5 ms·

Part of me is sad about this. Of course there are horrible calls that sometimes result in runs being scored, but the game loses a lot with robo-umps as well. Th

by kart23 5y ago

Part of me is sad about this. Of course there are horrible calls that sometimes result in runs being scored, but the game loses a lot with robo-umps as well. The dynamic of the pitcher and ump would go away, the pitcher learns what the ump likes and doesn't like, and has to pitch for them. The inconsistency can be annoying, but its part of the game to me, you really never 100% know whether a pitch will be a ball or strike. Also catchers framing pitches would go away entirely, something I really enjoy watching, heres a video on that. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQdkeYXHh6Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQdkeYXHh6Y

Spooky23 5y ago
IMO the issue isn’t solving a problem with the game, it’s implementation of systems that enable sports betting. At least I hope so. The folks running baseball now like to twiddle with stuff.
ipaddr 5y ago
I look forward to the same strike zone every game. As a fan seeing calls outside being called strikes and seeing strikes being called balls based on who is the ump tonight is something I could do away with. The framing of the ball to make it appear as a strike is a fraud.
- dap 5y ago
  People said the same about the curveball.
GavinMcG 5y ago
I agree. The idea that there is always a right answer has been a fiction for the entire history of the game. Take away the box on the screen and there are still some obviously bad calls, but there are many more calls that no one but the batter, catcher, and umpire could credibly debate about. There are measurable differences in the skill with which a catcher catches the ball. [0] And frankly, without the box there, many people wouldn't have batted an eye at this pitch [1] (watch the video). No one in the game did! It's sad to me that many people care more about the box than about that human experience of the game. One of the great things about sports is that it isn't fair—it teaches us about life in that and other ways. And particularly in baseball, with 162 games and 24,000 pitches in a season [2], variations tend to come out in the wash, even as individual games and pitches feel really meaningful. [0] https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/catcher_framing?year=2019&team=&min=q&sort=4,1 https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/catcher_framing?year=2019&tea... [1] https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-worst-called-ball-on-record/ https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-worst-called-ball-on-record/ [2] https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/MLB/2019-pitches-pitching.shtml https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/MLB/2019-pitches-...
- Dylan16807 5y ago
  > The idea that there is always a right answer has been a fiction for the entire history of the game. The rule is right there. If the rule is a lie, it should not be there. > And frankly, without the box there, many people wouldn't have batted an eye at this pitch It's moving fast and involves tracking something in 3d space from a far-away camera. You could trick me super easily, but I'm not sure what that proves. > One of the great things about sports is that it isn't fair Yikes. I'm really unconvinced that if things were more fair, you'd be arguing they should become less fair.
  - GavinMcG 5y ago
    That's because you imagine fairness can be adjusted on its own. I wouldn't say I want the game to be less fair as a primary value. But imagine I say I want the game to be more X, Y, or Z, and you respond that those changes would make it less fair. It's not hard to imagine accepting that tradeoff for some things that make the game better. Before the Rockies existed, adding a team at high altitude where the ball carries farther could have been seen as less fair, because batters for that team would have an easier time breaking home run records. But so what? Camden Yards is one of the best stadiums in baseball. It's only 318 feet down the right field line. But so what? The rule isn't a lie. It's just enforced by humans. Should speed limits not exist, just because you can often exceed the limit and not get a ticket? I sure don't want to live in a world where every street has automatic enforcement.
    - thatcat 5y ago
      Speed limits are a bad rule that is used bc it is easier to measure. Following distance is a better metric bc it is more closely aligned with the goal of safety, but harder to determine by a human.
lastofthemojito 5y ago
I think one thing that's important about this tech in the wider context of improving the entertainment value of baseball is that this gives the league a knob to tweak to balance pitching and hitting. Lots of words have been written already this season about the historically low batting average across baseball, fueled at least in part by balls with less bounce and thus more aggressive pitchers who aren't afraid of getting dinged. If MLB wanted to tweak a knob to get a bit more offense, they could shrink the strike zone a little - maybe take away half an inch at the top of the strike zone. With human umpires, there's no way that could be implemented consistently. But with this solution, it'd be consistent and could potentially even be done with no announcement and no rule change. If it's subtle, batters and pitchers might not even notice that they're being experimented on.
