Developing MLB’s Automated Ball/Strike System
technology.mlblogs.com
technology.mlblogs.com
Also catchers framing pitches would go away entirely, something I really enjoy watching, heres a video on that.
At least I hope so. The folks running baseball now like to twiddle with stuff.
There are measurable differences in the skill with which a catcher catches the ball. [0] And frankly, without the box there, many people wouldn't have batted an eye at this pitch [1] (watch the video). No one in the game did!
It's sad to me that many people care more about the box than about that human experience of the game. One of the great things about sports is that it isn't fair—it teaches us about life in that and other ways. And particularly in baseball, with 162 games and 24,000 pitches in a season [2], variations tend to come out in the wash, even as individual games and pitches feel really meaningful.
[0] https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/catcher_framing?year=2019&tea...
[1] https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-worst-called-ball-on-record/
[2] https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/MLB/2019-pitches-...
The rule is right there. If the rule is a lie, it should not be there.
> And frankly, without the box there, many people wouldn't have batted an eye at this pitch
It's moving fast and involves tracking something in 3d space from a far-away camera. You could trick me super easily, but I'm not sure what that proves.
> One of the great things about sports is that it isn't fair
Yikes.
I'm really unconvinced that if things were more fair, you'd be arguing they should become less fair.
Before the Rockies existed, adding a team at high altitude where the ball carries farther could have been seen as less fair, because batters for that team would have an easier time breaking home run records. But so what? Camden Yards is one of the best stadiums in baseball. It's only 318 feet down the right field line. But so what?
The rule isn't a lie. It's just enforced by humans. Should speed limits not exist, just because you can often exceed the limit and not get a ticket? I sure don't want to live in a world where every street has automatic enforcement.
Lots of words have been written already this season about the historically low batting average across baseball, fueled at least in part by balls with less bounce and thus more aggressive pitchers who aren't afraid of getting dinged.
If MLB wanted to tweak a knob to get a bit more offense, they could shrink the strike zone a little - maybe take away half an inch at the top of the strike zone. With human umpires, there's no way that could be implemented consistently. But with this solution, it'd be consistent and could potentially even be done with no announcement and no rule change. If it's subtle, batters and pitchers might not even notice that they're being experimented on.
Announcing ahead of time that strike zone is + - 5% would at least set expectations.
Now it would also undo months of muscle memory training.
Was highly impressed at how industry got its act together.
Found it. https://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-xpm-1996-04-07-9...
Not anymore. These days there are a few that make you wonder about the strength of the elastic on their protective gear.
What if that Jeffrey Maier kid hadn’t grabbed the home run… What if Ron Gant wasn’t really out…
MLB parks are all different dimensions and even shapes. Grounds crews maintain the local fields differently from each other, sometimes to the advantage of the home team. Colorado plays half their games at an altitude that meaningfully favors offense. Other teams play half their games in climates that meaningfully favor defense. Some teams go 20 days without a day off. Some divisions tend to be more competitive than others. There are injuries — sometimes many of them to one team.
To all those, add: some umpires make more mistakes than others, and some pitchers and catchers are better at adapting.
All of these things aren’t fair. That’s okay. That’s life, and that’s baseball.
Anyway, this isn’t really about overall fairness. Serious accusations of umpires favoring one team or another are very rare. It’s about whether to obsess about every single pitch being called by some mechanical (and so supposedly objective) standard. To me, that misses the whole point. You get 27 hitters per game (unless you win early) and play 162 games per year. If your success comes down to even a handful of bad calls, you were only going to win by chance anyway.
It's wild he still umps MLB games.
Bad umpires can’t be fired due to the Umpires union, so their relevance has to be taken away.
I strongly believe that this situation wouldn’t be required if fans were shown that bad umpires wouldn’t be tolerated.
It seems to me, without knowing anything about their union, that it would be in their best interest to let umps to get fired for performance reasons, as opposed to getting replaced by robo umps.
Maybe this is a bargaining chip ploy by MLB? Personally, I'd be kind of sad for umps to get replaced, although I see the argument for it.
https://twitter.com/UmpireAuditor/status/1388405200512159747
Robo umpires? Please. Your league has two sets of rules, every field is differently shaped, and one even had a ramp in the outfield.
Which is one reason why MLB viewership has been in decline for the last few decades.
