Swampboy posted:luv baseball posted:The entire thread comes down to this: Would the game be better if the strike zone caused zero bitching? I believe the answer is yes.
The path to that is to make it electronic. It will be more precise than any human being can possibly make it...and far more consistent from pitch to pitch, game to game. It will not detract from the pace of the game and in fact will speed it up. And when it happens and the bitching stops....everyone (or nearly so) is probably going to feel the same as I do.
It will not bleed down to HS or youth ball. Replay has not for anything else and for football it has been around 20 years. Maybe some day it will but by then it will probably cost $100.
Three points,
First, you continue to refuse to address the issue of your misplaced confidence in the value of precisely measuring the relationship to an imprecisely defined strike zone.
Second, you are dreaming if you think electronic strike calling will lead to zero bitching. There will be tons of complaints about how the electronic strike zone rewards and punishes certain hitter body types or stances, and there will be tons of complaints about how it rewards or punishes certain pitches depending on the type and degree of late movement they have, and there will be suspicions of clubs or players figuring out how to game the system. If it is discovered, for example, that the system rewards the top-of-ball/bottom-zone/front-of-zone pitch, you'll hear complaints from hitters about having to swing at spiked curve balls.
Third, your quest to eliminate the human factor is futile because humans will design the system and create the business rules and install and calibrate and operate the equipment. How many times have you heard someone call a computer, smart phone, TV remote, or some other electronic device stupid for doing exactly what it was programmed to do when that doesn't happen to be what the user wants done?
If your proposal goes through, I guarantee there will be a pitch in a big situation that looks to all the world like a clear ball or a clear strike that the machine calls the other way because of how it defines the zone for that hitter or because of how it converts a 3-d figure into a 2-d image. And there will be no human accountable for the injustice because you thought the human factor was a quaint 19th century relic.
Good luck with that.
Here's my issue with your defense of your argument. You continue to support a view that basically states that in the absence of absolute perfection, there should be no attempt to make incremental strides of improvement. (the crux of points one and three above).
As to point two, I agree, there will always be some element of disdain, but at least with a computerized system, we'll have consistency. This, more than any other reason mentioned, would be the greatest gain in my opinion.
How many times has a zone changed during a game. A pitch called for a strike the first three innings suddenly becomes a ball? Frustrating for hitter and pitcher. How many times has the bat been taken out of the players hand by a horrendously interpreted zone? I've watched umpires set up over the left shoulder of a catcher for the first half of a game, then shift to the right shoulder to bear their weight on the other leg (because the first leg got tired the first half of the game). At least with some computerized system, the zone is known and consistent, not just throughout the entire game, but the entire season. This will be a great improvement for the game overall. It will also alleviate an umpire squeezing a pitcher that has drawn his ire, or widening the zone for the batter who has done the same.
As to your final comment, yes, there will likely be times where all of the viewing world has an opinion other than what the computer rendered, much like we have with great frequency today with humans making these calls. My argument is that this will become far less frequent, and the pitch called would be the same call B9, full count, 2 out as it would be in the top of the second with no count. To me, that's better and if it's better, it's an improvement for the game.