the best efforts of the average MLB umpire to make it up as he goes along and call it as he damned well wants to.

[onlyalbert]

2 words....Don Dekinger.

[coxfan]

I'm all for more use of technology in baseball, as it has already made its way into other sports. But I recommend reading two things to get an idea of the complexity of the issues:

1) The book "As They See 'Em" by Bruce Weber. This very thorough study of umpiring addresses such things as the available technology tools, regarding how accurately they measure the third dimension of the strike zone (front to back) on a 2-dimensional screen. Is late tailing movement of a pitch going to show well on existing technology? The book also addresses in detail how managers and coaches really feel about the rulebook strike zone as it presently exists. Whenever umpires try to call high strikes as defined by the rules, they get complaints, for reasons discussed in this book.

2) The recent article on MLB.com giving Joe Torre's views on the challenges of using more technology such as replays, etc. The article should still be in the archives of MLB.com.

I'm all for more technology, but details are far from being clear on how to use it, and how to develop and improve it.

Once in conversation with an SEC umpire, he joked to me: "Fans say I lose a lot of games, but I've never won one!" The job's not easy.

[jake33]

I am all for getting it right.

The traditional old school baseball fans are usually against it.

But, in all reality if baseball was invented today, replay would easily be used and robot/electronic ball and stike calling would likely be the normal.

Also, this of this. If in 1920 MLB had the techonolgy to have replay and electronic ball and strike calling, they wouldn't have thought twice about, it would just be part of the game.

When people say "human error is part tof the game" , why is that an acceptable excuse?

I don't know why we just don't want to get it right.

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Does anyone else notice on MLB Tonight on MLB network, every night they put in slow motion missed calls from around the league? They clearly seem to go out of their way to do this and I am thinking there is an agenda behind it.

[coxfan]

jake33 makes good points. Tradition is good where it honors the past (like family Christmas traditions) and where it inhibits impulsive changes. But tradition's too often used as an excuse to block positive changes. Tradition is, as jake33 implies, merely what was thought best at some time in the past. It should work with new ideas to reach a new future synthesis of the old and the new.

[gingi79]

When people say "human error is part of the game" , why is that an acceptable excuse?

I don't know why we just don't want to get it right.

---

Does anyone else notice on MLB Tonight on MLB network, every night they put in slow motion missed calls from around the league? They clearly seem to go out of their way to do this and I am thinking there is an agenda behind it.

I agree with Jake. Human error being part of the game is flawed logic. It's a cop out and an excuse. "Every team has been on the losing end of an umpire's (refs etc) call so it's ok." Just because everyone gets cheated, doesn't mean it's right.

MLB and ESPN do go out of their way to show missed calls. Fans feel an Ump or a Ref's sole job is to cheat their team. Fans WANT to see it proven so they can feel vindicated.

All that being said, HBO's Real Sports did a great piece on how out of control and insanely dangerous it can be to be an Ump or Ref. Fans attacking them, parents losing their minds after their kid gets a foul, a player swinging his helmet at a ref's head and breaking every bone in his face, a group of players and coaches mobbing and beating a ref after a game and even a ref dying from being knocked out by a goalie. People are insane when it comes to sporting events, they do and say horrible things they would not otherwise do in their private lives. It brings out our most primal urges.

I for one can't wait for the technology that eliminates all human refereeing so fans can put the blame on the team who blew the damn game rather than the monkey in a blue shirt who cost my beloved team the damn game.

[Mark17]

I agree with Jake. Human error being part of the game is flawed logic. It's a cop out and an excuse. "Every team has been on the losing end of an umpire's (refs etc) call so it's ok." Just because everyone gets cheated, doesn't mean it's right...

I for one can't wait for the technology that eliminates all human refereeing so fans can put the blame on the team who blew the damn game rather than the monkey in a blue shirt who cost my beloved team the damn game.

I agree 100%. The game should be about the players playing the game, and not about the human shortcomings of the umpire.