Younger fans simply aren’t putting up with the status quo regarding the game and their outdated traditions.
For me it's the opposite: the pure game is boring to watch. I love when unusual stuff happens.
A leg-before-wicket (LBW) out on the other hand happens if the umpire deems the ball would have struck the stumps if the batsman hadn't put their legs (really pads) in the way (there are other technicalities involved but thats the gist). A MLB ball/strike judgement seems similar in nature. Cricket has been using ball-tracking technology for over a decade now for determining LBW.
See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leg_before_wicket https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/ball-tracking-and-the-uni...
Recently the automated front foot no ball system was introduced too, and it has too been a success.
This system should have been fully in place many years ago. The fact that the deployment is still dragging along is amazing.
I think there needs to be a fine line, however. We can keep umpires in some capacity, but still make use of an automated system.
Do Not Do This.
Here's why:
Right now, all of the criticism about the calls of balls and strikes - criticism that might seem unique for this season but isn't - is directed at individual umps. You do this, and build an automation tool to replace them, and you've just redirected the entire fan rage from an ump who makes a bad call or two at a critical point in the game and aimed it at the institution of baseball.
While you may feel like this season has seen a lot of criticism of balls and strike calls, it only seems that way because of, well, the internet. You may also think "if we just make this thing uniform, with math and automation, then it really will be fair", but it won't be. This is important to note because, again, if you take the human element out of this and replace it with a machine you are signing yourself up for constant criticism and risk. Moreover, you are introducing a new kind of risk into the game (an attack surface that hasn't existed before). Think of the Houston Trash Can Scandal, but instead of an analog signal based on an auditory input, it's some paid bad actor who manipulates the system making calls at critical points in the game. I hesitate to use the word "hack" but is it really that outside the realm of possibility? With a World Series on the line, Houston did what they did out in the open. You don't think someone would lose their scruples and try to do it on the backend if this existed?
Third, and this may be a bit "old man yells at cloud", but if you do this you are removing one of the best parts of the game. The human element, where a reasonable person can watch a ball go across the plate, and it's just outside that little box the broadcast booth puts on, the ump calls strike three, and you as a fan let it go because, ya know what, "ehh he coulda hit that I think".
I am baffled because I don't understand how that is "the human element" at all. I don't know if you can explain that in a different way? And you could still have the same situation happen with a machine calling it a strike, couldn't you?
and i too don't understand your third bit. when the human element that gets involved is the umpire that is terrible for the game. the umpire should only be there to properly referee balls/strikes, safe/out as they are. not to just decide a ball is now a strike and a strike a ball. no thanks. sign me up for robot umps.
I think having the automated call kept semi-private is part of the design. Umps aren’t big fans of getting shown up. Maybe in future iterations, but the only way this is getting adopted up front is if the ump still has some “control.”
Another thing to consider is that the ump also has other responsibilities than just ball/strike. Keeping it audio only allows the ump to focus on check swings, catcher interference, and anything else that requires his eyesight.
> Also, are there any deaf umps? Will MLB need the ability to make accommodations if so?
Since they developed an iOS app, they could feasibly develop a watchOS app as well, and relay the call via vibrations on the wrist
So you get the human calls from the ump, but at the same time there's a way of signaling if any are egregious. If so, you can override the human call.
Problem is, that process would happen often and need to take less time than a standard play review, which already can drag, and it has to be agreeable.
The way I see it with what I initially posted, the ump can make a call but with the machine backing every pitch, it'll be easy to stop emotional calls from continuing.
I'm also surprised that all you need to define the strike zone is two heights which are pre-determined per player. I guess I assumed you would need to track the batter's actual knees and torso to define it dynamically. If this is really being used by the actual umpires, wouldn't that be important to get right?
> I'm also surprised that all you need to define the strike zone is two heights which are pre-determined per player
The strike zone is determined when the batter first gets set in their stance so that batters can't shrink the zone after the pitcher starts their motion.
If you watch, you'll notice a lot of guys crouch when they start to load up and step in the bucket, so there can be a huge difference in the apparent strike zone from the time a pitcher lets the ball go to the time the ball arrives at the plate.
I haven't played organized baseball in 10 years, but having played for a long time before that my body still automatically does its thing when I pick up a bat.
That’s as much for your brain as it is for your mechanics; over time you get to know where your zone is in 3D space, and having to re-learn that is painful.