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

Seems reasonable

[cascadingstylesheet]

Seems reasonable ... we want the game play to be human, but mechanical tasks like measuring what was where when, why not automate them?

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

Re:Seems reasonable

[saltydogdesign]

You're comparing apples to oranges. Balls and strikes are the atoms of baseball, not the planets. The comparison should be more along the lines of when the shot clock starts in basketball or exactly where the receiver touched the ground in football. Even then, though, the comparison is imperfect. There is a long history of pitchers and catchers exploiting the psychologies of different umps. Catchers work very hard at "framing" — that is the art of making an outside pitch look like it caught the corner. Greg Maddux was a master of slowly expanding the strike zone over the course of the game. These are fairly small matters, but for people who care, they are sources of considerable entertainment, and it typifies the kind of edge work that differentiates great players from good ones. Should we take that away? Well, if we do it won't really change the game that much, but by definition it will render it a little less human.

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:That's a terrible idea

[Nidi62]

replace the $10.50 bud light with an $3.50 bud light and the $7.50 hotdog with an $3.00 one.

Mercedes Benz Stadium in Atlanta has $2 hot dogs and free refills on (non-alcoholic) drinks. Of course it costs an arm and a leg to get into the stadium, but that's another story.

Re:That's a terrible idea

[Falos]

six kinds of beans, plus several things that look like beans

I think we should have robots as players

[JoeyRox]

Since they're all juiced up anyway. The game has become a contest of who has access to the best 'roids.

Re:Someone is missing the point

[Nidi62]

Part of baseball is the human factor - its the same reason they don't allow instant replay like in football - no second guessing umpires.

They do allow limited replays, but the types of plays that can be reviewed is very specific, much more so than in football.

How about a halfway approach

[magarity]

Give the umpires something along the lines of Google glasses that overlay the baseball strike zone in real time like the TV coverage?

i can see it now

[kaatochacha]

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.

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.