Agree with both of you. The balls and strikes were horrible both ways last night. The JD Martinez strikeout was borderline criminal negligence and I am an Astro fan.
I am one who is a traditionalist with regard to the robo ump discussion. I think things should stay as they are but there has to be accountability. The technology is already there and the umps get graded on balls and strikes every game. There just seems to be nothing done with the information. If an ump is consistently below par with his calls he should go, period.
An interesting side note from WWBA in Jupiter a couple of weeks ago. It seems PG was testing a hybrid robo ump arrangement during our exhibition game. The ump had an earpiece wired to a receiver on his belt. There was a PG official sitting at the scorers table with a laptop monitoring each pitch via the TrackMan system that is permanently installed on the spring training field we were playin on. It didn’t seem like the PG rep was making every ball and strike call but he definite made one in particular. My son was on the mound and throws a front hip 2 seam to a lefty batter that ran onto the inside corner. The ump hesitated, the TrackMan screen indicated the pitch was a strike and the PG official said “that was a strike” into his handset. The ump made the strike call. The PG rep at the computer had an earpiece so perhaps the ump was able ask on pitches he was unsure about. It was pretty crazy.
The red box on the top left would read “out” with a red background for balls out of the zone and “in” with a green background for balls in the zone.