DVRd this last week and watched it last night. Major disparity on calls favoring home teams by umpires. What are your thoughts on technology augmenting the homeplate Umpires in baseball?
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Umpires are good but Technology is better. I understand some are entertained by the "human element" (and especially the following arguements) but Baseball does not Need that. the human element of the Players is entertaining enough.
I think if Technology is just as fast and much more accurate it should be used. just don't delay the game as Long as the instant replays, just have a green light indicating a strike within a second of the pitch crossing the plate which should be possible (not sure how fast it is now).
the accuracy is not even Close I think pitch fx is at least 10 times more accurate if not more than that. this has nothing to do with umps being bad. they are better than ever but there just is a Limit to the human eye at 90+ mph.
Our grand father's type of baseball is best I think. No technology just good old honest baseball. Even if it is flawed. I would have preferred no replays at all but I can live with how it's done now.
Automated strike zones would absolutely ruin the game. If people already don't want to watch baseball, try taking away umpires and having a buzzing sound for balls and strikes.
Have an umpire with an ear piece? Holy Rasslin' fakery, Batman! People would revolt. Humans want to watch humans, including human arbiters.
Teaching Elder posted:Automated strike zones would absolutely ruin the game. If people already don't want to watch baseball, try taking away umpires and having a buzzing sound for balls and strikes.
Have an umpire with an ear piece? Holy Rasslin' fakery, Batman! People would revolt. Humans want to watch humans, including human arbiters.
Absolutely agree with Elder automated anything would definitely ruin baseball. Hope it never gets to that or even what football is doing don't like it all.
I like what your coach said about run/pass options and linemen down field.
(I'm a 'Bama grad.)
As an umpire, I have a variety of feelings on the subject:
1. If it's true that hitting a baseball is the hardest thing to do in sports, it may also be true that judging whether any part of a pitched ball passes through any part of the strike zone is the hardest call for a sports official to make. In other sports, officials judge where balls land or where feet are positioned in relation to painted lines. In a baseball game, the plate umpire has to make a couple hundred calls a game about the location of spinning, sinking balls in flight when pitchers are trying to pitch as close to the edge as they can and hitters are trying to be as selective as they can about which close pitches nick the zone and which ones don't. Thus, when a writer trying just a little to hard to be hip refers to "lovably blind" umpires, I assume he has no clue about the subject he has undertaken to write about.
2. I have no sympathy for the argument that human error is part of the game to the extent that it encourages complacence with unnecessary inaccuracy. However, I have a lot of tolerance for errors made by trained, prepared, conscientious, objective umpires. I had a professor in business school who often said the job of managers isn't to be right all the time; their job is to decide and to hope enough of their decisions are right to help their companies make money and fulfill their obligations to customers, employees, and the community. This principle applies to baseball, too. There is a game to be played. It can't drag on for days like a cricket match, and it is more important to maintain its rhythms than to adjudicate every fine-as-frog's-hair distinction to scientific precision. As long as the calls are being made conscientiously by an umpire with training appropriate to the level of ball being played, that's almost always good enough to have a fair competition.
3. "Getting it right" has its limits. Although I know I make mistakes every game, probably every inning, I also know my view of the strike zone is better than the batter's, and my ability to tell where the pitch was is almost always better than the batter's ability to predict where it will be in the future. So when it comes down to that hard-to-call pitch, if I mistakenly ring up a batter, the "injustice" is less outrageous than it seems. Sometimes the batter does get hosed, but it's almost never because of his superior perceptual skill: when he takes a close pitch with two strikes, it's usually because he got fooled or frozen or handcuffed by a pretty good pitch. I don't lose sleep over missing a two-strike pitch by a fraction of a ball's radius--that batter had it within his power to overrule my feeble judgment. If he's right and I'm wrong, it's usually a coincidence--unless I really blow it, which I admit can happen from time to time.
4. The object of umpiring is not perfection; it is fair competition and good sportsmanship. If you want perfect, you're missing the point of sports.
5. Despite these observations, if I had the ability and authorization to resort to technological resources on a limited number of important calls and it could be done without tedious delays, I would welcome the assistance.
If you think balls and strikes are inconsistent - the spotting of the ball in football is awful. The idea that a chain is the tool of measurement for first downs is even crazier.
I saw something on Real Sports that MLB umpires miss about 25-33% of pitches within 2 inches of the edge of the strike zone. No doubt many will disagree with that assessment and give you the bromides about the box is the same and therefor wrong. Turns out they can adjust the zone in 2 seconds with a mouse. The camera can see better than the human eye. It is science folks.
