A Computer Umpires Its First Pro Baseball Game 68
An anonymous reader writes: Baseball has long been regarded as a "game of inches." Among the major professional sports it arguably requires the greatest amount of precision — a few extra RPMs can turn a decent curveball into an unhittable one, and a single degree's difference in the arc of a bat swing can change a lazy popup into a home run. As sensor technology has improved, it's been odd to see how pro baseball leagues have made great efforts to keep it away from the sport. Even if you aren't a fan of the game, you're probably familiar with the cultural meme of an umpire blowing a key call and altering the course of the game.
Thus, it's significant that for the first time ever, sensors and a computer have called balls and strikes for a professional game. In a minor league game between the San Rafael Pacifics and the Vallejo Admirals, a three-camera system tracked the baseball's exact position as it crossed home plate, and a computer judged whether it was in the strike zone or not. The game went without incident, and it provided valuable data in a real-life example. The pitch-tracking system still has bugs to work out, though. Dan Brooks, founder of a site that tracks ball/strike accuracy for real umpires, said that for the new system to be implemented permanently, fans must be "willing to accept a much smaller amount of inexplicable error in exchange for a larger amount of explicable error."
Thus, it's significant that for the first time ever, sensors and a computer have called balls and strikes for a professional game. In a minor league game between the San Rafael Pacifics and the Vallejo Admirals, a three-camera system tracked the baseball's exact position as it crossed home plate, and a computer judged whether it was in the strike zone or not. The game went without incident, and it provided valuable data in a real-life example. The pitch-tracking system still has bugs to work out, though. Dan Brooks, founder of a site that tracks ball/strike accuracy for real umpires, said that for the new system to be implemented permanently, fans must be "willing to accept a much smaller amount of inexplicable error in exchange for a larger amount of explicable error."
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Are you kidding me? The only parts of baseball that take several minutes are:
1) waiting for everyone to get ready for the next pitch. Because the batter just has to step out of the batters box, adjust his balls, rub his nipples, hitch up his shirt, work on rubbing out the lines showing where the batters box is, and then practice swinging the bat. Every single pitch.
2) when the teams switch from hitting to fielding
3) manager and/or player arguing over the last call from the umpire before being thrown out.
Ball tracking is not new (Score:2, Informative)
Ball tracking tech has been used by cricket umpires for years.
Although its still a human making the decision, the computer shows where the ball was, and would have gone.
Re:Ball tracking is not new (Score:4, Informative)
Ditto tennis, where most people find it adds to the enjoyment.
The only tech that assists with calls on a regular basis is (I believe) the one that tells the umpire if the ball nicked the net on a serve, which has been in place for decades. However, players are allowed to challenge other calls (or lack of call), in which case the decision is turned over to the computers, which display an animated view of the ball's trajectory and it's calculated impact, to much "ooh"ing from the crowd.
Re:Ball tracking is not new (Score:5, Informative)
Cricket is actually a poor comparison as Hawkeye is used to predict where the ball would have gone, whereas in Baseball you're looking at where the ball went and defining whether it passed through the correct window. This should make it a lot less controversial as there's no debate about whether the computers extrapolation is correct or not, like there is with hawkeye in cricket.
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Cricket is actually a poor comparison as Hawkeye is used to predict where the ball would have gone
That's just one thing that hawkeye does in cricket. To be out leg before wicket in cricket, the ball cannot have pitched outside leg stump. Also to be out lbw when playing a shot, the ball must not have hit the batter outside off stump, which is also checked for. Both of these examples check where the ball has been, and decisions are often overturned on these things.
Also, if the umpire's decision is not ou
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Re:Ball tracking is not new (Score:4, Informative)
3 to 5 years? I was a catcher in little league in the '70s and was taught how to frame pitches. It's been done as long as there have been umpires calling balls and strikes...
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technically it's cheating, but everyone has been doing it for the last 3-5 years.
