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.

Comments

That's a terrible idea

[rsilvergun]

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.

Re:Seems reasonable

[E-Rock]

This isn't even going to instant replay. It's a real-time overlay of the pitch that shows if it's a strike or not. The ump is very often wrong. The announcers don't even skip a beat, they just say, he's calling strikes a little outside tonight.

I think Baseball is hella-boring, but this is cool enough that you should check it out. If you scrub through this you can see it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6EDJ7IHfGE

Exaggeration

[Brett Buck]

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.

Re:Sprite Collision

[Wycliffe]

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.

I don't think anyone is requesting to replace umpires completely but rather just for the strikezone. The strikezone is the easiest for computers and the hardest and most error prone for the umpire. Basically, like all other automation, let the computer do what it is good at and the human do what it is good at.