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Baseball Players Want Robots To Be Their Umps (technologyreview.com)
The sports world has been dealing with the human error of referees and umpires for decades -- it's pretty much tradition at this point. But with technology that can assess the game more accurately, some athletes are ready to push the people calling balls and strikes off the field in favor of technology. From a report: On Tuesday, Chicago Cubs second baseman Ben Zobrist, one of the most vocal supporters of turning over baseball rulings to software, used an argument with the umpire as a chance to advocate for a change in the league. The comment reinvigorated a long-standing debate over automation in sports. You're out! As you watch baseball on television, a graphic is often overlaid on the action that shows in real time whether a pitch is a ball or a strike. But human umps are still making the calls on the field based on nothing but their own eyes. Increasingly, viewers and players would rather have the technology take over.
Seems reasonable ... we want the game play to be human, but mechanical tasks like measuring what was where when, why not automate them?
half the fun of a baseball game is bad calls from the Umpire. Next thing you know they'll wanna replace the beer and hotdogs.
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Think they can modify one of those Boston Dynamics mules to hit a baseball coming in at 100mph?
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
On Tuesday, Chicago Cubs second baseman Ben Zobrist, one of the most vocal supporters of turning over baseball rulings to software, used an argument with the umpire as a chance to advocate for a change in the league.
Or he was just letting off some frustration and saying the ump sucked. Unless you are also going to argue that this guy thinks umps should be replaced by trash cans.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Since they're all juiced up anyway. The game has become a contest of who has access to the best 'roids.
Part of baseball is the human factor - its the same reason they don't allow instant replay like in football - no second guessing umpires.
Machines are great at determining play-field collisions in 2d. That's, pretty much, what a strike box is. Either the ball is inside or outside the box. Sure the box is moving but it's still not insanely complicated to compute.
Now talk about the catcher tagging out a runner - you've got a 3d object (the ball) that is usually inside another 3d object (the mitt) that needs to fully touch another 3d object (the runner) within 3d space. Unless you have full coverage of every conceivable angle I'm not sure how you can make a reliable call - at least significantly more reliable than an umpire.
Give the umpires something along the lines of Google glasses that overlay the baseball strike zone in real time like the TV coverage?
I played volleyball last weekend with some people who had a homemade system to help with the rules, it was great. Their system was pretty basic, all it did was use a few camera and software to automatically figure out if the ball was in or out. We still enforced the rest of the rules manually. But even that little bit of help was so good, helped the game run smoother, did away with many little arguments, and let us focus on having fun.
Apparently athletes aren't any better educated or informed about the actual, non-hype, non-media-fiction driven capabilities of so-called 'AI', otherwise they'd know that you could not rely on it to make a call any better than a human umpire could make, not even close in fact.
People, could we please stop thinking that 'AI' solves everything?
Zobrist's comment was a typical smart-alec comment about a call he didn't like, not a serious call for the new system. Sort like "hey, did you lose your white cane" or "how did you make it to the yard without your seeing-eye dog"?
He got tossed for arguing balls/strikes and showing up the unpire, this sort of thing is 150ish years old.
I think I'd be most satisfied with a kind of compromise, in which the home plate umpire had a small wireless device he held in his hand (perhaps in a uniform pocket) that gave him the ball/strike result as determined by the same Pitch f/x video system used now to grade umpire performance.
Like most modern wireless devices, at the umpire's discretion it could be set to a visual display of ball/strike, or some type of haptic or vibration indication -- one buzz for a ball, two for a strike, perhaps. The umpire could, also at his discretion, use the information from the wireless device always, sometimes, or never, with the stipulation that his ball/strike performance would still be graded by MLB against the Pitch f/x system.
With this compromise, the umpire would be free to call the game in much the same way as he does today, except that the information from the Pitch f/x system would be available, should he choose to use it. He would still call swinging strikes, foul tips, hit-by-pitches, catcher's, hitter's and runner's interference, balks, and the myriad of special cases that come up in the course of a baseball game and, if he kept the wireless device in his pocket, all would look as it does today.
Teams could challenge a ball/strike call in much the same way as they do a safe/out call today -- a very limited number of opportunities to appeal per game. The appeals should be much shorter since human evaluation of video would not be required.
The robot Umpire just received a Windows Update.
Umpires make mistakes. That's part of the came. You want a computer to call it, play on the console of your choice.
People and players will still disagree with the calls. Just like so many disagree with the radar gun the cop recorded them speeding with.
We know that software is inherently racist. If you're looking for the next Great White Hope to take sports back, then look no further than A.I.
*You don't argue balls and strikes.*
It's part of the game. Let it be. Half the charm of baseball is the old-timey aspect.
