I feel like I write more about umpires than many people do, and it’s because I feel strongly that what happens on the field isn’t subject to interpretation. If a player’s foot hits a base before a glove with a ball in it touches that player, that player is entitled to the base, he’s safe, and that doesn’t change because some middle-management functionary says otherwise. If a breaking ball crosses the plate at a point between a batter’s knees and the midpoint between his shoulders and pants, it’s a strike, no matter what the anachronism behind the plate thinks he sees. In eighteendicketysix, a human being was state-of-the-art technology for making these decisions. Now, you can get better information-we do get better information-by using better technology. Championships should be decided by the players and by what actually happened, not by what somebody thinks happened.
Now, whenever I bring this up, I get a chorus and three verses of “But It Would Take the Human Element out of the Game.” My problem with this is that the complainer makes themselves heard via a global communications network, accessed via microcomputer and wireless technology, which allows their opinion to be seen by billions of people. Once done expressing themselves, and perhaps feeling peckish, they can microwave a pizza, or even research a better dinner option, using a powerful search engine that has indexed vast stores of knowledge about the human experience, the universe, and local eateries. Without moving from the spot from which they keyed in their opinion, they can read countless reviews of potential dining options. Once they settle on one, they can punch a button on their keychain to start their car, activating the seat warmers while they turn on their high-priced home-alarm system. While walking to the car, they can call their spouse using their handheld telephone to see what they would like for dinner, and when the call isn’t picked up, they can follow up by typing in a message that will arrive instantly. Inside the car, our poster uses his Global Positioning System to find the best route to his culinary choice, and punches up a station from the hundreds offered via the small unit that pulls signals from a satellite orbiting the planet. Distracted by the choice between baseball talk and light rock, he is jolted back by the beeping of his vehicle, which has sensed that he’s backing into traffic and alerted him, saving him thousands of dollars in damages and potential neck and back pain. Along the way downtown, he pays a toll not by scrambling for change but by slowing down a bit and allowing the overhead sensors to read his in-car transponder. Similarly, he pays for his dinner not with cash but with a debit card that instantly transfers the money out of his account to the resturant. Despite being a hardcore baseball fan, he drives back calmly, listening the the start of the next game on his satellite radio system-the road team’s broadcast, as he can’t stand the blowhard who does color for the home team. He pulls into his driveway, lights triggered by motion sensors so that he can park safely and walk to his door, which he opens not with a key but a keypad. Safely home, but a bit chilly, he dials up the thermostat a few degrees, takes his food and settles in front of his 52-inch high-definition television. Despite having listened to a couple innings in the car, he fires up his DVR and starts watching from the first pitch, fast-forwarding past the commercials, rewinding to take another look at his favorite player’s diving catch in the second.
Satisfied with his meal and pleased by his team’s performance, he reaches for his laptop computer, less than an inch thick and light as a feather, to rejoin the conversation. He’s pleased to find that three people who he’s never met agree with him about the role of umpires in major league baseball.
I assume that people have graded the umpires using pitchFX, but I've never seen the data. Do you know how accurate MLB umpires really are at calling balls and strikes?
I did a little research into where balls and strikes are actually called: http://902a.com/baseball-prospectus-idol-entry/. Basically, there an area about 7 inches wide all the way around the strike zone where you can't be sure what umpire is going to call.
I'd certainly like to see a more accurate system of calling the plays, too.
What I worry about is not "taking the human element out of the game", but ending up with a system which causes the game to screech to a halt whenever there's a doubt. (I find it ironic that instant replay in football often causes the game to stop just when it's at its most exciting.) I'd be willing to give up a little time for better accuracy, but that amount of time is measured in seconds.
Agreed -- pace is important in baseball, aesthetically and practically, and in my opinion its dramatic slowing over the years is a much bigger human-element problem than bad calls. Replay would only exacerbate this problem.
MLB should shorten pre- and in-game ceremonies; enforce the "pitch clock"; get rid of all of the travel days between playoff games; sign a TV deal that allows the playoffs to unfold continuously, rather than having to pause to fit a predetermined TV schedule that has nothing to do with series outcomes; and do something about time-calling for hitting-armor adjustment.
