The only good thing about the end last night is that I was rooting for USA. While an unsatisfying and unacceptable finish to a game like that, at least my guys won... I guess? But I don't blame DR folks for being angry and heartsick. I feel that way, too. A game like that should NEVER end like that. At a minimum, Corey Blaser should have to explain himself. Both of those pitches were well off the zone, Corey... What gives? They weren't close.
ah, the modern american whine -- it's not fair! get it right! we were robbed! funny how the dominicans quoted, including pujols, have more equanimity and perspective than most of the people on this thread. and the author. i take baseball as seriously as anyone writing here....but it's a fucking game. and really, having robots running our lives is more significant than 2 blown calls in the WBC. but, i'm old. guess i just think that at this point in history, there are more important outlets for outrage.
The umpiring has been generally abysmal with ball-strike all tournament. There were at least a handful of missed calls in that game alone, and Italy was really being squeezed in the PR game. Having said that, we have lost the concept of protecting the plate with two strikes in this day of almighty reverence to OPS and OBP in particular.
I was not able to watch the game last night so this is all friend of a friend info. But I heard from multiple people that the ump was calling the low strike all night and for both teams. So while I do agree that going with ABS makes it more consistent Im not sure that is what happened here. It is one thing when an ump is just all over the place. And of course it is an issue if team A has a super large zone and team B doesnt. But if both teams are getting the same consistent zone then they need to adjust.
Umpires were, and are, nothing but a necessary evil. They are not why we watch the game, and every technical advancement that minimizes their subjective influence on human competition should be implemented.
The true test is how one handles a clearly blown call. As a player, do you forgive the umpire (Armando Galarraga) and get right back to work (retiring the 28th batter on another routine ground ball), shrug if off as a bad break (Stan Musial), or do you let it get into your head so much that you blow the rest of the game and lose the next one (1985 Cardinals)?
"I don't want to focus on the last pitch. I'm not going to criticize any of that," Dominican Republic manager Albert Pujols said after the game. "It wasn't meant to be."
If Cory Blaser is a bad umpire, he shouldn't be umpiring, period. But what does the humanity of umpiring mean? Well, it refers to the humanity of the game. So if you want to say the umpire shouldn't be human, why don't we also get robot players and managers? They won't make mistakes. Then again, they won't invite people like the former Seal Team 6 member to do pep talks or not know where they stand in the brackets.
This is a really weird argument. The umpires *should* have ZERO to do with the outcome of the game. The players *should* have EVERYTHING to do with the outcome of the game.
Respectfully, this feels like a weird place to make a slippery slope argument.
"So if you want to say the umpire shouldn't be human, why don't we also get robot players and managers?"
Because a lot of people want non-human umps, and zero people want non-human players, and the entire point of a baseball league is to provide entertainment for people?
And thanks. And, respectfully, I really don't see a slippery slope, but I do think we can try to make the game TOO perfect when it's baseball, so it already is!
I hear you. I know—especially for us weirdos who love baseball enough to be in the comments section for a niche sports blog on a Monday morning—we're all here for the small joys and idiosyncrasies.
I haven't seen anyone suggesting they want anything that goes beyond umpires, and at the moment, really just balls and strikes, which we know there already exists an automated system for. If someday there is an automated system for out/safe at the bases, I guess that would be a new debate, but I don't think anyone serious is interested in robot players, so I don't think we're on a particularly slippery slope. So I guess it stops with however far it might go with umpires, the people there to keep an eye on the game, not play it.
No, I don't think we're headed for robot players. But again, I worry about "perfecting" the game. I remember a line Bob Costas had many years ago, which I'm paraphrasing a bit. Baseball has to be a great sport to survive what the people who run it do to it.
I also confess to nostalgia for when we had one umpiring staff for each league and the players and umpires actually knew each other. To my point: The two top-rated plate umpires for many years were Doug Harvey and Lee Weyer. Harvey said his zone was exact, to the dimensions of the plate. Weyer started a game by digging a trench on each side of the plate and widening his zone, making the point that if the ball nicked the zone, it was a strike. Again, BOTH considered top-flight, but different approaches.
I don't actually have strong feelings about human umpires vs. replacing more of what they do with automated systems (I just don't think making changes like this heads us toward robot players).
