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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. "
Does anyone read:
"However, the umpires association has filed a complaint about the system's unreliability and incapability to replace the human 3-D, real-time view."
as, "It points out our mistakes!"
Slashdotter are stupid and biased.
I have been playing sports my entire life and I must say that it is the human factor that makes it interesting. To take all the errors out of sport is to take away something -- and as I have recieved many a bad call I can't believe I am saying this -- special from it.
Then again, with all the money that is in sports these days maybe it is a good idea -- from the point of view of owners, players, and sponcers. I think it takes something away from the fans.
I do not control the Sig, the Sig controls me.
Hrm, I wonder when or what will happen when someone hacks these things in favor of the home team? I mean, you just know it can be done, and thinking of the potential edge this could give teams, some malicious people would think of this.
Jason Lotito
Just like any sport (football, tennis, hockey) there is an element of human error. It's just one of those things that we come to accept.
I'm all for technology that helps to prevent game-changing bad calls, such as instant replay, but I think something like this is better suited for the ESPN analysts and home viewers.
Happiness is like peeing yourself. Everybody can see it but only you can feel its warmth.
"These are proud professionals who don't want to be evaluated by a faulty apparatus"
Or even by a working apparatus.
This can go wrong in so many ways, false positives and false negatives along every border of the strike zone. But aside from the mathematical reasons, why take away the human element even more from baseball?
You know one of the most fun parts of playing sports in my neighbourhood as a kid was watching my big brother argue whether something was a goal or not, who was safe or out. It was subjective and it was fun!
Now we have photo radar and cars that will apply the brakes themselves too. Sheesh.
Esteem isn't a zero sum game
Doesn't this kind of taint baseball as a tradition? You are not allowed to use aluminum bats in professional baseball because there's a long tradition of using wood bats. Now we get robotic umps?
I for one will miss seeing the coaches run out on the field kicking dirt everywhere throwing equipment yelling at the umpires. Now there will be no reason.
I am a baseball umpire (high school) and I doubt that the players - particularly the pitchers - would like this sort of device either.
At the major league level, there are pitchers who thrive upon umpires giving them a few inches off the outside corner. With a machine, their pitching careers would be over because now they'd have to throw all of their pitches within a tightly-defined strike zone to get a batter out.
With hitting being so much better than pitching (for most teams) these days, the balance would be thrown off that much more by having these machines call balls and strikes.
Do I even need to ask the question about what happens if the machine malfunctions? If you don't have a workable backup and there aren't any umpires who have practiced calling balls and strikes, that'll make for one ugly game!
Five Dolla Moddy-Moddy?
Then I guess you don't drive because cars threw aside the horse based economy and changed a way of living. It put a lot of people out of work; blacksmiths, horse breaders and trainers, feed providers, etc.
You also don't eat then. On a modern farm, a single farmer can produce as much food as 100 farmers 200 years ago. That means 99% of the population who would have been farmers 200 years ago is doing other things today, such as programming computers, flying airplanes, and doing hundreds of other things they prefer to farming.
The only abomintation is stagnation. Human progress has been going on for hundreds of thousands of years. Would you prefer to still be living in caves and die of old age by the time you're 20?
That being said, I don't believe a machine can replace a human umpire. Even if the machine makes every call perfectly, the players and fans will not accept the calls against them. There's nobody to argue with and it's against human nature to accept a machine making judgements about them. I let some friends play chess on my computerized board once (they just wanted a normal chess board, but that was all I had), they let the computer referee their game. Eventually they got into a situation where one of them was in check, but neither saw it, so the computer wouldn't let the player make the move he wanted to. Their solution was to turn off the computer and make the move anyway.
Jason
ProfQuotes
Call me a soft hearted old-fashioned traditionalist if you must, but an electronic umpire will ruin the game! The obvious "bad calls" are often the highlights of the games! Well, maybe not the call itself, but what follows. C'mon, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to know that it's not as much fun for a player to kick dirt on a CCD camera as a middle-age guy in funny clothes. Plus, if the camera can't spin it's cap around backwards and shout during the spit-flying-in-your-face confrontations that follows, what's the point?
I remember having a conversation about this some 20 years ago, when I was playing little league. After seeing so many bad calls, I brought up to my coach that someday we would have computers and robots making all of the decisions. He balked, saying it would ruin the game.
Now that Iâ(TM)m older, I tend to agree with him; at least for the major leagues. But I still think this technology could be well used in little league, where itâ(TM)s hard to find someone to be an umpire, even harder to find one thatâ(TM)s any good. Some would show up drunk, would have some bone to pick against a team who had a player with a parent he didnâ(TM)t like, or simply be idiots.
Whatâ(TM)s worse is the way parents react to calls (even good ones) they donâ(TM)t agree with. I can only imagine how it would change the dynamic of the game for kids if these officiating robots could be made cheaply and be available to kidsâ(TM) leagues.
It wouldnâ(TM)t be without precedent: We already allow little leaguers to use aluminum bats, while the big leagues still have wood. Keep the majors pure and traditional, but it would be nice to see a little technology around to help keep the games fair for kids.
The Internet is generally stupid
This isn't what the article says though. What it says is that in games where the system is on 32.1% of pitches are called strikes by the umpires. In games where the system is off, the number of pitches
called strikes by the umpires is 31.4%. It doesn't say what percentage of the pitches are called strikes by the machine. (Note: The summary of the article is also wrong.)
You have human umpires just as you have human players. For umpire assistance, I'd take some form of instant replay (like in the NFL) over this system.
Major League Baseball has told umpires previously to call more strikes (pitches on the black or even an inch or two off) including calling the high strike (from the belt to the letters or bottom of the armpit). This speeds up the game and forces batters to swing at these pitches, since it will be called a strike.
Let the games be decided on who hits the ball where, who catches it, and who scores runs, not on balls and strikes called by the umpire.
Don't ping my cheese with your bandwidth!
It's a game, regardless of how much people are getting paid. Games aren't any fun if you just let the computer play against itself. Getting irritated at the umpire for making a call you consider unfair is part of baseball.
"Give a man fire, and he'll be warm for a day; set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life