- treeman79 5y ago
  First time a hidden “experiment is noticed” trust goes out the window. Ever close call will be blamed on computers. Announcing ahead of time that strike zone is + - 5% would at least set expectations. Now it would also undo months of muscle memory training.
deelowe 5y ago
The issue is the union for the umps protecting bad umps. If mlb had a way to remove terrible umps and reward good ones, things would be much better.
- treeman79 5y ago
  I recall umps were all fat. Then one fell over dead at a game. Few years later they were all super fit. Was highly impressed at how industry got its act together. Found it. https://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-xpm-1996-04-07-9604070198-story.html https://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-xpm-1996-04-07-9...
  - culturestate 5y ago
    > Few years later they were all super fit. Not anymore. These days there are a few that make you wonder about the strength of the elastic on their protective gear.
foolfoolz 5y ago
i disagree entirely. this bullshit nostalgia of the refs and players getting tit for tat ruins the game. if you’re fair all the time it’s always better
- paulcole 5y ago
  The whole game is made up. Nobody ever said it had to be fair all the time. Sports are more interesting when there’s controversy and what-ifs to debate. What if that Jeffrey Maier kid hadn’t grabbed the home run… What if Ron Gant wasn’t really out…
  - LanceH 5y ago
    Go watch WWE. Let sport be fair.
    - dap 5y ago
      Are you a baseball fan, out of curiosity? MLB parks are all different dimensions and even shapes. Grounds crews maintain the local fields differently from each other, sometimes to the advantage of the home team. Colorado plays half their games at an altitude that meaningfully favors offense. Other teams play half their games in climates that meaningfully favor defense. Some teams go 20 days without a day off. Some divisions tend to be more competitive than others. There are injuries — sometimes many of them to one team. To all those, add: some umpires make more mistakes than others, and some pitchers and catchers are better at adapting. All of these things aren’t fair. That’s okay. That’s life, and that’s baseball. Anyway, this isn’t really about overall fairness. Serious accusations of umpires favoring one team or another are very rare. It’s about whether to obsess about every single pitch being called by some mechanical (and so supposedly objective) standard. To me, that misses the whole point. You get 27 hitters per game (unless you win early) and play 162 games per year. If your success comes down to even a handful of bad calls, you were only going to win by chance anyway.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
lc9er 5y ago
Me too. But counter argument: Angel Hernandez and Joe West.
- maxioatic 5y ago
  Angel Hernandez.. smh. It's wild he still umps MLB games.
  - ecf 5y ago
    And that is exactly the reason why strike zone systems have been necessitated. Bad umpires can’t be fired due to the Umpires union, so their relevance has to be taken away. I strongly believe that this situation wouldn’t be required if fans were shown that bad umpires wouldn’t be tolerated.
    - maxioatic 5y ago
      Agreed. It seems to me, without knowing anything about their union, that it would be in their best interest to let umps to get fired for performance reasons, as opposed to getting replaced by robo umps. Maybe this is a bargaining chip ploy by MLB? Personally, I'd be kind of sad for umps to get replaced, although I see the argument for it.
wnevets 5y ago
If it means we don't have to deal with calls like this [1], it's worth it. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YQtVmpX-OM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YQtVmpX-OM
- kart23 5y ago
  As a padres fan I was dying of laughter when this sequence happened. https://twitter.com/UmpireAuditor/status/1388405200512159747 https://twitter.com/UmpireAuditor/status/1388405200512159747
  - ilaksh 5y ago
    Some university did a study and found that on average, umpires miss more than 1 out of 10 pitch calls.
Waterluvian 5y ago
Agreed. Baseball is interesting in part because of all its nonsense. Robo umpires? Please. Your league has two sets of rules, every field is differently shaped, and one even had a ramp in the outfield.
- ecf 5y ago
  > Agreed. Baseball is interesting in part because of all its nonsense. Which is one reason why MLB viewership has been in decline for the last few decades. Younger fans simply aren’t putting up with the status quo regarding the game and their outdated traditions.
  - Waterluvian 5y ago
    Interesting. Never considered that. For me it's the opposite: the pure game is boring to watch. I love when unusual stuff happens.

