Slashdot Mirror
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. "
I can understand why they aren't exactly happy - this computerized system is a threat to their jobs. What I'd like to examine is every pitch in a game and see if the system made "better" calls than the human. In any event, I can understand the umpires' cause for concern.
The reason umpires don't want these machines on the field is that they make a KILLING doing their job.
Seriously, the average pay for an ump is well over $100k. I'm not talking about your little league ump, I'm talking about the "Big Boys", the major league umpires.
It's hilarious reading the article with this in mind, with the machine doing the same job better and the umps jumping up and down crying foul. Of COURSE they don't want these machines. They'd lose their Lexus.
Just something to think about.
Actually, I read it as "We don't want it to replace our jobs"
There's nothing like having a batter stare down an ump or kick dirt or get thrown out of a game.
Of course, you'd still need an ump for the home plate tag calls...so it's not like the umpires are going to disappear.
I think the machine is fun for the home-viewing audience, but the ump is necessary for the game. Until you can put in a Johnny-5 to call the game, I'll take my umpires and their strike calls and punch-out flourishes.
Mordor...a magical, mythical land where women are more rare than dragons--but where every man would rather find a dragon
The fact that people are COMPLAINING that there is a 0.7%(!!) margin between the accuracy of machines to humans is insane! I'd be congratulating my umpires for being so accurate!
If anything, I think it'd be an argument on why to KEEP umpires.
It's being used as a tool to evaluate umpires, particularly to judge which ones should be involved in playoff games. Baseball would gain nothing by replacing umps with these tools, and would only incur the wrath of traditional fans (of course, given MLB, they may do that anyway).
By and large, this is a GREAT tool in that it will help get rid of the absurd variance in strike zones as called by different umps. One factor in the Home Run Derby that MLB has become is the incredibly shrinking strike zone...
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
I'm not a big fan of automated officials in sports, or replay cameras.
Yes, I know humans will make mistakes, but questionable/bad calls are part of the game. The small bit of randomness that can have a surprise effect.
As long as the margin of error is as reasonable as it has been.
Yes I have heard all the technical arquements about this, but this is how I enjoy the game. I don't like astrturf or indoor games either.
As a kid I remember watching the browns play in snow. It is assome. There is nothing like watching a quarter back hit a reciever 20 yards away when the visability is 20 feet.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
It's not just the umpires who don't like this. The pithers don't like it either because they can't paint the corner. However, the batters probably won't like it because it will force the strike zone on them too (they just don't realize it yet). Right now the strike zone is called very side-to-side. The batters would be happy that the pitchers will be forced to throw it over the plate. But then the pitchers will remember that the strike zone is also knees to chest and the batters probably won't like it when the high hard stuff is called a strike when currently it's probably called a ball.
These machines will never replace actual human umpires. Traditionalists like myself would launch a Butlerian jihad before that were to happen.
What good I think can come of this is the absolute lunacy of umpires with different strike zones. The actual strike zone as described in the rules hasn't been called in decades. If this system can force umpires to call close to the real zone instead of their "personal" zone, I am all for it.
"Enough of this wretched, whining monkey life." -- Marcus Aurelius, _Meditations_, Book 9, 37
Sports are about people going out and doing difficult things in front of a crowd. It's not just the atheletes who do that, especially in baseball. The umpires are out there performing too.
Part of the fun of baseball is second guessing the umpire, complaining about a bad call, arguing with your friends about whether or not a call really was bad, etc. Just like part of the fun is seeing whether or not someone is going to hit a home run or strike out, or watching someone pitch, or whatever.
Everyone on the field comes together and interacts in a complicated ecosystem. If they start mucking around with it at such a fundamental level, they're going to break the game more than they already have by their tweaks designed to produce more hits.
Why stop with the umpire? Why not making pitching and hitting robots? Why don't we have modified sony aibo's roaming the outfield, with baskets to catch the balls?
I'm not saying there isn't room for geekery at the ball park. The machines that shoot the hotdogs way up into the stand are pretty cool. But that's the sort of thing that technology should do at a ball park. Leave the game to the people.
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.
Now there's some stupid science. Hey, I bet I'd call 32% of pitches strikes too, too bad they wouldn't be the right damn 32%. We need to know what % they agreed, not what % they called. For all we know the umpires are constantly making bad calls that cancel each other out. Anyway, it's the close calls that matter more then anything, how many of those calls were totally obvious? I think we need a lot more info before this study means anything.
And yes, I am assuming that the umpires are worse then the machines. That's because machines are better at judging the exact spacial positioning of fast moving things then people-even trained people.
"Probably the toughest time in anyone's life is when you have to murder a loved one because they're the devil." -Philips
I would strongly disagree that there is an absurd invariance in strike zones across different home plate umpires. If anything, the fact that there is a little over 1% difference in the machine and the actual human strike zone recognition proves this point. In general, umpires working in MLB have worked very hard through A, AA, AAA leagues to get where they are, and they are there for a reason.