Calls I think were wrong don't make me happy, but they don't ruin my life either. I don't like the challenge element of what we're getting now though, and would prefer more of an "all or nothing" approach to balls and strikes to this.
The problem with the challenge system is it's entirely possible a team would be out of challenges by the time these crucial 8th and 9th inning strikeouts occur. Yes that's within a team's control, but I'm not sure it would make the ending any more satisfying.
Which is exactly why there shouldn't be limits. Or if there are, make it 3, and if you win your challenge you get to keep it no matter what. It would remove the ability for an umpire to call three egregious calls just to force you to use challenges and then run out.
3 wrong challenges and you're out. Symmetry.
Keep winning the challenges? Umpire gets embarrassed and hopefully removed from his job if he's that bad.
I support ABS as in tennis where balls & strikes are called by a computer. I do not want and loathe the ABS challenge system. The computer line calling system in tennis has been wonderful. Players have accepted it as "the law" and arguments between players and umpires have greatly diminished - the sport has become more about the play than the arguing.
The WBC game showed the problem of the hybrid system. Fans are shown the ABS image but the umpire is still the law. Fortunately, the DR team (at least Pujols and Perdomo) accepted the umpire's call as the law. But we all know the ending was a fluke and that tarnishes the outcome. And even if there had been ABS challenge, we don't know if the DR would have had a challenge left and a video review of the final play also tarnishes the game.
Why have a challenge system? I think tennis has become much more enjoyable to watch relying on electronic line calls, which mean less time waiting for challenges to be determined. Why not just get the call right in the first place?
All sports, but MLB worse than most, seem to think that making officiating into another mini-game somehow "adds interest" or something.
Fun and possibly relevant historical note: The term "referee" comes from the fact that originally in Association Football (soccer) the convention was that the players would make their own calls about rules infractions and the like, and a neutral party was only needed when the players weren't able to agree and needed to "refer" to someone not on either team - hence, "referee", "one to whom the players would refer". It quickly got to the point where the players needed to "refer" to the referee so often that the referee was given primary authority to make calls without having to wait for the players to ask.
There's something similar emerging with replay in MLB - it's not uncommon that there's some call that is put under "crew chief's review" even if the team that would have challenged has exhausted their challenges. So calls that appear likely to be wrong - as opposed to ticky-tack or borderline - are effectively not subject to the challenge limits.
I think the best case outcome (since I suspect MLB will never actually go away from some kind of challenge system) is that after enough cases where there's some egregiously wrong ball/strike call late in a game in a high leverage situation and the injured party has no challenges left, and some player or manager gets run for arguing with the umpire about a call that replay shows to have been egregiously wrong, MLB will find some way to enable umpires to surreptitiously consult the ABS data in real time to change calls.
Early ABS systems tried in independent baseball were not accurate and this has tainted the technology. Full ABS should be implemented and the challenge system should be discarded ASAP.
Agree 💯. Stop the madness and have the robot tell the umpire on the field the correct call on every pitch/play. That will speed the game and end the randomness of humans interpreting the rules in the heat of the moment.
So, I entirely agree with your analyses and conclusions, Joe.
But there is another thought that occurs to me.
Technology could certainly make it possible to build robots that could pitch, hit, field, and throw better than any human being. Similar robots could also draw, paint, and write better than any human.
Could that be our future? I very much hope not. But I have a niggling fear it might be.
(We've already started down that road with AI produced written content.)
At the highest level of sport, it's the mental side that often separates 1st and 2nd place by who performs their best at the big moments and who don't and that separates champions who can win without their best stuff from the very good and highly talented players that win sporadically when they put it all together. I don't see many people being interested in watching robots.
Players and umpires are not on equal footing in terms of why people watch baseball, so replacing the calls made my umpires and replacing the players are not even remotely equal ideas.
The difference is that (most) people watch baseball to see human beings compete within a structure provided by rules that they expect to see enforced correctly, accurately, and fairly, not to see how well the enforcers of those rules are at enforcing them correctly, accurately, and fairly. People go to Umpscorecards.com to validate their priors that umps are screwing over the team they're a fan of, not because they have Phil Cuzzi on their ump fantasy team and are trying to figure out if they should cut him and pick up Clint Vondrak on waivers.