So coming soon (within 10 years and maybe 5) - Balls and strikes by machine. Sensors in footballs to measure first downs and if touchdowns break the plane. Pucks will have sensors to see if they cross the goal line. All measured by a guy sitting in a booth anywhere in the world. They do it with the lines in tennis and it works.
There will be resistance particularly in baseball because we hang on to our "traditions" but it will work. The idea that an entire game can be played without one bitching episode about balls and strikes is actually very appealing. Nothing detracts more from the game than the endless huffing and puffing by batters, chirping from dugouts and umpires staring guys down. It is really irritating and the game would be better if the ball hit the glove and the call was made immediately and the game moved on.
Can someone tell me what adjustments an "operator" would have to make as each batter steps to the plate? As I understand it, PitchFx or whatever the system(s) are called requires an operator to adjust the upper and lower limits of the strike zone. Maybe they could incorporate something like NASCAR and have a laser inspection - before and after each game - and measure the distance between the hollow beneath the knee cap and whatever the top of the zone is defined as. If you want precision, you will need to have precision on the front end when setting up each individuals strike zone.
Forgot to add - the player cannot change footwear between inspections.
If you think balls and strikes are inconsistent - the spotting of the ball in football is awful. The idea that a chain is the tool of measurement for first downs is even crazier.
I can see it now - the umpire starts to spot the ball. He puts his hand to his ear so he can hear the operator a little better through his earpiece. Th operator tells him "A little more.....a little more....just a bit more.....perfect!" Or maybe the ball lights up like the studfinder and the ump moves it along until the light stays on.
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.
"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."
Swampboy. Swampboy. Swampboy. (Sigh) THIS is what we have the government for!
3. "Getting it right" has its limits. Although I know I make mistakes every game, probably every inning, I also know my view of the strike zone is better than the batter's, and my ability to tell where the pitch was is almost always better than the batter's ability to predict where it will be in the future. So when it comes down to that hard-to-call pitch, if I mistakenly ring up a batter, the "injustice" is less outrageous than it seems. Sometimes the batter does get hosed, but it's almost never because of his superior perceptual skill: when he takes a close pitch with two strikes, it's usually because he got fooled or frozen or handcuffed by a pretty good pitch. I don't lose sleep over missing a two-strike pitch by a fraction of a ball's radius--that batter had it within his power to overrule my feeble judgment. If he's right and I'm wrong, it's usually a coincidence--unless I really blow it, which I admit can happen from time to time.
Very good post, but I want to highlight just this because I wonder how it differs at various levels.
At the highest possible level of the game, if you see Buster Posey, for example, while batting, dispute a strike called by Joe West, for example, I believe that, despite West having the better view from behind the dish, the odds are that Posey's perceptual skill is better, not just because Posey is known as being among the best at what he does and West is known as being among the worst of his peers, but because the natural selection funnel that is baseball has proven that any top-of-the-lineup major league hitter belongs to a tiny elite proven to be the best in the world at recognizing and hitting balls in the strike zone. West has gone through a selection process as well but that process can't have been nearly as rigorous. It's not like all the umpires in the world have been tested competitively and only the best of the best of the best make it to MLB. You couldn't do that. Or could you? Perhaps the way to use technology is not to have it make calls live in games but to use it extensively it select those umpires who truly have a consistently elite ability to perceive tiny increments of space and movement at very high speed.
At the 14U level, for another example, yeah I'm going to agree that the average ump sees the zone better than the average player. But at the level I've watched the most over the past few years, HS Varsity, well, I wish I could agree that most batters who are mistakenly rung up on a 2 strike count are frozen or handcuffed, because I've seen far too many rung up on balls 6" or more outside the zone. But the variation is incredibly wide. Some games, the guy behind the plate has the best set of eyes on the field. Some games he has the worst. Maybe it would be good to use technology for testing at that level too.
If the game could go on as shown in the 1st vid in the article, what about the game would be affected negatively? Remember, the only pitches being called by technology would be pitches not swung at.
Swampboy posted: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.
Here is the full quote:
The camera can see better than the human eye. It is science folks.
It is important not to change the context. There are no eyes that can see better than a camera...that is science and an unalterable fact. FWIW I would take any electronic measurement to that of the human eye or hand as superior 99.99999% of the time.
We are talking pro and college ball. There is no replay in HS or youth sports and there doesn't need to be. That is a red herring.