From a baseball purist standpoint, MLB has become a Home Run Derby of sorts, but that has VERY little to do with strike zone, and much more to do with performance enhancing drugs, different composition used in the actual ball, expansion thinning out pitching talent, and the general change in the makeup of ballparks (read: home run alleys as found in PacBell Park, and the new Great American Ballpark in Cinncinati).
Personally, and I believe many die-hard baseball fans feel similarly, this new machine ruins the game. Pitching and hitting are arts, and the ability of a good pitcher to locate pitches just on the corners is something that is special to the game, and makes a great pitcher amazing. This machine has served it's purpose: it has proven that the Umpires are doing a very good job dealing with a highly subjective condition. Leave the subjectivity to the humans, and the web serving to the machines.
It's only when we've lost everything, that we are free to do anything...
I'm sure you could build a system that will measure strikes and balls better than any human. That's not the point. There's plenty of sports where automated systems could be used to replace human judges, but the question you have to ask is "does it make the game better?"
I argue that most of the time, the answer is no. Sports are not meant to be an exersize in perfection, and there is an element to every sport that involves playing 'outside' the rules. In the specific case of Baseball, for example, a human umpire knows when to call a ball as a strike because the batter is being a dick. Competition can be more about manipulating the human and social factors than about following the rules, and we shouldn't take that aspect out of the game just because we can.
Now owners are trying to take away that leeway and create a uniform strike zone because they (somehow) think that there isn't enough offense in the game.
What I really like is that not even the MLB follows its own strike zone rule in setting up this system.
Does anyone call a letters high strike anymore? Of course not... it's an unhittable pitch and wouldn't be fair to call. Questec doesn't either according to an "Outside the Lines" report on ESPN a few weeks ago. I'd rather let the umps determine what a strike is than the owners.
Whatever,
mcsey
BTW -- Outside the Lines is great! A sports talk show where people don't yell at each other, woohoo!
Where just because somebody can type they think they know what the hell they're talking about.
The machines won't replace the umpires. That's not the umpires concern. Please stop posting that.
The core of beef on this system is a struggle for control between the umpires union and MLB. Ever since Richie Phillips (head of the Umpires Union) Tried to wrestle control of umpiring from MLB the two sides have been fighting over exactly who controls the game. MLB has been trying to get umpires to call the rulebook strike zone and Umpires have been trying to maintain their autonomy (a difficult task after the massive f**kup Phillips organized). Questec is a grading system for umpires and umpires don't like it. Players (Curt Schilling most famously) don't like it because they feel it makes the umpires tentative and inconsistent.
So far the system has had no affect.
The editors are apparently not quite capable of discerning exactly what the story is about or they wouldn't have titled it "Digital Baseball Umpires", which in turn would have kept the slashdot masses from posting random contributions pulled out of their ass. Honestly, do you think that a system which grades strike zone judgement is in anyway a threat to umpiring jobs? Will the strike zone grading system handle calls at the plate? Ejections? Can it call a ground rule double? Infield fly? Seriously people, think about it for about 30 seconds before you post the kneejerk crap that's flooding this story (Umpires == factory workers losing thier jobs to technology? What the hell are you smoking).
The reason umpires don't want these machines on the field is that they make a KILLING doing their job.
And they deserve it too. Being a good official is really, really, really hard. I know first hand because I've been an official (different sport but same deal) for a number of years. Major league officials show as much skill as the athletes do. I know because I've been a division 1 college athlete (yes a few of us read slashdot believe it or not) and an official too.
It is damn hard to know all the rules of a game, have them on instant recall, apply them to the situation at hand, and do so correctly and without pissing anyone off. If you do your job right, no one notices you and if you do get noticed you get screamed at, usually by some halfwit who has never picked up a rule book in their life.
It annoys the hell out of me when I see some twit complaining about officials "trying to determine the outcome". Let me get out the cluebat. NO official I have ever met (and that is a LOT of officials) would ever try to determine the outcome of a game. We really don't care who wins. We just want to have a fair contest and really prefer it when one team kicks the crap out the other. Less chance of anyone getting their panties in a bunch over a *game*. If you don't take my word for it, read anything by Ron Luciano and you might get the idea. The only thing any official wants is for the game to get over with as quickly and fairly as possible. That's it.
As for the measuring equipment being used. As an official I don't really have a problem with it being used as an evaluation tool. Most officials would welcome a tool to make them better at their job. I would however have a problem with it being used in a game I was officiating. No official wants to be second guessed because it undermines our ability to keep control of a game. People start becoming unnecessarily rough, unsportsmanlike, and generally begin to behave like cretins when they think they have a right to question the judgement of the officials. (This isn't a supposition of mine, I've seen it happen countless times)
Now there are problems when the officials in some sports (basketball is notorious for this) start calling the game differently depending on the situation instead of how the rulebook specifies. That's a problem. But most officials at a high level do a very good job at what is a very difficult job. If they get paid well to do it, believe me, they've earned it.