by kart23 5y ago

Spooky23 5y ago

IMO the issue isn’t solving a problem with the game, it’s implementation of systems that enable sports betting. At least I hope so. The folks running baseball now like to twiddle with stuff.

ipaddr 5y ago

I look forward to the same strike zone every game. As a fan seeing calls outside being called strikes and seeing strikes being called balls based on who is the ump tonight is something I could do away with. The framing of the ball to make it appear as a strike is a fraud.

dap 5y ago
People said the same about the curveball.

GavinMcG 5y ago

I agree. The idea that there is always a right answer has been a fiction for the entire history of the game. Take away the box on the screen and there are still some obviously bad calls, but there are many more calls that no one but the batter, catcher, and umpire could credibly debate about. There are measurable differences in the skill with which a catcher catches the ball. [0] And frankly, without the box there, many people wouldn't have batted an eye at this pitch [1] (watch the video). No one in the game did! It's sad to me that many people care more about the box than about that human experience of the game. One of the great things about sports is that it isn't fair—it teaches us about life in that and other ways. And particularly in baseball, with 162 games and 24,000 pitches in a season [2], variations tend to come out in the wash, even as individual games and pitches feel really meaningful. [0] https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/catcher_framing?year=2019&team=&min=q&sort=4,1 https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/catcher_framing?year=2019&tea... [1] https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-worst-called-ball-on-record/ https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-worst-called-ball-on-record/ [2] https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/MLB/2019-pitches-pitching.shtml https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/MLB/2019-pitches-...

Dylan16807 5y ago
> The idea that there is always a right answer has been a fiction for the entire history of the game. The rule is right there. If the rule is a lie, it should not be there. > And frankly, without the box there, many people wouldn't have batted an eye at this pitch It's moving fast and involves tracking something in 3d space from a far-away camera. You could trick me super easily, but I'm not sure what that proves. > One of the great things about sports is that it isn't fair Yikes. I'm really unconvinced that if things were more fair, you'd be arguing they should become less fair.
- GavinMcG 5y ago
  That's because you imagine fairness can be adjusted on its own. I wouldn't say I want the game to be less fair as a primary value. But imagine I say I want the game to be more X, Y, or Z, and you respond that those changes would make it less fair. It's not hard to imagine accepting that tradeoff for some things that make the game better. Before the Rockies existed, adding a team at high altitude where the ball carries farther could have been seen as less fair, because batters for that team would have an easier time breaking home run records. But so what? Camden Yards is one of the best stadiums in baseball. It's only 318 feet down the right field line. But so what? The rule isn't a lie. It's just enforced by humans. Should speed limits not exist, just because you can often exceed the limit and not get a ticket? I sure don't want to live in a world where every street has automatic enforcement.
  - thatcat 5y ago
    Speed limits are a bad rule that is used bc it is easier to measure. Following distance is a better metric bc it is more closely aligned with the goal of safety, but harder to determine by a human.

lastofthemojito 5y ago

I think one thing that's important about this tech in the wider context of improving the entertainment value of baseball is that this gives the league a knob to tweak to balance pitching and hitting. Lots of words have been written already this season about the historically low batting average across baseball, fueled at least in part by balls with less bounce and thus more aggressive pitchers who aren't afraid of getting dinged. If MLB wanted to tweak a knob to get a bit more offense, they could shrink the strike zone a little - maybe take away half an inch at the top of the strike zone. With human umpires, there's no way that could be implemented consistently. But with this solution, it'd be consistent and could potentially even be done with no announcement and no rule change. If it's subtle, batters and pitchers might not even notice that they're being experimented on.

