Slashdot Mirror
A Computer Umpires Its First Pro Baseball Game
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."
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.
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 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 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. Furthermore, the K Zone and FoxTrax 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.
Hey! It's Enrico Palazzo!
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 asked to do. For the most part, MLB players tolerate a strike zone that's not perfect provided it's not unreasonably large or small and that it's consistent for both teams throughout the game. That said, it's not perfect, and there are situations where this really could make a difference.
Yadier Molina is one of the best catchers in baseball, known primarily for his defense, especially picking runners off base, and for being a good hitter as catchers go. He also does a good job of calling the game for his pitcher, that is what pitch he asks the pitcher to throw, and where he sets up and tries to get the pitcher to locate the pitch. He's probably the best catcher in MLB right now at this. But he's also really good at fooling the umpire in what's known as framing the pitch. That is, how he moves the glove after catching the baseball can fool the home plate umpire into calling borderline balls as strikes and effectively expanding the strike zone for his pitchers. Long considered a myth, there's actually real evidence now with new data that shows catchers like Molina can have large impacts on a game by framing pitches. Not directly related to Molina, but a similar issue, is when a pitcher badly misses the catcher's target, but the pitch is still a strike. An example would be the catcher setting up on the outside corner but the actual pitch being on the insider corner. The pitch may well be a strike, but because the pitcher missed the target so badly, it will almost always be called a ball.
Greg Maddux was a really great pitcher who was successful in fooling hitters and getting a lot of strikeouts with a fastball around 90 mph. He's a Hall of Fame pitcher and deservedly so. He fooled hitters for about two decades and his stats in the shortened seasons of 1994 and 1995 rank among the very best stats for a season in the history of baseball, right up with Bob Gibson's 1968 season and Pedro Martinez's ridiculously good 2000 season. However, in addition to pinpoint control of his pitches and good movement, he also seemed to get a lot of pitches called strikes that were off the plate. That is, he got some strikes "on the corner" that were really about six inches off the plate. His teammate and fellow Hall of Fame pitcher Tom Glavine, was also frequently associated with getting a wide strike zone.
While the umpires generally do a really good job, I can see ways where this really can help standardize the strike zone and solve some problems. I don't think this will ever replace human umpires altogether, but it frees them up to focus on other things like managing the pace of play (a huge problem for baseball), looking for balks, and determining whether a hitter went around on a checked swing. And I suspect that in college and lower levels of baseball, human umpires will always call balls and strikes.
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.
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.
-Dave
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.
-Dave