Let's lobby for all of these things and then lobby for umpiring reform.
That said, maybe there's a middle ground. A head ump, for example, could sit in a booth and use pitchFX to call balls and strikes. He could also -- within a predetermined and very short period of time after a given play (fifteen seconds?) -- make use of replay to overrule an egregious call. Such a system would eliminate a managerial power of appeal but serve as a check on human error in umpiring.
The problem with reducing the length of playoffs is that it would take a serious chunk out of revenues. Especially at the DS level, at least 2 games would have to overlap on days with all 4 matchups playing.
The ceremonies are ridiculous. Who actually likes them? I want to see my team get their rings and gold gloves and mvp awards, but beyond that there isn't much else that needs to be done in plain sight of a TV camera. Get the ceremonies in between the end of BP and 1st pitch. Rather than making the start of game time depend on when a ceremony ends, make the ceremony end early if game time rolls around.
You don't remove umpires from most levels of play. Little Jimmy's fourth grade baseball team is not a billion-dollar enterprise. The fans, players, coaches, and owners deserve to have the game played at the most equitable possible level.
However, here's a different question. We have data on the efficacy of a certain umpire at calling balls and strikes, to the point where we can say that so-and-so will 40% of the time give you a low slider for a strike. Does that come into the planning phase of a pitcher's gameplan?
We get enough bullpucky from coaches and "fans" as it is, and how we're ruining little Johnny's big league career. I really don't want to have to be compared to machines.
The problem with making calls on the bases via the TV feed is that the angles are all different, and not the ones umps are trained to take. Not that the MLB umps always get the right either; the next time I see one moving who actually stops to set as the play gets there will be the first. There's probably some room for a pitch f/x system, though.
I tend to think accountability, rather than automation, is the answer, even at the plate (though I can be swayed on that.) While the pro guys are really really good, there's no reason not to weed them out until we get the best of the best.
Being perfect is the best solution, but in most cases, it's really hard for me to get upset on a call that is ridiculously close. So many factors of luck go into the play itself, the fact that a player may have been safe by an fraction of a second but was called out doesn't bother me much since it is really just a coin flip.
Run scoring would sky rocket if you eliminated the neighborhood play at 2B or looked at what really happened at home instead of the ball beat the runner so he is out.
The neighborhood play bugs the crap out of me for some reason. If it was written in the rules, maybe it wouldn't, but sometimes it's so blatant that I wish an ump would call a guy safe just to make a point once in a while.
I'm totally with you. If MLB doesn't want collisions, then change the rules. Chalk a 3x3 area around second base where a fielder with the ball can initiate a forceout. Or make all plays at the plate a force play -- I've actually played in softball leagues that do that. That's what the NFL does -- you may agree or disagree with the Cindy Brady rules protecting QBs, but at least the league went out and made it an actual rule. But until MLB changes the rules, they ought to be enforced, else why do they exist?
The neighborhood play may be different from the others being discussed here, in that there's a clear baseball reason to allow the thing to get called: desire to minimize mayhem between fielders and runners. Steinbonehead's rant earlier in the year about pitchers being too valuable to run the bases, although ridiculously self-serving and arrogant, had a grain of truth in it: players are now commodities, and there is something to be said for reducing (although not eliminating) the opportunities for those commodities to be permanently damaged during a game. Accordingly, rather than either eliminating the neighborhood play or making it subject to review, etc., it might be best just to accept a rule change to codify the thing and let umpires continue to use their best judgment in enforcing it, against a rule/standard more better defined than it is today.
Note that I definitely don't feel the same way about calling balls and strikes. That simply needs to be done better, and if humans can't hack it, well, Cyclops didn't kill pro tennis, quite the contrary...
Blocking the plate is not explicitly in violation of the rules. Rule 2.00 is the Definitions of Terms listed alphabetically. In regards to obstruction, the rules state:
"OBSTRUCTION is the act of a fielder who, while not in possession of the ball and not in the act of fielding the ball, impedes the progress of any runner."
