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. "
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.
How do you kick dirt on a digital umpire?
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.
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
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.
Can the strike zone be "augmented" by passing the system hundred-dollar bills...
Moderation: Put your hand inside the puppet head!
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.
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.
"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
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.
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.
Computer UMP: Yes that's what I said a strike.
Computer UMP: Yes that's what I said a strike.
away in the stands: Hot dogs! Get yer hot dogs!
Ah the boys of summer. Wonder if they'll put a plastron on the sucker?
Steeeeeeeeerike.
QD
Replace the batter and the pitcher with robots, and I still won't give a damn about baseball. :)
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.
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?
This would be a great place of employment for all those robot soccer players that will be out of work in America due to yet another instance of the American appetite for soccer coming in well below expectations.
"Bender like Beckham" indeed.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Well, as far as their complaint goes, I feel that it is totally unjustified. This machine is only really taking out one aspect of their job, and that is of the home plate umpire to judge whether or not the pitch was in the strike zone or not. Everything else would stay the same. As far as the dirt kicking, umpire cursing goes, I think that this would be a good thing for that, because the strike zone would be a standard, and therefore the batter would know that the pitch was judged fairly and equivocably. I think it would be good for the game, as it would hopefully get rid of the batter-umpire arguments over whether or not the pitch was really a strike or not, and allow the players and umpires to focus on the game.
I have no regrets, this is the only path.
My whole life has been "UNLIMITED BLADE WORKS"
However, the umpires association has filed a complaint about the system's unreliability and incapability to replace the human 3-D, real-time view.
... instead only giving an accurate 3-D, real-time view.
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.
"Dave.... Dave.... 3 strikes and you're out, Dave".
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
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'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!
Dude, it's not like it's taxpayer money.
Given that taxpayers typically paid for the useless-almost-every-day-of-the-year giant ballpark in which umpires "work", it's not too much of a stretch to imagine that ridiculously high umpire salaries are made possible by the fact that other parts of the baseball enterprise are financed by taxpayer money.
ASA
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
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?
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.
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).
Anyone else feel a little weird discussing baseball on slashdot?
I know I do.
http://use.perl.org
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 mean.. how interesting will it be to watch a manager bump chests with this thing? And will this be programmed to throw 'em outta da game?
:)
I welcome our new 99% overlords.
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
just get robots to throw the ball and hit it as well.
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
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
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!
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.
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.
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