Is there any way in which having balls and strikes called reliably is detrimental? I cannot think there is. Will it change the game? We already have individual at-bats affected by the 10% of calls being questionable - so having at-bats not affected by bad calls I guess is a change - but that's good, right?
Ron H pointed out that there are ways that an computer generated strike zone can be adjusted for different player heights and stances. I just want to add that we already have tech that can track dynamic positional information in real time - ball flight, plate, batters knees/armpits etc - so it's available to generate an instant and accurate strike zone and determine if that generated strike zone was penetrated by the ball. The tech is ready to go.
Here's the part I don't get. Is the home plate umpire watching where the ball is in relationship to where the plate is? Or is he watching where the catcher's glove is in relationship to the ball? Can the umpire, who is peaking over the catcher's shoulder, even see the glove clearly without looking down? I understand how the umpire can miss up and down, but how can they miss so many in or out?
Several of the comments have mentioned that the box doesn’t account for the height difference between players. It makes me ask why not. A computer is generating the box electronically, right? Seems to me every major league player can have the appropriate measurements taken (e.g. knee height) which can be input into a database. So that whenever that player comes up you get a customized electronic box created, slightly different (maybe more than slightly if comparing Jose Altuve with Aaron Judge). Computers today should be able to handle this easily. A new player comes into the league? Along with getting a new uniform they get correctly measured and that information is added to the database. You would still have the question of do you want to use the box versus an umpire, but you couldn’t argue against using the box because it is not accurate either. Am I missing something?
Who cares what the catcher does? Who cares what it "looks" like? Who cares what has been done before, for however long? Who cares what the fans think if the fans are wrong?
The strike zone is a clearly defined three-dimensional space (yes, I know it varies with the height and stance of the batter, and technology shouldn't be implemented for this until it can account for that). If a pitch passes through that space, it's a strike. If it doesn't it's not.
The umpire has an extremely hard job: to track a small object moving at almost impossible-to-see speed passing through a space that he can only envision in his mind. That doesn't make a ball a strike or a strike a ball, but erroneous calls are just that - errors.
The batter can't see what the catcher is doing, so he has to make his own judgment.
Yes, Bauer missed his spot and the catcher had to lunge for the pitch. So what? His mistake resulted in the ball passing through the strike zone, so it was a strike. The fact that the pitch and the catcher's reaction to it created an optical illusion that the pitch missed the zone doesn't mean that the pitch missed the zone.
Balls and strikes do have a RIGHT and a WRONG result. It's entirely understandable that a human crouching behind the catcher can't always see it correctly, but that makes it a problem to solve, not a state of things to accept.
How does the strike zone "box" account for the height of the batter? Like so many things, it frustrates me that we assume the box is precise just because the umps aren't.
I assume that they don't alter the box. I just looked at several articles of analysis of umpires and their ball/strike calls and none mentioned anything about different hitters having different heights on their strike zone. :( We need to bug Joe to go ask someone about this.
I wonder this as well, because the box always looks the same. I don't think Altuve and Harper should have the same strike zone.
When Joe said we have to figure out what a strike is, I thought he would talk about the size of the strike zone. In my lifetime, it has changed a bunch, from a big strike zone where the high and low strike zone was called, to strike zone with narrow height but expanding width. The high strike disappeared completely (A belt high pitch was too high) and the low strike prevailed. There was the postage stamp strike zone 20 years ago where virtually nothing was a strike. They actually changed the rulebook definition at least once along the way.
If you have a computer doing balls and strikes, you not only have to have it account for the height, but you have to actually define the strike zone once and for all. The output of a machine is reliant on the input. The biggest problem once you account for height (The rulebook definition is entirely dependent on the batters height) will be that probably no current player has ever had to deal with a rulebook strike zone. There would definitely be an adjustment.
I also think an unintended consequence would be a decrease in sliders. They have more of a lateral movement, and the computer knows where the plate stops.
Yup. Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley chatted about this in the last week on an episode of their Effectively Wild podcast. But I just can't stomach seeing the "strike zone box" being used as proof of a strike when it doesn't actually have anything to do with the batter at the plate.
The point about what baseball wants to be a strike is a good one. I don't want robot umpires for a couple reasons - one is that I like the idea of catcher framing being a skill. Two is that I like that the strike zone is tighter on an 0-2 count and bigger on a 3-0 count, since it makes it more likely we'll get a ball in play rather than a strikeout or walk. However, if (when) they go to the robo-zone, I will be happy that the pitches where the pitcher misses his spot but still hits the zone will be called strikes. I understand why they're CALLED balls; the umpire has as tough a time tracking the pitch as the catcher, but they should be strikes. I do think they'll need to work on the zone a little bit. Those breaking balls that fall into the top of the zone on the back half of the plate and the ones that catch the very front-bottom edge of the zone on their way down have never been called strikes, but they'll be robo-zone strikes. They may need to shave the edges a bit.