Strongly agree. We will see how the challenge system works in practice for MLB, but I’m wary about the additional “gamification” it introduces around when players should challenge. There is also no guarantee that it would prevent a situation like the one last night— it’s very easy to envision scenarios in which teams don’t have challenges left in the later innings. I wish MLB would implement ABS on every pitch right now, given that it’s essentially seamless to game flow and it’s probably where we’re headed eventually anyway.
The argument I give to the "what about the human element?" folks is that I WANT to see the human element...of the guy on the mound and the one at the plate and the eight guys in the field and the 0-3 on the bases and the various managers and base coaches and whoever. Adding a wild card of human element that might negate any or all the others doesn't bring anything to the game for me.
That...that's it? That's one of the most egregious strike calls that you will ever see? A pitch that was inside the box and rising until the very last instant?
We take this as black and white, ball or strike, and we need a proper judge to tell us what it is. But the batter has the chance to not let any gray area affect him. Guard the plate and fight off anything at the margins. But somehow the vast majority of baseball fans would rather a pitch on the margins go by and see what an umpire says and then be mad rather than have a guy with the bat in his hands take matters into his own hands. This is baseball's version of hoping for contact and drawing a foul or a pass interference call or getting awarded a penalty kick rather than making the basket or catching the ball or scoring the goal. We all just want to be pissed off.
Get the tech. I'm hopeful for this year's trial. But we should question whether tech will solve that problem (us all needing to be pissed off all the time). Case-in-point: the box that you show in your article looks very different from the box on the broadcast. It also makes it look like the final pitch was closer to his ankles than his knees when it just wasn't.
Haha, well, it's not so black and white in real time. I'm saying it was marginal--not the worst pitch in the history of the world that everyone is acting like it is. You don't let that go. So I'm saying that the batter should simply fight off the pitch that is marginal.
It was an exceptional pitch that ended up below the strike zone. How Perdomo did not swing at it is a mystery. But Perdomo did not swing and he should have been credited with a base on balls and not a game ending strikeout.
I have no problem with that. And I'm even very okay with someone saying that Miller was purposely nibbling at the zone because he knew that he had open bases and that he should not be rewarded for it. I guess I am very much in favor of the human element beyond just preferring that humans make the calls. I'm from the Max Scherzer school.
What makes you in favor of the human element? Setting aside arguments about how we’re defining the box, the rule is very simple. Throw a ball in the box, strike. Miss the box, ball. Batters should be rewarded for knowing the ball would miss the box.
My absurd analogy: Steph Curry shoots a three pointer. It looks good off his hand.he turns to head back on defense. The ref puts his arm up to signal 3 points. The ball hits the back of the rim, sure to drop. Only then, it ricochets, front rim, back rim again and bounces out. We have evidence it missed. Should we defer to all the humans who thought it was going to go in? The answer is obviously no. So what makes baseball different? Both are simple binaries. In both cases, we now have indisputable evidence. To me, the only argument is that you don’t trust the evidence.
But if you could perhaps consider that maybe the pitch location box that was posted on the view from behind the pitcher, being the typical view that a fan sees when watching a game, was somewhat accurate, then that pitch was actually right on the margins. It was not a frozen rope. It had movement. It was rising upward in the zone until the very last instant, as I said. A pitch is supposed to be judged where it enters the batter's body, being the front of his body, which is a good three feet from the catcher's mitt and allows for additional movement of the ball before it hits the mitt. So I'm just not offended by the egregiousness of this call. I'm more bothered by everybody whining.
I agree with you in spirit - the art of pitching to make strikes look like balls and balls look like strikes and the skill of a batter protecting the plate on pitches close enough to be called strikes. This isn't the test case for that. The pitch was a little under 5" below the zone that was created with technology, trial-and-error, and consensus agreement between the league and players. A pitch like that has always supposed to have been a ball and would've been called a ball by ABS. It may have been enticing enough for a less disciplined player to swing at, but Perdomo correctly identified it as a ball and should've been at 1st base as the winning run with the top of the order up.
I also have a feeling that your point about how difficult it is for a hitter to properly judge strikes and balls or at least whether or not to swing before it's too late, means that most hitters will still be faced with having to protect the plate if they don't want to strike out looking. Spring training should have humbled many of them based on what I've seen. The Saturday game between the Twins and Rays saw 0-4 on challenges including each team on successive pitches.