I played baseball from the time I was 7 to the time I was 22 when I finished college. I pitched from 9 till I finished. I had good umps and bad umps calling games and I have to say there are times I wish there was a machine for calling the strike zone. However I just don't think a machine can do a better job on the whole than a human umpire and I really don't think it can replace the role a human umpire plays in a game of basball.
You can make a machine that calls a rule book strike. Not easy and questech dosn't do that by a damn sight that I am aware of ( it does good and in and out but the variance of hitters hights and stances calls for a modicum of human judgement in the grading phase ). But it can be done however I don't know how desriable that would be. Hell the umps in the majors or college havn't called rule book strikes for years. These days for the most part above the belt is a ball and somewhat above halfway up your shins is a strike ( rule book states kneecaps to armpits more or less... forget the exact wording ).
There are inumerable subtle nuances invovled in the whole process of the game that leads to how the strike zone is called and it is a huge part of the game as anyone who actually plays it for long becomes aware of, especially at the higher levels. A mechanical zone would proove benificial in some ways and detrmental in others. It certainly won't stop complaining about strike/ball calls. People will just complain the system wasn't calibrated right, or a system was malfunctioning.
I am not against change. But I am against removing such an intergral and human element to a great game as a plate umpire calling balls and strikes. As for the idea of grading umpires with questech it A) needs to be agreed upon by all involved, not just the owners and B) needs to be universal with a universal calibration instead of the individualistic methods used in the various systems currently. ( ie sensors/cameras can't be put in the same relative locations due to variences in foul territory and avialability of overhangs etc... the systems are also tuned by different people and the settings can vary from location to location ) finally C) all of the systems need to be verified as consistent in what they consider a strike across the variences of hitters hights and stances out to a pretty significant factor which is where right now there is a good bit of fudge factor covered by the system operators.
I don't ask you to be me. I only ask you not expect me to be you.
From a baseball purist standpoint, MLB has become a Home Run Derby of sorts, but that has VERY little to do with strike zone
.262 right now, I think I'd be hard pressed to convince anyone that umpires' collective decisions about strike zones can move overall batting averages so minimally yet be the cause of an increase in home runs.
I think this section is an excellent analysis of the parent post. If the strike zone were the cause of "Home Run Derby" baseball, you'd expect to see an overall increase in league batting average. The theory would say that by improving the quality of the pitches the batter faces as strikes, they'd be hitting more of everything, not just home runs.
Anyway, some guy's chart bears this out- keep in mind what looks like a big difference on that chart (.006, say) represents about 30 hits per team per season. Given that the NL appears to be hitting a collective
And Curt has nothing to gain by siding with the umpires? Right...
Bah!
Although I think it blows when taxes finance the stadiums, at least with baseball it'll get about 70 uses a year. The worst is tax-finaced football stadiums - 8 games a year??!
Anyway, the umps make a decent amount, but two points:
1) Their job is difficult, in that they travel for half the year and have thousands of people screaming bloody murder at them every night
2) Although their salaries are nowhere near basball players, if they aren't at least making above the median for an USian/Canadian professional they'd get even less respect from the players and coaches.
And 3), it's MLB's money. Better to an ump than that jackass from Milwaukee.
A tiny difference in total called strikes versus balls is irrelevant. Umps don't have problems calling the obvious ones, it's the on-the-edge uncertanties that cause trouble. I'm more interested in what percentage of "difficult calls" were different.
GL
No, of course it's not. Framing isn't making a bad pitch look good--it's making a good pitch look good. As you say, the catcher isn't a neutral observer, so if the catcher can't make a pitch look good, it doesn't deserve to be called a strike, even if it just caught the corner. The ump shouldn't be calling a ball a strike because it's well framed, and no (good) umps do. The ump should only give borderline pitches to the pitcher if they're well framed--otherwise, the catcher is making him look like a fool, and there's no reason the ump should do that.
Framing aside, the strike zone slightly wider than the plate that umps want to call just makes for a better game because it allows finesse pitchers (including Maddux, although he certainly shouldn't get a wider strike zone than a rookie) to make good pitches. It's not in the rulebook because the plate is 17 inches wide and is not about to change, but no players have a problem with the wider strike zone as long as the umps are consistent, which, by and large, they are. If QuesTec can help check their consistency, that's great. If it forces them to make the strike zone narrower than most umps have called it for years, that's a bad thing, which will lead to even more home runs (the last thing baseball needs!) and fewer effective control pitchers.
This is a game played by humans. It should be judged by humans and the compulsive idiots should keep the machines out of it. The game itself is subjective.
clancey