As for the argument that rules should be vague and defined with a certain amount of randomness by human beings is a very quaint 19th century thought in a time before the movie camera was invented. Does that apply to out/safe calls? How about fair or foul? That boat has sailed and the answer is no it does not apply we can and should do better. Why? Because camera's see better than the human eye...there is that pesky science thing again. Darn it works every time!
This is like batting helmets. When we finally do it we'll wonder two things: 1) What took us so long to do it? 2) What was the big deal?
Supplying the context about cameras doesn't address my point. I don't care how many 9's you stick to the right of the decimal point, precisely measuring the ball's relation to an imprecise point still produces an imprecise result.
My comment about youth and high school ball was not a red herring because these things do trickle down, as seen by the cool stuff they do at PG events.
However, if you want to talk about red herrings, you dragged several across the trail: batting helmets (this discussion has nothing to do about safety); fair/foul calls and safe out calls (exactly the sort of help I welcomed in my initial post).
And you appear to have distorted my point about the role of the umpire. It had nothing to do with quaint ideas about how the game may or may not have been played in the 19th century. It had to do with understanding the relative limits and advantages of subjective and objective knowledge. A blind spot of our age is to disparage subjective knowledge and to falsely equate it with randomness.
Subjectivity refers to something being determined by the peculiar condition of an individual mind. If the individual mind is one conditioned to know the game, its rules, its customs and if it is determined to promote fair competition and good sportsmanship, subjectivity is the best guarantor against randomness.
Meanwhile, your camera will give you false confidence in its precise comparison to an imprecise standard and it will be objectively fooled whenever subjective decisions are needed to correct for players who wear their pants artificially low or to decide where the shoulder ends and the neck begins or to determine where the zone should be for a player who does not have a normal stance.
We have some common ground. I agree that fair/foul calls invite precise objective measurement like on a tennis court. And I agree that safe/out and catch/no catch calls often invite scrutiny from better angles or replay at slower speeds. However, I continue to believe that the strike zone inherently requires subjective judgment--and there's nothing quaint or archaic or unscientific about my reasons.
As the dad of a pitcher, I hate the idea of a camera replacing a human. After all, this is a game, not life or death. I think the umps are pretty darn good at what they do. Of course they make mistakes, but for the most part, when slow motion replay is shown, they are correct more often than not it seems. Maybe I am just old fashion, but that is how I see it. The truth of the matter is that it doesn't really matter what I think as "they" have never asked for my opinion.
Stats from the Real Sports Episode - Professor Toby Moskowitz at Yale University evaluated every pitch in the last 3 years aobut 1M in all.
MLB claims 97% correct calls by Umps
Since 2013 Moskowitz found that Umps are only 88% accurate - 1 of 8 calls wrong and about 30,000 mistakes a year.......including the easy calls right down the gut or way off the plate not requiring a decision
When the balls are around the plate within a +/-2" or 4" border of the zone, inside averaging about 32 pitches per game......they miss at a higher rate - incorrect calls are 31.7% of the time. Just under 1 of 3 calls in that tight zone
When they are given another 1" of coverage to a 6" border total they miss about 25.9%
Also discovered bias in games favoring the home team, 8 more mistakes a game, up and inside the zone and a strike on home team...will be called ball, but visitor called a strike
Also Cubs beat Cardinals in on last call which was a strike, not a ball & run was walked in on that call. Cubs were home team the night after Moskowitz completed his study.
Playoff baseball - 2011 Game 7 Cardinals vs Rangers : Umps missed 14 calls in favor of Cardinals and only 3 in favor of Rangers - Cardinals advanced.
MLB uses the technology to grade Umpires and improve their performance
Pitches were also evaluated by a 3rd party independent expert and all the math checked out and confirmed Yale's findings.
Things that make you go hmmm...........
One thing that I have found is that those who go to critiquing the judges are usually wrong. The other night the MLB network hosts were about to blow a gasket over a missed ground-rule double that ended up scoring a winning run. The talking-head went on-and-on about it and how they were going to have to come back and finish the game, and the umpires had done the team wrong by leaving the field and refusing to make the two teams come back out and play. Turns out, the umpires had done their jobs correctly according to the rules as laid out. Can one argue that the rules pertaining to end of game situations weren't well thought out? Perhaps. But the accuser wound up with egg on his face, because the umps were right.
I would imagine that MLB, if consulted, would have something else to say about Mr. Moskowitz's position on what is a ball or a strike, and that they would likely be right.
But, if one wanted to remove the home team bias, a rule could be instituted that does not allow fans to yell at or critique the umps.