In "Baseball and Philosophy : Thinking Outside the Batter's Box" by Eric Bronson and Bill Littlefield (a great book; every baseball fan should read it), there's an essay on cheating in baseball - doctored baseballs, sign stealing, etc. Is it cheating if it helps your team win? The author of that essay concluded that cheating is acceptable *as long as it is not done to deceive the umpires*. You can fool the other players by "deke-ing" them on the basepaths all you want - but trying to sneak something past the umpires is Right Out.
Pitch framing is an attempt to deceive the umpire........
I will quibble a bit with your premise in that the purpose of pitch framing is to give the pitcher the best possible chance to get a favorable call, which in some cases is meant to fool the umpire, if the pitch is a ball. In other cases, it's merely to give the umpire the best look at a pitch that catches the edge of the strike zone. Overall, though, your point is taken, and I'm not normally one who goes for any kind of deception in sports.
However, there are two reasons I like pitch framing. One is that the skill itself is interesting in the context of the skills that are necessary to be a good baseball player. Catching a ball with such precision of hand movement that you can influence a call to made fits really well with other such precise skills in baseball - a pitcher who can paint the outside corner, a hitter lining an outside pitch the opposite way on a hit and run, a fielder reading a ground ball and making a backhanded short-hop, etc. Pitch framing fits in there as a skill the best catchers in the world can and should be able to develop.
Second, it adds an interesting element to statistics evaluating catcher defense. Catchers, for obvious reasons, don't get much from range factor. And in today's game, they don't even get much for their ability to throw out baserunners, since no one runs any more. So having another element that adds to catcher defense is fun. With robo-umps, catchers having "soft" or "quiet" hands will be irrelevant, and I think that would be a little bit sad. Certainly I'm more interested in pitch framing than I am in getting every ball and strike call perfect.
To me it just seems weird to celebrate a part of the game where a defender (the batter in the case) is forced to do something against which he does not have the necessary information to do it. The batter is told "the ball has to be here for it to be a strike". So he waits for the ball to go there, but it never goes there because the catcher is doing trickery. A batter could theoretically strike out without ever swinging the bat, or ever having a ball go through the strike zone.
It would almost be like telling a defensive player in football that he has to stop the opponent from crossing the goal line, but then suddenly saying "well, the player crossed the 5 yard line so we decided to call it a touchdown anyway".
Sure, in theory. In practice, batters know the risk of taking a close pitch with two strikes. If a pitch just off the plate is called for strike three because the catcher is really good at framing, that's tough luck. But I don't see it as being all that different from a batter taking strike three because a pitcher is really good at painting the corners, on the catcher gets some credit for it. In other words, your situation isn't anywhere close to being prevalent enough to get rid of pitch framing as a skill.
I think you're right about the unintended consequences of a robotic strike zone and how framing (and pitcher intent) end up getting boiled out of the process, but fans seeing the computerized strike zone in HD and knowing that 10% of pitches are called wrong is inescapable. I feel like we're all going to have to mourn pitch framing and accept it as a casualty of the new precision of the strike zone. The alternative--some sort of pass-interference-like official judgment about whether a catcher had to make a baseball move with his glove--is so awful I don't want to contemplate it.
May we never live to see such a dystopia as a world in which there is such a thing as a "baseball move"!! Also: you got a genuine chuckle out of me there
The MLB strike zone is tiny. In that second tweet you posted, with Cody Bellinger, the strike zone goes from Bellinger's knees up to his waist. On top of that, you have umps who squeeze pitchers. You mostly see it on pitches that are outside, in that lower or upper corner of the strike zone, but still called balls. I don't know how many low and away strikes I've seen this year that were called balls. Maybe this is why so many home runs are being hit. For a ball to be called a strike, it basically has to be a meatball.
One problem is, I think, that umpires (and players) have traditionally accepted that different umpires have different strike zones. So, instead of trying to get the calls "right", umpires lean on the idea that that's "my" strike zone so deal with it. Joe is right about tennis; no one argues that a ball has to be in the middle of the line to be in. It's either in or out. Tennis referees don't have their own definition.
I'm seeing this type of talk in soccer discussions with the increasing use of VAR in higher-level competitions. What tends to happen is that people don't like that a rule is being called a different way under VAR (offsides, or rules relating to goalies, or more recently handballs) than under traditional eyes-only officiating. But my response to them, which is pretty much how I feel here, too, is: Your complaint is not with the technology, it is with the rule, so fix the rule.