treeman79 5y ago
First time a hidden “experiment is noticed” trust goes out the window. Ever close call will be blamed on computers. Announcing ahead of time that strike zone is + - 5% would at least set expectations. Now it would also undo months of muscle memory training.

deelowe 5y ago

The issue is the union for the umps protecting bad umps. If mlb had a way to remove terrible umps and reward good ones, things would be much better.

treeman79 5y ago
I recall umps were all fat. Then one fell over dead at a game. Few years later they were all super fit. Was highly impressed at how industry got its act together. Found it. https://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-xpm-1996-04-07-9604070198-story.html https://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-xpm-1996-04-07-9...
- culturestate 5y ago
  > Few years later they were all super fit. Not anymore. These days there are a few that make you wonder about the strength of the elastic on their protective gear.

foolfoolz 5y ago

i disagree entirely. this bullshit nostalgia of the refs and players getting tit for tat ruins the game. if you’re fair all the time it’s always better

paulcole 5y ago
The whole game is made up. Nobody ever said it had to be fair all the time. Sports are more interesting when there’s controversy and what-ifs to debate. What if that Jeffrey Maier kid hadn’t grabbed the home run… What if Ron Gant wasn’t really out…
- LanceH 5y ago
  Go watch WWE. Let sport be fair.
  - dap 5y ago
    Are you a baseball fan, out of curiosity? MLB parks are all different dimensions and even shapes. Grounds crews maintain the local fields differently from each other, sometimes to the advantage of the home team. Colorado plays half their games at an altitude that meaningfully favors offense. Other teams play half their games in climates that meaningfully favor defense. Some teams go 20 days without a day off. Some divisions tend to be more competitive than others. There are injuries — sometimes many of them to one team. To all those, add: some umpires make more mistakes than others, and some pitchers and catchers are better at adapting. All of these things aren’t fair. That’s okay. That’s life, and that’s baseball. Anyway, this isn’t really about overall fairness. Serious accusations of umpires favoring one team or another are very rare. It’s about whether to obsess about every single pitch being called by some mechanical (and so supposedly objective) standard. To me, that misses the whole point. You get 27 hitters per game (unless you win early) and play 162 games per year. If your success comes down to even a handful of bad calls, you were only going to win by chance anyway.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]

lc9er 5y ago

Me too. But counter argument: Angel Hernandez and Joe West.

maxioatic 5y ago
Angel Hernandez.. smh. It's wild he still umps MLB games.
- ecf 5y ago
  And that is exactly the reason why strike zone systems have been necessitated. Bad umpires can’t be fired due to the Umpires union, so their relevance has to be taken away. I strongly believe that this situation wouldn’t be required if fans were shown that bad umpires wouldn’t be tolerated.
  - maxioatic 5y ago
    Agreed. It seems to me, without knowing anything about their union, that it would be in their best interest to let umps to get fired for performance reasons, as opposed to getting replaced by robo umps. Maybe this is a bargaining chip ploy by MLB? Personally, I'd be kind of sad for umps to get replaced, although I see the argument for it.

wnevets 5y ago

If it means we don't have to deal with calls like this [1], it's worth it. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YQtVmpX-OM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YQtVmpX-OM

kart23 5y ago
As a padres fan I was dying of laughter when this sequence happened. https://twitter.com/UmpireAuditor/status/1388405200512159747 https://twitter.com/UmpireAuditor/status/1388405200512159747
- ilaksh 5y ago
  Some university did a study and found that on average, umpires miss more than 1 out of 10 pitch calls.

Waterluvian 5y ago

Agreed. Baseball is interesting in part because of all its nonsense. Robo umpires? Please. Your league has two sets of rules, every field is differently shaped, and one even had a ramp in the outfield.

ecf 5y ago
> Agreed. Baseball is interesting in part because of all its nonsense. Which is one reason why MLB viewership has been in decline for the last few decades. Younger fans simply aren’t putting up with the status quo regarding the game and their outdated traditions.
- Waterluvian 5y ago
  Interesting. Never considered that. For me it's the opposite: the pure game is boring to watch. I love when unusual stuff happens.