So rule 7.06, which deals with obstruction, does not come into play unless the fielder (it is generally the catcher at home plate) does not have the ball or is not in the process of receiving the ball. The Note on Rule 7.06(b) explains this situation:
"NOTE: The catcher, without the ball in his possession, has no right to block the pathway of the runner attempting to score. The base line belongs to the runner and the catcher should be there only when he is fielding a ball or when he already has the ball in his hand."
Also, middle infielders are known to block second base when attempting to tag out a runner trying to steal second. This is in accordance with the rules too.
I rarely say this ... but I agree with Joe. Time for balls and strikes to be called by pitchFx, and if the technology is ready for other calls to be subject to replay.
I agree with Joe too. Half the time these guys don't even position themselves for the right angle to call the play. That Rox-Phils game was absurd. You'd think the best of the best umps would be there and that's obviously not the case.
The umpiring in the Yankees-Twins game was also stupid. I think the HP ump must have been watching a different game when he was umping that one.
I do have a problem with removing the human element from the game...but isn't that what the players are for? Aren't they human? I guess I'd just rather see the game being decided by the players than by the non-players.
Aren't most of the pitchFX and k-zone strike zones based on human error to begin with? Does any computerized strike zone take into play the actual strike-zone of what the batter presents when the first pitch is thrown to him?
I like the k-zone type stuff in TV as a gauge, but I never rely on it 100% to make a judgment of the umpire. Questec always had the 2 inches concept, and it's always made a lot of sense to me. You need the human element for the instant call, and just because a blogger somewhere is able to post his opinion in 2009 doesn't mean that in the split-second the ump has to make a call, that he should be criticized for it. No refereeing in any sport will ever be 100%, and even if it's all computerized, at some point there has to be the human that inputs the criteria the determines a correct/incorrect call. How can you decide at what point the human input it correct?
I think you're right, that the entry of the strike zone is done by someone watching the game, and so there is a chance for error there. And that's another reason not to trust the accuracy of pitchFX.
However, I believe that kind of error could be eliminated through some creative use of technology - perhaps RFID tags in the uniform - so that there was no doubt about where a given player's strike zone was. The question is, will MLB ever do it? I think they'll eventually have to.
I love the human element. I love that players don't always do exactly what we expect them to do. I love that rational, intelligent people can disagree about what should or should not take place in a game, who is the better player, etc. But I do not love when umpires miss calls.
I would say I'm torn. As a Padre fan in 1998, game 1 of the WS. The Padres enter the bottom of the 7th with a 5-2 lead. In Yankee Stadium. Donne Wall(!) gives it back, and the score is tied at 5-5 with Mark Langston facing Tino Martinez. Two outs. With a 2-2 count, Langston throws a perfect strike, right down the middle. I mean, belt-high, straight down the heart of the plate. Even Tino was walking back to the dugout. Umpire calls Ball three. At that moment I said to my co-watchers "This is going to be a home run, right here" and it was. Grand Slam. Massive momentum shift back in favor of the Yankees. Series over. The Padres probably weren't going to win anyway, but if they'd taken that game 1...who knows? So I know, first-hand, the pain of a missed call.
But I also watched Girardi, last night, take 20 minutes to run through three pitchers, with the last two - Coke and Joba - throwing a grand total of three pitches. I watched 9 commercials between those three pitches. The NFL's replay system just makes the game unwatchable, and at the moments when the game should be its most exciting. Baseball already has enough lulls in it; I fear what expanded replay might do to it.
Ami I the only football fan who doesn't mind replay delays? Are we not grown ups here? I for one am willing to wait a minute or two to see if they got the call right in a game where fractions of inches can decide things.
When it comes to baseball umpiring, I'm much more upset about plays in the field and at home plate than balls and strikes. Having an umpire in the booth upstairs watching, ready to beep down to the home plate umpire if he sees a close play. We wait 30 seconds while he double checks. The play gets called right and we move on. How hard could that be?
good for him, getting cavalier can cost you your season. One announcer asked if Philly should test out Lidge with a 5 run lead during yesterday's game. Thankfully the other announcer noted the nonsense of that as I was spitting my drink.