The technology is not going away, so anything that needs to be fixed is going to have to come from within the games themselves. So if you don't like that, for example, a low-and-away breaking ball that only hits the very front-corner of the plate is called a strike, than when the strike-zone tech is good enough to be implemented, make that area outside the zone.
I also tend to consider arguments like on that Bauer call to be questionable. The pitcher's job is not primarily to throw a ball to the exact spot the catcher wants it. The pitcher's job is to throw a ball that overpowers or deceives the batter enough to either let a strike go by, swing and miss, or make poor-enough contact to make an out. If he misses the catcher's target, that's not great, but that doesn't mean that the pitch isn't still a strike. I mean, if the batter swings and misses, is anyone complaining about it being a strike? I don't think anyone is asking why he swung at a pitch clearly in the zone in that circumstance.
But, of course, the electronic box is mainly b.s., because literally every batter has a different strike zone (because they are of different heights and use different stances). That television uses the same box for every hitter is ridiculous. According to the electronic box, Pete Rose's and, say, Khris Davis' strike zones *are exactly the same.*
This is one of those "technology is amazing and can do anything except this one minor problem that it just can't solve" arguments. For robo-ump strike zones to work, the technology also has to take into account the hitter's size and stance... but do we think that given the existing technology, it is impossible to calibrate a standard strike zone for every hitter's dimensions? I sure don't.
Sure, 10% of the calls differ between robo-ump and meat-ump. But you need to break that down to say whether it will affect the game. Does robo-ump call more strikes than meat, fewer, or is it essentially random when differences occur?
Yeah, those calls were bad, but balls and strikes calls are soooo much better and consistent than they were 10-15 years ago. As much as I bash MLB, they knew they had a problem and they worked really hard to correct it.
Is there any way in which having balls and strikes called reliably is detrimental? I cannot think there is. Will it change the game? We already have individual at-bats affected by the 10% of calls being questionable - so having at-bats not affected by bad calls I guess is a change - but that's good, right?
Ron H pointed out that there are ways that an computer generated strike zone can be adjusted for different player heights and stances. I just want to add that we already have tech that can track dynamic positional information in real time - ball flight, plate, batters knees/armpits etc - so it's available to generate an instant and accurate strike zone and determine if that generated strike zone was penetrated by the ball. The tech is ready to go.
Here's the part I don't get. Is the home plate umpire watching where the ball is in relationship to where the plate is? Or is he watching where the catcher's glove is in relationship to the ball? Can the umpire, who is peaking over the catcher's shoulder, even see the glove clearly without looking down? I understand how the umpire can miss up and down, but how can they miss so many in or out?
Several of the comments have mentioned that the box doesn’t account for the height difference between players. It makes me ask why not. A computer is generating the box electronically, right? Seems to me every major league player can have the appropriate measurements taken (e.g. knee height) which can be input into a database. So that whenever that player comes up you get a customized electronic box created, slightly different (maybe more than slightly if comparing Jose Altuve with Aaron Judge). Computers today should be able to handle this easily. A new player comes into the league? Along with getting a new uniform they get correctly measured and that information is added to the database. You would still have the question of do you want to use the box versus an umpire, but you couldn’t argue against using the box because it is not accurate either. Am I missing something?
Very good points!
Who cares what the catcher does? Who cares what it "looks" like? Who cares what has been done before, for however long? Who cares what the fans think if the fans are wrong?
The strike zone is a clearly defined three-dimensional space (yes, I know it varies with the height and stance of the batter, and technology shouldn't be implemented for this until it can account for that). If a pitch passes through that space, it's a strike. If it doesn't it's not.
The umpire has an extremely hard job: to track a small object moving at almost impossible-to-see speed passing through a space that he can only envision in his mind. That doesn't make a ball a strike or a strike a ball, but erroneous calls are just that - errors.
The batter can't see what the catcher is doing, so he has to make his own judgment.
Yes, Bauer missed his spot and the catcher had to lunge for the pitch. So what? His mistake resulted in the ball passing through the strike zone, so it was a strike. The fact that the pitch and the catcher's reaction to it created an optical illusion that the pitch missed the zone doesn't mean that the pitch missed the zone.
Balls and strikes do have a RIGHT and a WRONG result. It's entirely understandable that a human crouching behind the catcher can't always see it correctly, but that makes it a problem to solve, not a state of things to accept.
How does the strike zone "box" account for the height of the batter? Like so many things, it frustrates me that we assume the box is precise just because the umps aren't.