Crazy, you say? I would agree with you. I just also think it's crazy to take away human umpires. Who wants to go to a game where they either a) aren't allowed to work an ump (per my hypothetical), or b) don't do so because some computer system has sterilized the game?
End the end, we are not talking about children's lives here. It's a game...a pastime. The human element makes it more enjoyable. I can understand some replay. But turning officiating over to computers is not the way to go.
Something that makes me go hmmmm . . .
If you go to the PITCHf/x site or watch the televised depiction of the pitch locations, they represent the strike zone as a two-dimensional rectangle.
But we know the strike zone has both depth and shape. It is a rectangular solid for the first 8-1/2" of its depth, then it becomes increasingly narrow until it reaches the point of the plate.
I see lots of pitches become strikes that are not strikes at the front of the plate, such as the bottom-of-ball/top-of-zone/back of zone pitch. And I see lots of pitches that appear to be strikes based on where they are received that didn't fall within the 17-inch breadth of the plate until after they reached the depth where the plate narrows.
I work hard to keep my face in the zone to see those pitches.
When I see academic certainty that relies on two dimensional representations of the zone, I remain skeptical.
I'm thinking I read somewhere once that the PITCHf/x or some other similar product was in fact two dimensional at the front edge of the plate. I can only assume the current technology can model the 3-D strike zone and track the path of the ball through the entire length (depth?) of the zone. At a minimum, you could get away with maybe 3-4 two dimensional cuts through the zone and get a pretty good 3-D representation without using any additional technology.
Shoveit4Ks posted:Stats from the Real Sports Episode - Professor Toby Moskowitz at Yale University evaluated every pitch in the last 3 years aobut 1M in all.
MLB claims 97% correct calls by Umps
Since 2013 Moskowitz found that Umps are only 88% accurate - 1 of 8 calls wrong and about 30,000 mistakes a year.......including the easy calls right down the gut or way off the plate not requiring a decision
When the balls are around the plate within a +/-2" or 4" border of the zone, inside averaging about 32 pitches per game......they miss at a higher rate - incorrect calls are 31.7% of the time. Just under 1 of 3 calls in that tight zone
When they are given another 1" of coverage to a 6" border total they miss about 25.9%
Also discovered bias in games favoring the home team, 8 more mistakes a game, up and inside the zone and a strike on home team...will be called ball, but visitor called a strike
Also Cubs beat Cardinals in on last call which was a strike, not a ball & run was walked in on that call. Cubs were home team the night after Moskowitz completed his study.
Playoff baseball - 2011 Game 7 Cardinals vs Rangers : Umps missed 14 calls in favor of Cardinals and only 3 in favor of Rangers - Cardinals advanced.
MLB uses the technology to grade Umpires and improve their performance
Pitches were also evaluated by a 3rd party independent expert and all the math checked out and confirmed Yale's findings.
Things that make you go hmmm...........
Little hard to give or deny credence to this without his methodology. For example, if he's using a strike zone that is 17" wide, it's incorrect. The strike zone is actually about 20" wide.
When you say about 33% of umpire calls are incorrect, you're assuming the computer models are 100% accurate. I don't completely trust it due to many of the factors Swampboy pointed out.
For those of you who've been around a while, you know I'm old school and don't like technology applied to baseball. I really think it would lessen the enjoyment of the game. Just as players are human and make mistakes, so are umpires. Umpires are as much an integral part of the game as players are and to take away from that human element of the game detracts from the character of the game - in my opinion.
While current replay rules seem ok, I still don't really like it. Mistakes are still made, even with replay... it's not perfect because you have humans interpreting what they see, or the angle isn't right or whatever the case might be. I also don't like the time it takes. Can't tell you how many times I've seen a replay and it is obvious within 15 seconds what the right call is. Yet we sit around waiting or 2 or 3 or 5 minutes for the call to be made. Really takes away from the flow of the game.
If you want 100% perfection on balls and strikes, play MLB 2016 on Xbox. If you want the real deal, keep the human element.
It does suck to be on the wrong end of a bad call. But being on the fortunate end of a bad call is like having a birthday cake for the whole team. Those ups and downs make sports interesting. Unfortunately strike zones judged by machines is coming and there isn't anyone who can do to stop it...except for maybe John Connor.
hsbaseball101 posted:It does suck to be on the wrong end of a bad call. But being on the fortunate end of a bad call is like having a birthday cake for the whole team. Those ups and downs make sports interesting. Unfortunately strike zones judged by machines is coming and there isn't anyone who can do to stop it...except for maybe John Connor.