The pitch was 4+ inches below the zone? Damn. That’s a lot. I just didn’t see that in the view that I saw. I give credit to movement and where a ball was right before the last moment that we can see it, and it just didn’t seem like 4+ inches. That’s another thing that is tough for me: it doesn’t feel like we have defined what we are talking about with all of the little things—we just trust the box that is put up there. Is the ball judged at the front of the batter’s body, or at least his front knee? Are we accepting that the pitches can move a lot and therefore not relying totally on where the catcher catches it?
A lot of this is my own personal view and bias, of course. Perdomo has an eagle eye and should not be punished for it. But I just don’t value an eagle eye when it translates to choosing to lay off a pitch that was close, even if technically a ball, in a big situation. And I carry this over to other things. I see Joe’s glowing words about Soto being like Rogers Hornsby and I don’t think that makes Soto or Hornsby or Klem look good (though I did think the Soto pitch was worse than the Perdomo pitch). People say it about Ted Williams, how he would never dare swing at a pitch that was even a hair off the plate, and even as a kid I thought, “That’s not a compliment. You are not complimenting him!”
On your last paragraph, I’m not entirely sure what you are saying, so bear with me. The teams going 0-4 on challenges should reflect well on the umpires. And I like batters having to guard the plate with two strikes. If it’s 3-2 and a pitcher throws it at the margins, he’s willing to risk a walk, and if the batter lets it go, he’s willing to risk a strikeout. I hope the challenges humble everybody and we all get to see that nobody knows anything.
The only good thing about the end last night is that I was rooting for USA. While an unsatisfying and unacceptable finish to a game like that, at least my guys won... I guess? But I don't blame DR folks for being angry and heartsick. I feel that way, too. A game like that should NEVER end like that. At a minimum, Corey Blaser should have to explain himself. Both of those pitches were well off the zone, Corey... What gives? They weren't close.
ah, the modern american whine -- it's not fair! get it right! we were robbed! funny how the dominicans quoted, including pujols, have more equanimity and perspective than most of the people on this thread. and the author. i take baseball as seriously as anyone writing here....but it's a fucking game. and really, having robots running our lives is more significant than 2 blown calls in the WBC. but, i'm old. guess i just think that at this point in history, there are more important outlets for outrage.
The umpiring has been generally abysmal with ball-strike all tournament. There were at least a handful of missed calls in that game alone, and Italy was really being squeezed in the PR game. Having said that, we have lost the concept of protecting the plate with two strikes in this day of almighty reverence to OPS and OBP in particular.
"Protecting the plate" means swinging at borderline pitches, not pitches that are obviously balls, as that last pitch was.
I was not able to watch the game last night so this is all friend of a friend info. But I heard from multiple people that the ump was calling the low strike all night and for both teams. So while I do agree that going with ABS makes it more consistent Im not sure that is what happened here. It is one thing when an ump is just all over the place. And of course it is an issue if team A has a super large zone and team B doesnt. But if both teams are getting the same consistent zone then they need to adjust.
There is no "adjusting" to the umpire calling a ball 6 inches low a strike. If you start swinging at that you are already screwed.
Umpires were, and are, nothing but a necessary evil. They are not why we watch the game, and every technical advancement that minimizes their subjective influence on human competition should be implemented.
The true test is how one handles a clearly blown call. As a player, do you forgive the umpire (Armando Galarraga) and get right back to work (retiring the 28th batter on another routine ground ball), shrug if off as a bad break (Stan Musial), or do you let it get into your head so much that you blow the rest of the game and lose the next one (1985 Cardinals)?
The DR handled it by being eliminated from the WBC. Did they pass the test?
"I don't want to focus on the last pitch. I'm not going to criticize any of that," Dominican Republic manager Albert Pujols said after the game. "It wasn't meant to be."
I'd say they did.
If Cory Blaser is a bad umpire, he shouldn't be umpiring, period. But what does the humanity of umpiring mean? Well, it refers to the humanity of the game. So if you want to say the umpire shouldn't be human, why don't we also get robot players and managers? They won't make mistakes. Then again, they won't invite people like the former Seal Team 6 member to do pep talks or not know where they stand in the brackets.
This is a really weird argument. The umpires *should* have ZERO to do with the outcome of the game. The players *should* have EVERYTHING to do with the outcome of the game.