What I have long thought would be great would be to have balls and strikes called using light beams. You have a beam directly above the plate, which determines whether a pitch crosses the plate (not inside or outside, at the moment it is over the plate) and another beam off to the side, measuring from the top of the batter's kneecap to the bottom of his armpit (or whatever the current strike zone is. When a pitch enters the intersection of both beams at the same instant, it's a strike.

You can also call swinging strikes by whether the bat crosses the plate to a certain degree, at the time of the pitch (this would require some rule clarification, for example, a player showing bunt but pulling his bat back before the pitch arrives... and maybe the bat would have to pass the halfway point of the plate to be a strike.)

As a college pitcher and catcher, I have always believed that such a system would not only be very fair to both teams, but it would also benefit pitchers immensely. I think there are a lot of low breaking balls that cross the plate above the knees, but get called balls because of where the catcher catches them. In fact, I've seen lolly-pop curveballs that should've been called strikes, but weren't because they hit the dirt before the catcher caught them.

If the rules are precise in defining what the strike zone is, there should be a method to make those calls that precisely follows those rules, and I just don't think it would be that hard. In fact, electronic chips could be put in the balls and bats to make things even easier to detect.

[xpress34]

In fact, electronic chips could be put in the balls and bats to make things even easier to detect.

Mark -

In order for this to happen, the Rule Book would have to be amended (see Bats below).

The Ball would be easy to chip during the winding process or the making of the 'pill' at the center of the ball.

Tracking it would be easy too - anyone remember some of Fox Sports technology when they covered the NHL and had chipped pucks and sensors in the boards so when they showed aerial shots in arenas fans watching on TV could track the puck?

The Bat - not so easy. Everyone says that corking a bat is illegal according to the rules... well, yes and no. Nowhere in the MLB rules does it ever say that you cannot cork a bat.

It is so much simpler than that. What the rules say is that a bat must be made out of ONE piece of SOLID wood. That's it.

Therefore, once you core it or cut a section out to add anything to it, it is no longer ONE piece of SOLID wood. In order to 'chip a bat', you would have to core part of it, or cut open a section to insert the chip.

Added to that is the recent study of 'exploding' bats (Maple) that caused many changes in how Maple bats are made. Any time you cut open or core the bat barrel, you are weakening it's physical structure, therefore making it easier to break.

Finally, IF they did 'chip' GU Balls and Bats, would they still allow fans to keep Foul or Home Run balls? Or Bats that go into the stands? Would they still sell them? I ask because more than likely, the chips in them would be proprietary property that they may be afraid of individuals removing from those items to study.

Just my .02

- Smitty

[godwulf]

I can see some reason to chip a baseball, although I don't think existing technology necessarily requires something like that to work...but why put a chip in the bat? For checked swing calls?

I've got a serious gripe with some umps that I'm afraid technology wouldn't fix or even help. The other night, a homeplate umpire tossed a player - I think it was Aaron Hill - out of a game because, in the ump's dumbass opinion, the player threw his bat and batting helmet toward the dugout, which most players do, too hard. I have seen players smash their batting helmets down with enough velocity to dig a hole or bounce two feet in the air, and stay in the game - but this jackass doesn't like the way the bat and helmet get tossed toward the dugout and ejects the player. Idiots like that should not be collecting a paycheck.

[Mark17]

If a chip was used in the balls, I'd think it would only have to be something generic - easily identified by whatever type of device was reading it. Perhaps something simple like a magnetized BB. Maybe chips wouldn't even be necessary - sonar technology similar to fish/depth finders on boats might be able to detect baseballs well enough without them.

Bats could have a small chip glued on the end of the barrel. You wouldn't have to hollow out the barrel or anything nearly so drastic. Maybe even just a 1/4th inch square piece of thin magnetic tape. The purpose of the bat chip would be to determine swinging strikes.

If the system became sophisticated enough, it could even determine foul tips. For instance, if the bat and ball were determined to have been in very close proximity at the same instant the ball changed trajectory.

This might be an ignorant question, but since I don't collect anything past the early 1970s, I'm wondering, how are game used baseballs identified? Like McGwire's 70th home run ball, and the other balls I see that are pinpointed to specific at-bats? Are they serial-numbered on the outside, or is there something inside that can be scanned for identification?