Catchers have been doing this since before there were catcher's mitts. And if there is no rule against it, it is not 'technically' anything, much less cheating.
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When Americans use that phrase ("Major professional sports") they're invariably talking about a) team sports that b) they actually play. So not cricket.
And of those sports baseball is clearly on the precision-oriented side. If you screw up a pass attempt in basketball, football, or soccer by a foot or two your team-mate can compensate and still catch the ball. Scoring in football and soccer you can generally be as much as a foot off where you were aiming and still make it. Basketball is tricker, because the
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Hey! It's Enrico Palazzo!
Not new to professional baseball (Score:5, Informative)
The use of a computerized system to call balls and strikes is not new to professional baseball. Major league baseball has used a system called QuesTec [wikipedia.org] to automatically determine whether a pitch is a ball or a strike. MLB used the data to evaluate the performance of umpires and try to standardize the strike zone so that all umpires call it according to what's in the rule book. In practice, this generally meant a narrower but a taller strike zone, including calling the low strike at the knees and the high strike at the letters. Another system called PITCHf/x [wikipedia.org] is installed in all 30 MLB parks and automatically classifies the type of pitch and tracks its trajectory, recording both velocity and movement. This data can show which pitches were balls and strikes, the type of pitch thrown, the velocity, and the amount of horizontal and vertical break on the pitch. These data are readily available on sites like Fangraphs [fangraphs.com]. Furthermore, the K Zone and FoxTrax [wikipedia.org] have been regular parts of the ESPN and Fox MLB telecasts, respectively, for many years and show the trajectory of the ball as it's pitched and whether it's a ball or a strike. The technology isn't new at all to professional baseball. The only thing that's actually new is using the data in real time to umpire a game as opposed to evaluating umpires after games, collecting data sets for scouting and statistical analysis, or entertainment purposes in TV broadcasts and tracking games live online.
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Also, it's fun to yell at the umpire, especially after a few beers.
I've heard some really creative insults directed at umpires.
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Actually, the quality of play in the WNBA is quite good and the ladies are every bit as professional as the men playing in the NBA. As for the minors, they're definitely professional. I suggest you educate yourself on the concept of a farm system [wikipedia.org], developed by Branch Rickey as a way for MLB teams to develop players under their control before bringing them to the majors.
The real benefit to this system (Score:2, Interesting)
The MLB rule book expressly prohibits arguing balls and strikes, partly because it's so hard for the home plate umpire to make those calls. For the most part, MLB umpires do a really good job of getting calls right. It's really hard to determine accurately whether the ball crossed within a certain rectangle at any point as it crosses home plate. The strike zone is a three dimensional construct that varies from one hitter to another depending on their height. There's nothing easy about what the umpires are a
Re:The real benefit to this system (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing is, I'm not so sure that I, as a fan, want to see the human element removed. Expanding the strike zone is a skill and a part of the sport. It's also a skill when the batsman shrinks or crowds the strike zone. The ability to adjust to a slightly different strike zone every night is also part of it.
Of course, none of this gets the ump out from behind the plate. There's still the swinging strike to consider. I don't know of any machine that can make that call automatically. For that matter, there isn't even an unambiguous rule for what counts as a swing, so there would have to be a rule change to even allow a machine to make the call unofficially. Even if that is taken over, there's still the foul tip and hit by pitch that the umpire will need to call. Not to mention plays at the plate.
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You might be surprised how much more you enjoy the game if you learn more about the subtitles of it.
Meanwhile, there's something to be said for the ability of kids on a sandlot to play a fully regulation game, or at least feel that they did.
Finally, don't underestimate how much some fans enjoy booing the ump.
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Damned spell checker...