Should we stop dating and allow eHarmony to pick our spouses for us?
I'm kidding but there is a cost to inserting technology wherever we can. The time of the game, the rythym of the game and the momentum of the game all get compromised with replay. This has been shown in spades in both the NFL and in basketball, IMO. I'm not an absolutist on the subject but I think concerns along these lines are valid. I think balls and strikes, if they could be called instantly, accurately and could be the only word on the subject, are a case where tech could help greatly.
And I think giving umpires a little less job security than Supreme Court Justices or the Pope would help too. I've seen zero accountability in that profession for 30 years.
Isn't the Pitch Fx equipment still operated by a human? IIRC, it requires a human to determine the upper and lower bounds of the strike zone for each batter. One could make an argument that each player be fitted into the Pitch Fx machine before the season begins and that is what will be sued throughout the season. That doesn't take into account how their strikezone would change if they were bunting as their stance is different.
And when are we going to get umpires and most baseball fans to understand Rule 7.08(e). It is a common understanding that a tie goes to the runner. However, Rule 7.08(e) makes it clear that a forced runner must tag the base first:
"Any runner is out when He fails to reach the next base before a fielder tags him or the base, after he has been forced to advance by reason of the batter becoming a runner."
Of course, any computer made to substitute an umpire would make the errors of whoever programmed it. So if the programmer goes with the common misconception that a tie goes to the runner, the rules will not be called as they are written.
"In eighteendicketysix, a human being was state-of-the-art technology for making these decisions."
I really have nothing to add other than: thanks for the Simpsons reference.
"We had to say dickety because the Kaiser stole the word for twenty!"
Oh, and I agree with Joe. I like umpires and the human element, but either home plate umpires have to get some heavy training on the strike zone and only be home plate umpires, or we move to pitch f/x. Really, there just has to be more accountability. Umpires seem to hold grudges and make bad calls because of those grudges. Each year, umpires with an accuracy rate below a certain level (say, 98%) should be forced down to the minors or to another part of the diamond.
I'm kinda ambivalent to the whole conversation. But, has anyone ever seen a game where the ump just "lost" the plate. I remember a game from the 80's where the Texas Rangers were playing (hey, I watch them a lot!) and the home plate umpire was Tim Tchida (I think) and all of a sudden, Tim decides that every pitch thrown towards home plate was a ball. And this wasn't just a few, this was like 40 straight balls thrown by like 5 different pitches. During this string, Jim Sundberg (known as "Sunny" partially for his disposition) has been ejected and forcibly removed from the field.
While we're out here discussing the "neighborhood" play, could we try calling the actual strike zone? Does anyone call a pitch above the belt a strike? According to the rules, there's a lot of strike zone above the belt: 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.
Maybe I'm biased b/c I used to pitch but this has bugged me for a while now. The strike zone is tiny and "working up in the zone" basically means throwing it down the middle. I suspect the strike zone has shrunk to promote offense because chicks dig the long ball.
I think we had this debate a few months ago and I came down strongly on the "human element" side, so the point I'll make here is that I think Joe is unfairly setting up a straw man. Yes, I'm writing on the internet, with my microwave and iPhone and rocket jetpack close at hand, but there's a difference between inventions and developments that are improvements and those that are mere progress. I write to you via internet because it's convenient -- in fact, it's the only way I could participate in this discussion. Just because we have technology doesn't mean that using it is an improvement.
My main issues with using Pitch F/X are accuracy and reliability. There needs to be some kind of redundancy or something built in so there's literally zero chance of failure during a game. What do you do if Pitch F/X breaks and you have no way of calling balls and strikes? It can't even happen once ever. Not sure if it is that reliable yet. Once it is, I'd be more in favor. As far as accuracy, I don't know how it could be tested but it is pretty clear from watching these playoff games that whatever TBS is using is not accurate. That could be a measurement issue or simply a poorly defined strike zone for particular batters as others have mentioned. Finally, at least with human umpires there is SOME chance of accountability. What do you do if Pitch F/X is somehow miscalibrated (it happens - see Eric Seidman's recent articles on perceived velocity) and is calling an obviously faulty strike zone? Call out a technician and put the game on hold? Accuracy and reliability should be fixable but you can't use an automated system until it is extremely reliable.