Respectfully, this feels like a weird place to make a slippery slope argument.
"So if you want to say the umpire shouldn't be human, why don't we also get robot players and managers?"
Because a lot of people want non-human umps, and zero people want non-human players, and the entire point of a baseball league is to provide entertainment for people?
And thanks. And, respectfully, I really don't see a slippery slope, but I do think we can try to make the game TOO perfect when it's baseball, so it already is!
I hear you. I know—especially for us weirdos who love baseball enough to be in the comments section for a niche sports blog on a Monday morning—we're all here for the small joys and idiosyncrasies.
"So if you want to say the umpire shouldn't be human, why don't we also get robot players and managers?"
This implies that umpires are on the same level as players in terms of why anyone watches baseball.
That isn't what I meant to imply, but my point is, where does it stop?
I haven't seen anyone suggesting they want anything that goes beyond umpires, and at the moment, really just balls and strikes, which we know there already exists an automated system for. If someday there is an automated system for out/safe at the bases, I guess that would be a new debate, but I don't think anyone serious is interested in robot players, so I don't think we're on a particularly slippery slope. So I guess it stops with however far it might go with umpires, the people there to keep an eye on the game, not play it.
No, I don't think we're headed for robot players. But again, I worry about "perfecting" the game. I remember a line Bob Costas had many years ago, which I'm paraphrasing a bit. Baseball has to be a great sport to survive what the people who run it do to it.
I also confess to nostalgia for when we had one umpiring staff for each league and the players and umpires actually knew each other. To my point: The two top-rated plate umpires for many years were Doug Harvey and Lee Weyer. Harvey said his zone was exact, to the dimensions of the plate. Weyer started a game by digging a trench on each side of the plate and widening his zone, making the point that if the ball nicked the zone, it was a strike. Again, BOTH considered top-flight, but different approaches.
I don't actually have strong feelings about human umpires vs. replacing more of what they do with automated systems (I just don't think making changes like this heads us toward robot players).
Calls I think were wrong don't make me happy, but they don't ruin my life either. I don't like the challenge element of what we're getting now though, and would prefer more of an "all or nothing" approach to balls and strikes to this.
Yea, there were a bunch of calls which IMO were wrong, not just those two.
The problem with the challenge system is it's entirely possible a team would be out of challenges by the time these crucial 8th and 9th inning strikeouts occur. Yes that's within a team's control, but I'm not sure it would make the ending any more satisfying.
Which is exactly why there shouldn't be limits. Or if there are, make it 3, and if you win your challenge you get to keep it no matter what. It would remove the ability for an umpire to call three egregious calls just to force you to use challenges and then run out.
3 wrong challenges and you're out. Symmetry.
Keep winning the challenges? Umpire gets embarrassed and hopefully removed from his job if he's that bad.
Or why there shouldn't be a challenge system - let the ABS do it all. But IMO the challenge system is better than no correction at all.
I agree. I don’t like the challenge system at all. Why should there need to be strategy to make sure the game is officiated correctly.
I support ABS as in tennis where balls & strikes are called by a computer. I do not want and loathe the ABS challenge system. The computer line calling system in tennis has been wonderful. Players have accepted it as "the law" and arguments between players and umpires have greatly diminished - the sport has become more about the play than the arguing.
The WBC game showed the problem of the hybrid system. Fans are shown the ABS image but the umpire is still the law. Fortunately, the DR team (at least Pujols and Perdomo) accepted the umpire's call as the law. But we all know the ending was a fluke and that tarnishes the outcome. And even if there had been ABS challenge, we don't know if the DR would have had a challenge left and a video review of the final play also tarnishes the game.
The only human element I want in baseball umpiring comes from Enrico Pallazo..
Why have a challenge system? I think tennis has become much more enjoyable to watch relying on electronic line calls, which mean less time waiting for challenges to be determined. Why not just get the call right in the first place?
All sports, but MLB worse than most, seem to think that making officiating into another mini-game somehow "adds interest" or something.
Fun and possibly relevant historical note: The term "referee" comes from the fact that originally in Association Football (soccer) the convention was that the players would make their own calls about rules infractions and the like, and a neutral party was only needed when the players weren't able to agree and needed to "refer" to someone not on either team - hence, "referee", "one to whom the players would refer". It quickly got to the point where the players needed to "refer" to the referee so often that the referee was given primary authority to make calls without having to wait for the players to ask.