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This. If baseball wanted to have a set strike zone, they would have invented some kind of moveable net like device like a goal. But the human element is a big part of the sport. There is an aesthetic quality that is essential in most sports that defies simple mechanization, and in baseball, that is the strike zone. In basketball, it is the little travel before a nice dunk, and in soccer, it is the amount of stoppage time. If every travel was rigidly called, or if a soccer game stopped at exactly the correct
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Except the player's actual height is irrelevant. The strike zone is measured as the batsman stands awaiting the pitch (that is, hunched up somewhat with knees bent).
The process did tighten up the strike zone sufficiently and it worked because it kept the umpire in charge with the machine simply providing feedback.
Re: The real benefit to this system (Score:2)
if a soccer game stopped at exactly the correct time, even in the middle of good possession, these sports would be worse off.
I'm not really a soccer fan, but I know that a regulation soccer game is 90 minutes, plus "extra time." The amount of "extra time" is set at the referee's discretion. I thought the referee had to announce the amount of extra time that would be played at the 89 minute mark, and then when that timer is up, the game ends, even in the middle of an exciting possession.
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In theory, yes, the ref announces, say, "3 minutes", and the game is supposed to end in 3 minutes, but that is just an approximation. It is generally understood that if the "real" stoppage time was 3 minutes, 10 seconds, but one team is in the middle of an attack at 3 minutes, 9 seconds, the ref will let the series play out before blowing the whistle.
The evidence is the disproportionately large number of games with a game winning goal in stoppage time, which end a second or two after the ball is inbounde
Kicking dirt (Score:2)
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No, but the St. Louis Cardinals are going to hack the computer real-time to win baseball games.
The joys of baseball (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem I have with this approach is the human element with its possible mistakes is what gives baseball a lot of its soul. First instant replay, now this? I'm all for progress and technology, but from where I sit on the couch and in the bleachers this is solving a set of problems that doesn't exist.
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Ender's Game? (Score:2)
Also means catchers no longer influence the calls (Score:2)
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Next they need a pitch clock if there's no one on base.
No, they just need to change the rules so we don't have 45-minute 8th innings because the leading team brings out a new pitcher for each batter.
OK with me (Score:4, Insightful)
I view myself as generally a baseball traditionalist. I hate the designated hitter rule. I mourned the addition of lights to Wrigley Field. I view replay review with suspicion.
Automatic balls & strikes seems like a good idea to me.
One of the side effects of replay is that the MLB has become much more civil. Instead of losing their shit, MLB managers calmly wait for the replay review.
For whatever reason, baseball had been unusually tolerant (compared to other sports) of long arguments from players and managers. This trickles down to the way people behave at amateur baseball games. So I'm hopeful that replay will eventually change the expectation for behavior in amateur games without replay. And following behind, automatic balls and strikes will do the same.
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I agree that replay could use some tweaks. The clock in football constrains stalling before the challenge. I'm not sure how to implement that pressure in baseball, which traditionally allows an indefinite number of time outs.
Curveball in the dirt (Score:5, Insightful)
There's an interesting oddity to the way umpires are currently graded with pitch F/X. Pitches that cross the front of the plate at the batter's knees but then drop before reaching the catcher are strikes by the definition in the rulebook. Those pitches don't look like strikes to the casual observer, so umpires stopped calling them strikes, basically so they don't get yelled at. Batters know this and generally position themselves at the extreme back of the batter's box to give themselves the most time to react to a fastball.
The automatic system currently grades umpires with the standard that balls and strikes have traditionally been called, NOT with a strict adherence to the actual rulebook zone. So when the MLB implements the automatic balls & strikes, will it be the actual strike zone or the traditional zone? Robot umpires don't care when people yell at them. If it's the actual rulebook zone, pitches that bounce before the catcher will be called strikes. Batters will have to adjust by moving up in the box to hit that low curve ball.
I don't know if all fans will accept it (Score:2)
I bet half the fans will accept a much smaller amount of inexplicable error, and half will demand a smaller amount of explicable error. They may go so far as to pick colors to help identify their preferred choice, and possibly even associate an animal or ethnicity with their selection.