But I gotta say - the biggest impact video review* has is adding further delay to an already-slow game.
On the topic at hand... I'm all for it. The hardware is already in place at all major league - and many AAA - stadiums. And it's been known for a long time that umps' strike zones don't reflect the official strike zone - with left handed batters, for instance, the vast majority of balls 1-4 inches outside the strike zone on the "away" side still get called strikes.
Sure, they "review" the ump's performances against the true strike zone... but apparently actually penalizing the umps for getting it consistently wrong was only a short term thing, lasting a couple years after Sandy Alderson started the program. That first couple of years, strike calls were shown to improve... but now we're sorta back to the "every ump has his own strike zone" days.
*I refuse to call a 3-minute process "instant replay"
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I don't think this will put an end, or even a noticeable reduction in players disputing calls. They'll just shift to criticising the software, calling in experts to nit pick the code and any algorithms it uses. They'll dispute that the hardware is properly set up, there will be cases when they can claim that the cameras were not properly placed to make a valid call in some situations. Same thing for the fans. It will *really* get messy if different ballparks use software and hardware systems. Then you see ugly disputes over accusations that the home team made subtle tweaks to the system at their ballpark to give them a slight edge. You'll probably start to see players and teams trying unorthodox plays to try and game the system.
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Bulk Erase the Umpire!
The Umpire is a frackin toaster!
My commodore 64 could have called that better than you!
Title says it all - Tennis has done it for many years... and it's been hugely successful. No reason why baseball can't do the same...
Players: We want automated umpires. They're more accurate and reliable.
League: No.
Players: robble robble robble strike robble.
League: OK, You have automated umpires. We're also automating the players.
Players: Why?
League: they're more accurate and reliable.
Cuz I thinks you need some glasses!
msMash finally gets a programmable dildo, now hopefluy she will be so occupied that, the stupid shit will stop being published here..
So can we fire players who canâ(TM)t hit a ball in the strike zone? As one coach always said, donâ(TM)t count on winning ball games with luck. Not sure if robots and technology can make calls better accepted by players and fans.
You're too old. Baseball needs to stay current and adapt with the times. Only old folks argue to keep things as how they were when they were younger.
Move aside and let the younger humans have their turn.
Because it's only a misdemeanor to smash a robot to bits when it ticks you off. Not the same for humans.
Table-ized A.I.
A) There is an accurate computer system for judging balls and strikes. The "overlay" by the broadcasters is not it. That box doesn't even change size for the height of the batter.
B) I'm an umpire. Computers should call balls & strikes.
-Dave
No good excuse why it isn't already.
Sorry, but there is no "old-timey charm" when the calls are blatantly wrong against you.
Think about it! How much less interesting would films like The Mighty Ducks series be if the referees could be truly considered impartial!
"It looks like you're trying to throw a no-hitter. Would you like 'help' with that?"
I don't really have a dog in this fight. However, it seems to me that logically human umpires should continue in their traditional roles. The sport of baseball is like 130 years-old and comparisons are made regularly comparing players and games in history with those today. Unless the same conditions exist today as in the past, it becomes no longer possible to make comparisons with historic games or players. Is accuracy really that important? It is, after all, only a game.
I remember reading, maybe in "Veeck as in Wreck," or maybe "Ball Four," about one umpire who tended to make first-base calls by watching the runner and listening for the sound of the ball hitting the first-baseman's glove. The players caught on to this, and the first-baseman would slap his glove just before the ball got there to fool the ump into calling close plays "out."
On the other side, an umpire from the 70s and 80s published an autobiography in which he bragged about deliberately trying to distract ballplayers he disliked, so as to mess up their at-bats.
So, at some point, tradition or not, is it really worth keeping human umps with guaranteed biases and egos?
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let's replace the batter, pitcher, and fielders too! how does he feel about that?!
What is lost here is that umpires are not making unforced errors in ball and strike calls. Catchers at the major league level can be very skilled at manipulating the umpire's perception of pitch location. It is called "pitch framing." It is sort of like pitchers asking for the threads on the baseball to be white instead of red so that batters cannot pick up ball spin. You are changing the game to remove a skill the opposing player has from the game. You better bet that a lot of batters swing more with 2 strikes because even if the batter is right that the pitch is in theory a ball, that the catcher might still steal that third strike.
Also, you never want to take all of the "coulda, shoulda, woulda" from the fan. He has to explain to himself why his team lost without blaming the team. The officials are a great target for that.
Makes perfect sense. Can keep the umpires, just force them to call pitches from what the automated systems tells them! Takes out the "underworld" component i've been advocating for years! Games are fixed, its been that way for a long time. NFL should be next! Those guys are the worst!