There's something similar emerging with replay in MLB - it's not uncommon that there's some call that is put under "crew chief's review" even if the team that would have challenged has exhausted their challenges. So calls that appear likely to be wrong - as opposed to ticky-tack or borderline - are effectively not subject to the challenge limits.
I think the best case outcome (since I suspect MLB will never actually go away from some kind of challenge system) is that after enough cases where there's some egregiously wrong ball/strike call late in a game in a high leverage situation and the injured party has no challenges left, and some player or manager gets run for arguing with the umpire about a call that replay shows to have been egregiously wrong, MLB will find some way to enable umpires to surreptitiously consult the ABS data in real time to change calls.
Early ABS systems tried in independent baseball were not accurate and this has tainted the technology. Full ABS should be implemented and the challenge system should be discarded ASAP.
Agree 💯. Stop the madness and have the robot tell the umpire on the field the correct call on every pitch/play. That will speed the game and end the randomness of humans interpreting the rules in the heat of the moment.
So, I entirely agree with your analyses and conclusions, Joe.
But there is another thought that occurs to me.
Technology could certainly make it possible to build robots that could pitch, hit, field, and throw better than any human being. Similar robots could also draw, paint, and write better than any human.
Could that be our future? I very much hope not. But I have a niggling fear it might be.
(We've already started down that road with AI produced written content.)
At the highest level of sport, it's the mental side that often separates 1st and 2nd place by who performs their best at the big moments and who don't and that separates champions who can win without their best stuff from the very good and highly talented players that win sporadically when they put it all together. I don't see many people being interested in watching robots.
Players and umpires are not on equal footing in terms of why people watch baseball, so replacing the calls made my umpires and replacing the players are not even remotely equal ideas.
The difference is that (most) people watch baseball to see human beings compete within a structure provided by rules that they expect to see enforced correctly, accurately, and fairly, not to see how well the enforcers of those rules are at enforcing them correctly, accurately, and fairly. People go to Umpscorecards.com to validate their priors that umps are screwing over the team they're a fan of, not because they have Phil Cuzzi on their ump fantasy team and are trying to figure out if they should cut him and pick up Clint Vondrak on waivers.
You apparently do not watch pro tennis where line calls are made by computer and yet the players are very human.
Strongly agree. We will see how the challenge system works in practice for MLB, but I’m wary about the additional “gamification” it introduces around when players should challenge. There is also no guarantee that it would prevent a situation like the one last night— it’s very easy to envision scenarios in which teams don’t have challenges left in the later innings. I wish MLB would implement ABS on every pitch right now, given that it’s essentially seamless to game flow and it’s probably where we’re headed eventually anyway.
The argument I give to the "what about the human element?" folks is that I WANT to see the human element...of the guy on the mound and the one at the plate and the eight guys in the field and the 0-3 on the bases and the various managers and base coaches and whoever. Adding a wild card of human element that might negate any or all the others doesn't bring anything to the game for me.
That...that's it? That's one of the most egregious strike calls that you will ever see? A pitch that was inside the box and rising until the very last instant?
We take this as black and white, ball or strike, and we need a proper judge to tell us what it is. But the batter has the chance to not let any gray area affect him. Guard the plate and fight off anything at the margins. But somehow the vast majority of baseball fans would rather a pitch on the margins go by and see what an umpire says and then be mad rather than have a guy with the bat in his hands take matters into his own hands. This is baseball's version of hoping for contact and drawing a foul or a pass interference call or getting awarded a penalty kick rather than making the basket or catching the ball or scoring the goal. We all just want to be pissed off.
Get the tech. I'm hopeful for this year's trial. But we should question whether tech will solve that problem (us all needing to be pissed off all the time). Case-in-point: the box that you show in your article looks very different from the box on the broadcast. It also makes it look like the final pitch was closer to his ankles than his knees when it just wasn't.
"Why didn't the batter simply hit the pitch that was not inside the strike zone?" is not the brilliant argument you may think it is.
Haha, well, it's not so black and white in real time. I'm saying it was marginal--not the worst pitch in the history of the world that everyone is acting like it is. You don't let that go. So I'm saying that the batter should simply fight off the pitch that is marginal.