Here's the thing...when it comes to this, baseball fans fall into two categories: those that view a baseball game as a continuous form of entertainment in its totality, and those that view a baseball game as a means to an outcome. The former is akin to someone watching a movie for the cinematography, for the character development, for all the pieces that contribute to a given moment of entertainment, and the latter watch a movie for the plot development and the ending.
The trouble is that if this is indeed inevitable, it will be a bell that can't be unrung. And if the fans in the first group find that their entertainment value in baseball is significantly diminished, then MLB will lose fans, and I see no way of fixing that after the fact. At least if it's still hypothetical, both groups can maintain interest--those that enjoy baseball now, and those that pine for that perfection in the future.
How would the computer account for the batter that moves? While in THEORY the batter should be set, but what if they scrunch down as the ball is coming in....would the computer be able to adjust to the NEW strike zone that batter just created?
Like I told my brother-in-law, if they put a sensor on my knees and mid-section, my body will be so scrunched up that the pitcher will be trying to hit a 6 inch vertical zone.
In the just my opinion category... The strike zone should be a set area regardless of the batter. Right now the strike zone is completely biased against tall hitters - another reason you see so few of them. They still call the low strike but they do in fact increase the height of the zone. And somebody crouching does NOT deserve a lower strike zone. And if a shorter batter has to hit a chest high fastball so be it. Maybe then he will know how the tall guy feels getting strikes called at the shins.
I thought the show was interesting and the data was something to think about. Umpires calling balls and strikes is the holy grail in baseball, otherwise technology has been used to augment/improve the game over the years and has helped get many calls right. Umpires are human and humans will make mistakes and continue to do so. I would argue that the depth of field or 2D argument while valid to inquire on is no less an issue the an umpire trying to determine the low point or outside part of the zone on the opposite side of where he sets up behind the catcher.
They can also add 2 more cameras, one for lefties and another for righties to get that 3rd dimension and alternate per batter. Once they do that, the argument that it isnt accurate or as accurate goes on the window.
Wondering if this technology would be accurate is a little like thinking you can hit the inside too if the ball and magically hit a line drive in the left center gap. Baseball people have to embrace technology and quit sticking their head in the sand. We have technology that can calculate spin rates - do we doubt that? If we believe in tracman and pitch fx and all that stuff this seems pretty basic to me. And why would we enjoy mistakes? Nobody cares about the umpires. If the whole game could be done electronically somehow rendering umpires obsolete it would be a better game.
Shoveit4Ks posted:DVRd this last week and watched it last night. Major disparity on calls favoring home teams by umpires. What are your thoughts on technology augmenting the homeplate Umpires in baseball?
The key word for me is "augmentation". If we have augmentation, then I'm all for umpire and computer working together behind home plate. Any tool that can be used to help with accuracy or clarification is a step in the right direction. There is no doubt in my mind, I will see this happen in my lifetime. The stakes and money are too big in MLB for it not to happen.
Professional tennis has been using computerized line calls for years. It amazes me how often the players are wrong and the line judges are right. Love him or hate him, we have John McEnroe to thank for the early "hawkeye" system of the early 1990s. Now it is a computerized representation from many cameras. It is a great tool to call upon for a player (and umpire) who thinks they've been "hooked". The technology is similar between tennis and baseball, however how they implement in MLB is the key challenge. Once they figure that out, I think we'll be good to go.
JMO.
CaCO3Girl posted:How would the computer account for the batter that moves? While in THEORY the batter should be set, but what if they scrunch down as the ball is coming in....would the computer be able to adjust to the NEW strike zone that batter just created?
No inside info, just logical hypothetical thinking.... each player gets his pic taken once before season - in a normal stance. Measurements are made and his zone is determined. Or, there can be a variety of sizes of zones to choose from based on player height... each player is assigned a S, M, L, XL or whatever. Then, that appropriate 3D zone is applied electronically. Not really rocket science. Ball touches zone = strike.
Batter moving does not affect zone now and it wouldn't then.
They set up the strike zone when each player approaches the plate and its saved for that batter. If another batter comes up in his place, they adjust the zone by dragging the upper and lower lines as required to adjust the zone.
CaCO3Girl posted:How would the computer account for the batter that moves? While in THEORY the batter should be set, but what if they scrunch down as the ball is coming in....would the computer be able to adjust to the NEW strike zone that batter just created?
Shoveit4Ks posted:They set up the strike zone when each player approaches the plate and its saved for that batter. If another batter comes up in his place, they adjust the zone by dragging the upper and lower lines as required to adjust the zone.