If it breaks, you go back to human. You adjust, just in the same way you do if an umpire gets ill or injured.
A lot of people also think there would be no home plate ump. There are still tag calls to be made, fair foul, etc, so I would think there could be a middle ground solution. Imagine a buzzer installed in the umps b/s counter. On a defined strike, it buzzes. If the ump thinks it's not a strike, so be it, but he'd better be able to defend that call later. Too many errors and he's not an ump anymore. Some umps would always defer to the buzzer, some wouldn't. Only downside I can see is that it might SLIGHTLY delay the strike call.
I also think thegeneral13 may have misunderstood what Eric means about perceived velocity. That's a batter's perception, not a change in the reality of a pitch. A 93 mph pitch is always a 93 mph pitch, even if a batter thinks it looks like 96.
I like the hybrid idea, Will, and you're right that you would still need an ump back there for other types of calls anyway, so he could serve as a backup for balls/strikes.
I should have been more specific in my reference to Eric's article. He mentioned in there that for a particular Padres game he was initiaully using Pitch F/X appeared to be miscalibrated, as every pitcher was shown to be throwing a couple MPH below his average velocity for the entire season.
It would seem to me that this could work for the current crop of umpires that already have experience calling balls and strikes - but what about in the future? How consistent do you think a HP umpire would be that hasn't actually had to "call" a game without the assistance of a computer?
I'm not saying what we have now works perfectly and shouldn't be changed - just wondering how much worse could it get?
Joe, it's one thing to say umpires mess up and that you want machines to call the game. Now pitch me your world without umpires. How do these calls get made? How long does it take to make the call? I want to hear how the pace and flow of the game would be affected in your world of machine umpires.
I'm sympathetic to the criticism and would like to see the strike zone standardized and called that way.
But I think there's an important intermediate step, one that would represent a much easier battle to fight and win: let's hold umpires accountable for their mistakes. As Joe notes, the technological tools are present--have been present--to identify those mistakes... and as we all know, the same handful of morons are disproportionately likely to make them. Whether it's CB Bucknor's ineptitude or Joe West's obnoxious carrying on like he's bigger than the game, there's nothing as dispiriting as seeing the same umps blow calls and affect outcomes game after game, year after year.
First impose some quality control of the "human element," and it will become easier to ultimately impose standardization.
Put a 5th umpire in the booth with the best of the available technologies and give him the right to supersede the on field umps if the opposing manager challenges the call - 3 per game. Each ump has an earpiece and mic with a feed to the booth. It would take 30 seconds, tops, to resolve the play. Often it's even less because you can get a replay of the TV feed instantly.
What takes so long in the current system, for both NFL and MLB, is that the umpires on the field have to leave the field and go watch something, interacting remotely with a person controlling that feed. Eliminate that and you solve a big piece of the problem.
A similar system using Pitch F/X could work for the home plate umpire on balls and strikes. He could have a little handheld device similar to his count clicker with a red, green, and yellow LED. Red is a ball. Green is a strike. Yellow means the system could not determine the location (for whatever reason) and the umpire should make the call himself.
Heck, you could just try the latter option without telling anybody just to give the ump immediate feedback and help him see his own biases.
But until MLB can get over the philosophical hump, the fundamental point Joe makes at the outset that umpires are merely enforces of rules and their affect on the game itself should be minimized as much as possible, until then, it's all pointless talk.
Why not just use Pitch FX to measure an umpire's accuracy, declare that something like 99% accuracy is necessary to retain your job, and go on with it?
Then every ump would fail that test with left-handed hitters.
Umps are actually really good at calling balls and strikes with righties at the plate, but as soon as a lefty stands there the strikezone gets shorter and wider.