It was an exceptional pitch that ended up below the strike zone. How Perdomo did not swing at it is a mystery. But Perdomo did not swing and he should have been credited with a base on balls and not a game ending strikeout.
I have no problem with that. And I'm even very okay with someone saying that Miller was purposely nibbling at the zone because he knew that he had open bases and that he should not be rewarded for it. I guess I am very much in favor of the human element beyond just preferring that humans make the calls. I'm from the Max Scherzer school.
What makes you in favor of the human element? Setting aside arguments about how we’re defining the box, the rule is very simple. Throw a ball in the box, strike. Miss the box, ball. Batters should be rewarded for knowing the ball would miss the box.
My absurd analogy: Steph Curry shoots a three pointer. It looks good off his hand.he turns to head back on defense. The ref puts his arm up to signal 3 points. The ball hits the back of the rim, sure to drop. Only then, it ricochets, front rim, back rim again and bounces out. We have evidence it missed. Should we defer to all the humans who thought it was going to go in? The answer is obviously no. So what makes baseball different? Both are simple binaries. In both cases, we now have indisputable evidence. To me, the only argument is that you don’t trust the evidence.
That ball was nowhere near the zone. It was obvious live, and in all the replays, and in the pitch location boxes. It's not up for dispute.
Oh ok. I’m sorry.
But if you could perhaps consider that maybe the pitch location box that was posted on the view from behind the pitcher, being the typical view that a fan sees when watching a game, was somewhat accurate, then that pitch was actually right on the margins. It was not a frozen rope. It had movement. It was rising upward in the zone until the very last instant, as I said. A pitch is supposed to be judged where it enters the batter's body, being the front of his body, which is a good three feet from the catcher's mitt and allows for additional movement of the ball before it hits the mitt. So I'm just not offended by the egregiousness of this call. I'm more bothered by everybody whining.
I agree with you in spirit - the art of pitching to make strikes look like balls and balls look like strikes and the skill of a batter protecting the plate on pitches close enough to be called strikes. This isn't the test case for that. The pitch was a little under 5" below the zone that was created with technology, trial-and-error, and consensus agreement between the league and players. A pitch like that has always supposed to have been a ball and would've been called a ball by ABS. It may have been enticing enough for a less disciplined player to swing at, but Perdomo correctly identified it as a ball and should've been at 1st base as the winning run with the top of the order up.
I also have a feeling that your point about how difficult it is for a hitter to properly judge strikes and balls or at least whether or not to swing before it's too late, means that most hitters will still be faced with having to protect the plate if they don't want to strike out looking. Spring training should have humbled many of them based on what I've seen. The Saturday game between the Twins and Rays saw 0-4 on challenges including each team on successive pitches.
The pitch was 4+ inches below the zone? Damn. That’s a lot. I just didn’t see that in the view that I saw. I give credit to movement and where a ball was right before the last moment that we can see it, and it just didn’t seem like 4+ inches. That’s another thing that is tough for me: it doesn’t feel like we have defined what we are talking about with all of the little things—we just trust the box that is put up there. Is the ball judged at the front of the batter’s body, or at least his front knee? Are we accepting that the pitches can move a lot and therefore not relying totally on where the catcher catches it?
A lot of this is my own personal view and bias, of course. Perdomo has an eagle eye and should not be punished for it. But I just don’t value an eagle eye when it translates to choosing to lay off a pitch that was close, even if technically a ball, in a big situation. And I carry this over to other things. I see Joe’s glowing words about Soto being like Rogers Hornsby and I don’t think that makes Soto or Hornsby or Klem look good (though I did think the Soto pitch was worse than the Perdomo pitch). People say it about Ted Williams, how he would never dare swing at a pitch that was even a hair off the plate, and even as a kid I thought, “That’s not a compliment. You are not complimenting him!”
On your last paragraph, I’m not entirely sure what you are saying, so bear with me. The teams going 0-4 on challenges should reflect well on the umpires. And I like batters having to guard the plate with two strikes. If it’s 3-2 and a pitcher throws it at the margins, he’s willing to risk a walk, and if the batter lets it go, he’s willing to risk a strikeout. I hope the challenges humble everybody and we all get to see that nobody knows anything.