Computers and Umpires
Like many of you, I’ve been watching with great interest and some trepidation as the ABS system overrides poor calls by all sorts of umpires.
It’s been interesting, particularly when certain notoriously poor umpires have been overridden over and over again. But the problem that we have is that these systems tend to cause us to forget about the human element of the sport.
I’m not saying that horrible calls, like the one in game 6 of the 1985 World Series, are somehow a good part of the sport. When things are egregious, we absolutely should find a way to solve them.
However, it’s clear to me that the future lies in having the system call the pitches, and the umpires merely acting as spokesmen.
Back in 1969, there were rumors of a strike by the umpires:
This is the part of the sport that we forget.
The umpires have always been the punching bags of the sport. Our heroes can never do wrong, but the umpires simply can never do right.
It’s a thankless job, one in which you’re infamous when you get it wrong, and one in which nobody notices when you do something right.
Now, the irony of that article is that this article showed up right next to it:
That’s right - the origins of modern data-driven baseball management came up at that precise time.
Look: using data works. There’s no way we’re going to get that cat back into the bag.
But there’s something sad about the great game losing a lot of its human element.
So, sure, get the calls right. But please don’t mind me as I mourn the loss of the human side of baseball.
I've decided I like the ABS. To me there's a difference between the human element of performance on the field, pitching, catching, batting, fielding, stealing bases, and so forth that is distinctly different from the *subjective* *judgement* aspect of umpires deciding balls and strikes. What the ballplayers do either succeeds or fails objectively. With the exception of scoring errors, there's no judgement involved.
But with balls and strikes, there is a fact of the matter — the pitch was either a ball or a strike. Fans watching on TV have seen the strikezone for many years and know when umps miss a call. Some broadcasts even put up a graphic showing missed calls. So, I think it's high time we put that to use on the field. (And high time we took a bit of stuffing out of some of those umps.)
I think ABS is fine, two challenges per team works for me. Usually there aren't many egregiously bad calls by umpires behind the plate, and I usually don't count the ones on the edges as mistakes, anyway. Those should go either way, in my view. If a hitter or a catcher have good enough eyes to spot the pitches on the edges correctly, they deserve the extra ball or strike. Don't have a problem with it.