I assume that they don't alter the box. I just looked at several articles of analysis of umpires and their ball/strike calls and none mentioned anything about different hitters having different heights on their strike zone. :( We need to bug Joe to go ask someone about this.
I wonder this as well, because the box always looks the same. I don't think Altuve and Harper should have the same strike zone.
When Joe said we have to figure out what a strike is, I thought he would talk about the size of the strike zone. In my lifetime, it has changed a bunch, from a big strike zone where the high and low strike zone was called, to strike zone with narrow height but expanding width. The high strike disappeared completely (A belt high pitch was too high) and the low strike prevailed. There was the postage stamp strike zone 20 years ago where virtually nothing was a strike. They actually changed the rulebook definition at least once along the way.
If you have a computer doing balls and strikes, you not only have to have it account for the height, but you have to actually define the strike zone once and for all. The output of a machine is reliant on the input. The biggest problem once you account for height (The rulebook definition is entirely dependent on the batters height) will be that probably no current player has ever had to deal with a rulebook strike zone. There would definitely be an adjustment.
I also think an unintended consequence would be a decrease in sliders. They have more of a lateral movement, and the computer knows where the plate stops.
And do you measure it at the batter's front knee, or his back knee? At the front of the plate, or the back?
Yup. Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley chatted about this in the last week on an episode of their Effectively Wild podcast. But I just can't stomach seeing the "strike zone box" being used as proof of a strike when it doesn't actually have anything to do with the batter at the plate.
The point about what baseball wants to be a strike is a good one. I don't want robot umpires for a couple reasons - one is that I like the idea of catcher framing being a skill. Two is that I like that the strike zone is tighter on an 0-2 count and bigger on a 3-0 count, since it makes it more likely we'll get a ball in play rather than a strikeout or walk. However, if (when) they go to the robo-zone, I will be happy that the pitches where the pitcher misses his spot but still hits the zone will be called strikes. I understand why they're CALLED balls; the umpire has as tough a time tracking the pitch as the catcher, but they should be strikes. I do think they'll need to work on the zone a little bit. Those breaking balls that fall into the top of the zone on the back half of the plate and the ones that catch the very front-bottom edge of the zone on their way down have never been called strikes, but they'll be robo-zone strikes. They may need to shave the edges a bit.
Why do you like pitch framing? That is only done to fool the umpire. The batter doesn't see what the catcher is doing.
In "Baseball and Philosophy : Thinking Outside the Batter's Box" by Eric Bronson and Bill Littlefield (a great book; every baseball fan should read it), there's an essay on cheating in baseball - doctored baseballs, sign stealing, etc. Is it cheating if it helps your team win? The author of that essay concluded that cheating is acceptable *as long as it is not done to deceive the umpires*. You can fool the other players by "deke-ing" them on the basepaths all you want - but trying to sneak something past the umpires is Right Out.
Pitch framing is an attempt to deceive the umpire........
I will quibble a bit with your premise in that the purpose of pitch framing is to give the pitcher the best possible chance to get a favorable call, which in some cases is meant to fool the umpire, if the pitch is a ball. In other cases, it's merely to give the umpire the best look at a pitch that catches the edge of the strike zone. Overall, though, your point is taken, and I'm not normally one who goes for any kind of deception in sports.
However, there are two reasons I like pitch framing. One is that the skill itself is interesting in the context of the skills that are necessary to be a good baseball player. Catching a ball with such precision of hand movement that you can influence a call to made fits really well with other such precise skills in baseball - a pitcher who can paint the outside corner, a hitter lining an outside pitch the opposite way on a hit and run, a fielder reading a ground ball and making a backhanded short-hop, etc. Pitch framing fits in there as a skill the best catchers in the world can and should be able to develop.
Second, it adds an interesting element to statistics evaluating catcher defense. Catchers, for obvious reasons, don't get much from range factor. And in today's game, they don't even get much for their ability to throw out baserunners, since no one runs any more. So having another element that adds to catcher defense is fun. With robo-umps, catchers having "soft" or "quiet" hands will be irrelevant, and I think that would be a little bit sad. Certainly I'm more interested in pitch framing than I am in getting every ball and strike call perfect.
To me it just seems weird to celebrate a part of the game where a defender (the batter in the case) is forced to do something against which he does not have the necessary information to do it. The batter is told "the ball has to be here for it to be a strike". So he waits for the ball to go there, but it never goes there because the catcher is doing trickery. A batter could theoretically strike out without ever swinging the bat, or ever having a ball go through the strike zone.
It would almost be like telling a defensive player in football that he has to stop the opponent from crossing the goal line, but then suddenly saying "well, the player crossed the 5 yard line so we decided to call it a touchdown anyway".