CaCO3Girl posted:How would the computer account for the batter that moves? While in THEORY the batter should be set, but what if they scrunch down as the ball is coming in....would the computer be able to adjust to the NEW strike zone that batter just created?
Yeah, I just don't know how "correct" the computer would be when it comes to these guys:
http://www.thesportster.com/ba...stances-of-all-time/
EDIT: Also...would this cause a generation of hitters to change their batting stance to hunched over so the scientific zone could be tricked? I'm having a picture in my head of a person being very hunched over, having a very small strike zone according to the computer, then straighten up and hit the perfect pitch.
cabbagedad posted:CaCO3Girl posted:How would the computer account for the batter that moves? While in THEORY the batter should be set, but what if they scrunch down as the ball is coming in....would the computer be able to adjust to the NEW strike zone that batter just created?
No inside info, just logical hypothetical thinking.... each player gets his pic taken once before season - in a normal stance. Measurements are made and his zone is determined. Or, there can be a variety of sizes of zones to choose from based on player height... each player is assigned a S, M, L, XL or whatever. Then, that appropriate 3D zone is applied electronically. Not really rocket science. Ball touches zone = strike.
Batter moving does not affect zone now and it wouldn't then.
Did you guys forget about my recommendation to use NASCAR's laser inspection? Had some time to think about it and now think having each player get modeled in 3-D would be an even better idea. TV could trot out the 3-D image along with the assigned strike zone and replace those stupid real life PITCHf/x replays with something that looks like MLB 2016. Come to think of it, MLB 2016 could actually use the actual 3-D imaging for their game simulations. Maybe TV could also have the 3-D image react appropriately given the call.
How about using the heads up display used by fighter pilots. I heard the F35 helmet syncs up with exterior cameras so when the pilot looks at the floor between his feet, he actually see the ground below him. Pipe in the strike zone to the heads up display and maybe have it light up with the path of the ball and you've got this thing figured out.
Again I could care less what stance the hitter uses. The zone would be the zone if I were in charge. Same if you stood straight as an arrow. Same if you hunched like Oscar gamble. Same if you are 6'11" and same if you are 5'3". Like 20" off the ground to 44" off the ground. If it were different by a couple inches one way or another so be it. But the exact same size for every hitter. Because 6'3"+ represents only a couple percent of society nobody really cares how hard it is for the tall guy. constantly called upon to hit balls at their shins. But heaven forbid the short guy have to go up and get one at his chest! Yes this is personal for me. I plead 100% guilty. My sons chances of being a college positional player are slim even if travel ball had an accurate electronic strike zone. He kind of just ain't good enough. But in the meantime he is good enough to have some fun as a kid and get some hits. But where do you think a kid is going to pitch a 6'4" hitter? And if he legit punches him out at the knees then kudos to the pitcher. But when umpires CONSISTENTLY ignore where the knees are and call strikes like they would for a 5'4" kid and he is asked to hit a ball on the outside corner (or 4" further out) and at his shins??? I realize this kind of change would be further down the road for youth ball and it will never benefit him but for all the talk kids who follow I say go electronic and get rid of mr biased (or just plain ignorant as in not thinking about it - not as in rude) umpire.
Screwball, all great ideas. I was thinking more along the lines of chip implants just above the knees and in the chest that automatically synch with the Fx system. These could also be used for tracking the players, monitoring their intake or ingestion of chemicals and predict future medical issues.
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.
CaCO3Girl posted:
How would the computer account for the batter that moves? While in THEORY the batter should be set, but what if they scrunch down as the ball is coming in....would the computer be able to adjust to the NEW strike zone that batter just created?
The STRIKE ZONE is that area over home plate the upper limit of which is a horizontal line at the midpoint between the top of the shoulders and the top of the uniform pants, and the lower level is a line at the hollow beneath the kneecap. The Strike Zone shall be determined from the batter’s stance as the batter is prepared to swing at a pitched ball. (For diagram of STRIKE ZONE see Appendix 5.)
There are likely a lot of different ways to interpret “the batter’s stance as s/he’s prepared to swing at a pitched ball” so I’m fairly sure everything from having the zone based strictly on a player’s height to having it adjusted for every pitch would eventually be backed by someone.
That being said, something that can’t be argued is that once programmed, a computer will make the correct “adjustments” much more consistently than any human. Remember, the computer will make the same “adjustment” no matter what, while those same “adjustments” will be made differently for every umpire and every differing set of conditions.
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.