luv baseball posted:It is science folks.
Ok. Fine.
So let's make it good science.
When you make a computation in chemistry or physics, one of the ground rules is that your answer can't be more precise than the least precise element in your equation. If you observe an object travel 173 feet in 3.5 seconds, you can't say it traveled 49.4285714 feet per second because you didn't measure either the distance or the time that precisely. You have to settle for 49 ft/sec because that's the limit of the accuracy of your measurement.
Same thing applies to baseball. When the top of the strike zone is defined as a horizontal line at the midpoint between the top of the batter's shoulders and the top of the uniform pants, and the bottom of the strike zone is defined as a line at the hollow beneath the kneecap, it is not scientific to pretend that advanced sensors can judge strikes to the fraction of an inch. The zone isn't defined to that level of precision, so you can't pretend to measure it to that level of precision.
It's just science, folks.
The purpose of the strike zone is to make pitchers throw the ball where batters have a fair opportunity to hit it. The vagueness of the definition of the zone is not a weakness in the rule--rather it assigns responsibility to the umpire to account for the infinite variety of stances, body shapes and uniform preferences to determine a fair zone. That subjectivity does more to protect the fairness of the competition than artificial accuracy would.
And by the way, if you really want to kill baseball in poorer neighborhoods, in poorer school districts, and at smaller colleges, create the expectation that balls and strikes need to be judged by expensive sensors and trained operators.