Sure, in theory. In practice, batters know the risk of taking a close pitch with two strikes. If a pitch just off the plate is called for strike three because the catcher is really good at framing, that's tough luck. But I don't see it as being all that different from a batter taking strike three because a pitcher is really good at painting the corners, on the catcher gets some credit for it. In other words, your situation isn't anywhere close to being prevalent enough to get rid of pitch framing as a skill.
I think you're right about the unintended consequences of a robotic strike zone and how framing (and pitcher intent) end up getting boiled out of the process, but fans seeing the computerized strike zone in HD and knowing that 10% of pitches are called wrong is inescapable. I feel like we're all going to have to mourn pitch framing and accept it as a casualty of the new precision of the strike zone. The alternative--some sort of pass-interference-like official judgment about whether a catcher had to make a baseball move with his glove--is so awful I don't want to contemplate it.
May we never live to see such a dystopia as a world in which there is such a thing as a "baseball move"!! Also: you got a genuine chuckle out of me there
The MLB strike zone is tiny. In that second tweet you posted, with Cody Bellinger, the strike zone goes from Bellinger's knees up to his waist. On top of that, you have umps who squeeze pitchers. You mostly see it on pitches that are outside, in that lower or upper corner of the strike zone, but still called balls. I don't know how many low and away strikes I've seen this year that were called balls. Maybe this is why so many home runs are being hit. For a ball to be called a strike, it basically has to be a meatball.
I can't believe Joe didn't mention The Human Element.
One problem is, I think, that umpires (and players) have traditionally accepted that different umpires have different strike zones. So, instead of trying to get the calls "right", umpires lean on the idea that that's "my" strike zone so deal with it. Joe is right about tennis; no one argues that a ball has to be in the middle of the line to be in. It's either in or out. Tennis referees don't have their own definition.
Tim Timmons is one of my favorite umpires! I was wondering if you still had a copy of the article from 1993?
I'm seeing this type of talk in soccer discussions with the increasing use of VAR in higher-level competitions. What tends to happen is that people don't like that a rule is being called a different way under VAR (offsides, or rules relating to goalies, or more recently handballs) than under traditional eyes-only officiating. But my response to them, which is pretty much how I feel here, too, is: Your complaint is not with the technology, it is with the rule, so fix the rule.
The technology is not going away, so anything that needs to be fixed is going to have to come from within the games themselves. So if you don't like that, for example, a low-and-away breaking ball that only hits the very front-corner of the plate is called a strike, than when the strike-zone tech is good enough to be implemented, make that area outside the zone.
I also tend to consider arguments like on that Bauer call to be questionable. The pitcher's job is not primarily to throw a ball to the exact spot the catcher wants it. The pitcher's job is to throw a ball that overpowers or deceives the batter enough to either let a strike go by, swing and miss, or make poor-enough contact to make an out. If he misses the catcher's target, that's not great, but that doesn't mean that the pitch isn't still a strike. I mean, if the batter swings and misses, is anyone complaining about it being a strike? I don't think anyone is asking why he swung at a pitch clearly in the zone in that circumstance.
It’s so much easier when you have an electronic box superimposed on the screen.
But, of course, the electronic box is mainly b.s., because literally every batter has a different strike zone (because they are of different heights and use different stances). That television uses the same box for every hitter is ridiculous. According to the electronic box, Pete Rose's and, say, Khris Davis' strike zones *are exactly the same.*
This is one of those "technology is amazing and can do anything except this one minor problem that it just can't solve" arguments. For robo-ump strike zones to work, the technology also has to take into account the hitter's size and stance... but do we think that given the existing technology, it is impossible to calibrate a standard strike zone for every hitter's dimensions? I sure don't.
Sure, 10% of the calls differ between robo-ump and meat-ump. But you need to break that down to say whether it will affect the game. Does robo-ump call more strikes than meat, fewer, or is it essentially random when differences occur?
I agree. Is there a (presumably unintentional) bias in favor of strikes or balls?
There's a bias in favor of the home team.
There's a whole chapter on this in the book Scorecasting: http://baseballbook.blogspot.com/2011/03/scorecasting-by-tobias-j-moskowitz-and.html
Quick correction, in the Atlanta game, pitch #5 wound up being a passed ball that scored a run before the pop out. So it did make a difference.
Yeah, those calls were bad, but balls and strikes calls are soooo much better and consistent than they were 10-15 years ago. As much as I bash MLB, they knew they had a problem and they worked really hard to correct it.
Yes, they did. I think Joe Torre gets a lot of the credit, along with Bud Selig.