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Digital Baseball Umpires
Dekaner writes "Wired is running an article on an electronic umpire that tracks each baseball pitch and judges whether it is within the "strike zone" has been installed at 10 major league ballparks in the U.S. The QuesTec system uses several cameras that track each pitch and compare the machine's judgment with that of the umpire standing behind the catcher. At the end of each game it provides a summary of its ratings and compares them with the umpire's calls. In general there is reasonably good agreement. In a recent test the QuesTec system judged that 32.1 percent of pitches were within the "strike zone", while the umpire called 31.4 percent as strikes. However, the umpires association has filed a complaint about the system's unreliability and incapability to replace the human 3-D, real-time view. "
The ICC adopted a similar scheme some time ago, but it was to assist the umpires rather than replace them.
I would like to change the world,
but they won't tell me the source code.
Jesus Christ. I thought you were lying about the salary issue, so I looked it up:
"NEW YORK (9/5/00) _ Umpires will get raises of 10.2 percent to 14.9 percent this year under their new five-year contract, boosting the minimum salary this season to $104,704 and the maximum to $324,545. In 2004, the contract's final season, the minimum will be $108,716, up 14.4 percent from the $95,000 minimum in 1999, the final year of the old contract."
(from: http://www.umpire.org/frames/fmlb.html)
Well, I'm in full support of robots replacing them.
I recall that one catcher was supposedly told by an umpire that he wanted to call a lot of those pitches strikes, but he couldn't. Catcher seemed to think this was a bad thing. So, in other words, the umpire admits that he doesn't typically enforce the rules as written unless outright forced to? Sounds like he's completely justifying the existence of the machines to me. Maybe now Atlanta pitchers won't get their customary strike zone that stretches between the home and visiting dugouts?
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
The main problem that the umps have is not that it might replace them, but that it might not really be more accurate than them. This quote is from the article (which is the little clicky linky thing that you often find in the story text...we should all try clicking it sometime!):
"Even if (the computer operators) were experienced umpires, this system would not work because it's based on a single frontal photograph in comparison with the 3-D, real-time view of the umpire," Gibson said.
In addition, many batters move during the course of the pitch, which an umpire sees and weighs in determining the strike zone, he said.
See, each time a batter steps to the plate, the system has to be calibrated for that batter's particular size, crouch, stance angle, etc. But that calibration is only done once (at the beginning of the at bat), and it's done by...a human being, just like the umpires. And often, this operator, while he may know the system, doesn't understand the game of baseball.
So the umpires' beef is not that they don't want to be evaluated, it's just a question of whether the measuring stick is really doing a better job than they can do standing right behind the plate.
Belloc
I got more rhymes than Jamaica got Mangoes.
I sense sarcasm, but I feel I should give the facts anyway. For a regular season major league baseball game there are four umpires (one for each base), compared to the nine defensive players that are always on the field, plus the batter and as many as three runners on base. So there are four umpires for as many as 13 players on the field. This is about the same ratio as the NBA (3 refs for 10 players) and the NFL (7 officials for 22 players).
For the playoffs, major league baseball adds 2 umpires, one down each foul line so the outfield is covered better. In the minor leagues, there are usually only 3 umpires per game during the regular season.