I realize that it's an objectively ridiculous thing to have strong feelings about, but boy do I hate it :D
At the time, every umpire had their own strike box, and I loved it! It added variance to the pitches and swings each game. Some batters would turn their head and confirm with the umpire where one edge of the box was when they called a strike (and others would silently curse without turning their head haha)
Guaranteed perfectly-called games every time.
Doesn't sound particularly fun to me, but to each their own.
Is this even a serious argument? Come on. I would almost think you were trolling, conflating the performance of the umpires vs the performance of the players, were this not HN.
Initially I was going to argue that that's a silly thing to prioritize in a game, but it's a matter of taste and I'm not going to tell you what to like or not. It's not like you said that you liked arguing with your friends or something.
In all seriousness though, sure, everyone wants a fair game, but there's limitations. For instance, I only watch minor league baseball, and it's not because they got the pitch clock and ABS first, it's because the teams aren't completely optimized like the majors, and the game isn't as refined - it's closer in spirit to the first game of baseball ever played.
Frankly, I'd rather watch a pick-up game without an umpire if it weren't weird (and I could get a beer and some hotdogs).
Long story short (too late), baseball's a lot of different things to a lot of different people. The stats, the camaraderie, the competition, or the culture around the game itself. If you prized a game going off like clockwork, I couldn't fault you, even if that doesn't factor into my love of the game at all.
The quest for eternal optimization is exhausting.
The primary use case is the glaring wrong calls. 1/2 a ball in/out of the zone called wrong. The batter/catcher/pitcher have to do the challenge, so, ideally, the “obvious” ones should be readily challenged.
But the close calls, the squeakers, the players have very little time to make the challenge and we saw lots of failures in Spring Training this year.
So, there’s still a lot of judgement and uncertainty to deal with. And don’t forget the the Umpires have been being evaluated based on the automated box for years. They review each game and the Umpires performance. It’s just not had actual game impact before.
I have no doubt that there will be some important, game impacting “bad calls” going forward. It just that there will be fewer of them. Also be interesting to see if the get extra challenges in the post season/WS games.
The problem is we have more and more technology (camera angles, first down markers, strike zones, HD and 4K resolution, etc) that make it easier to see errors after the fact.
Not using technology to get things right starts to feel like dereliction of duty by the leagues as evidence of errors pile up.
I accept the "human element" but I wouldn't say I like it. I do think umps having their own strike zones is one of the better instances of human element, though (so long as they're consistent).
If you want a human element this is just using it as a challenge system. So the players have to have a good eye to decide whether an ump was right or wrong and they can’t get help from anyone else to decide to challenge a call.
Arguing about calls when we were watching blurry slow-mo on CRTs isn't the same as when we're watching crystal clear 4K.
Even with a challenge system as you describe, you still have potential for an ump missing calls that are obvious to everyone watching on TV.
Being able to challenge is good, sure, as a bare minimum, but it's very arguable that players shouldn't have to.
I think players liked arguing with the umps, too.