I still think computers can't replace umpires until calibration issues are addressed. Even though it's been around for a few years, pitch F/X still has some problems with accuracy. It would be ironic if the start of a game was delayed to a computer malfunction or calibration. Even with the limited use of technology for instant replay on home run balls, there have been errors. Granted, humans make errors too and there might be less errors in a computer-based system... but such a computer-based system would have to undergo a lot of stress-testing, perhaps at the high school/college/minor league level first.
* I'll agree with thegeneral13 that TBS's new toy is not accurately defining the strike zone. However, I do find it to be reliable - a pitcher can throw a slider that we think hits the outside corner and the pitchtrax will say a foot outside the zone. If he throws that same pitch again, pitchtrax will chart it in the same spot. I have found it to be useful in terms of simply showing us how the pitcher approaches each individual batter. It would be even better if when say Torii Hunter had his second at bat against Jon Lester, TBS could show the data from his first at bat - reminding us about how Lester pitched to Hunter and to see if he follows a similar pattern, or changes it up.
* I'm an idealist when it comes to instant replay. What I do not want (and what I feel has happened in the NFL) is that instead of complaining about how there is no instant replay in the NFL, we are now complaining about the instant replay system in the NFL (e.g. deciding calls can/can't be reviewed, or that when a TD is under review we never see a sideline angle from directly across the goal line, or even just how a ref could see what we saw and still blow that call). We have shifted from an imperfect human to an imperfect system, and I feel that when the choice is only between those two, I'm more comfortable living with the human element, than spending additional money and wasting additional (game)time on instant replay.
* If we're going to add a 5th umpire, might as well make him useful and appoint him as the official scorer - eliminate the hometown scoring that turns errors into base hits and vice versa...
Apparently, MLB umps are reacting to Joe's article with a fierce determination to prove him right. How about C.B. Bucknor missing super-obvious tag on Howie Kendrick in the 4th inning of Game 1? That was just unforgivable.
I thought about this article in the top of the 11th inning of the MIN-NYY game. Then again, a blown foul ball call in extra innings might not have mattered if Chuck Merriweather's strike zone wasn't as mysterious as the Bermuda Triangle.
After seeing some of the Bos-LAA game yesterday (1st base) and the Min-NYY game tonight (ground rule foul), I am beginning to see more merit in more room for replay on the field.
I can't believe how long it took, on this site of all places, before Dan W. pointed out the logical fallacy at the heart of Joe's piece.
There's no reason why using and preferring the Internet or any other type of sophisticated technology should require a person to prefer a high-tech over a low-tech approach to umpiring a baseball game.
By the same logic, a person who uses the Internet and various other advanced technologies would be required to prefer music played on electronic instruments over music played on acoustic instruments, an argument that's absurd on its face.
That is in NO way Joe's argument. The difference between acoustic and electronic music is a matter of taste and degree that reasonable people can disagree about. Whether the ball was fair or foul is a matter of fact with serious zero sum consequences. We can disagree all we want about how to go about doing it, but all Joe is trying to do is campaign for us to use the absolute best possible tools at our disposal to determine the facts.
What Joe is arguing here is that it is patently ridiculous for us to ignore the available tools to determine the facts on the field in favor of antiquated loyalty to, as he points out, middle management.
In my opinion, if MLB is not taking every step possible to ensure that the arbiters on the field are doing their absolute best to determine the outcome of events on the field of play, then what we are watching is not a game of skill, but a farce, a morality play with no more significance than a pro wrestling match (and I say that as a wrasslin fan).
I don't need them to BE perfect, but they at least need to be STRIVING for perfection.
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I assume that people have graded the umpires using pitchFX, but I've never seen the data. Do you know how accurate MLB umpires really are at calling balls and strikes?
Pretty accurate, which I'm sure makes Placido Polanco feel better this morning.
The impact of a bad call at the wrong time is the issue.
I agree completely, I was just curious.
I did a little research into where balls and strikes are actually called: http://902a.com/baseball-prospectus-idol-entry/. Basically, there an area about 7 inches wide all the way around the strike zone where you can't be sure what umpire is going to call.