Digital strike zone: Does it compute?
Jed Lowrie plays baseball with special skills and a cool head. As the A’s took the field at Yankee Stadium on May 27, he had played 10 seasons in the big leagues without being ejected from a game. But he reached his boiling point that day. “I struck out three times, and not a single one of them
was a strike,” Lowrie recalled in the A’s clubhouse last week. “On one of those at-bats, every pitch I saw was a ball.”
It had been a tough day for plate umpire Will Little — “this is the worst umpiring I’ve ever seen in my life,” broadcaster Ray Fosse said on the air — and upon being called out on strikes for the third time, Lowrie objected with such vehemence that Little tossed him out.
So what about the notion of a computerized strike zone, Jed? Any merit to that?
“Listen, I think basically the umpires do a good job,” he said. “I see the traditionalist side of things, but if the idea is to get it right — and the computer gets it right — I think it’s inevitable. And I’d be fine with that.”
Giants pitcher Jeff Samardzija is more of a gladiator on
the field, an ex-football star who was so intent on throwing a punch during the Hunter Strickland-Bryce Harper fight May 19 that he sent teammate Michael Morse onto the disabled list in an accidental collision. It’s easy to spot Samardzija’s seething anger over dubious umpiring, and there was a great example when the Giants visited Colorado in April.
Twice, Samardzija worked a 2-and-2 count on Charlie Blackmon, then fired what appeared to be an obvious strike at chest level — but didn’t get the call. It seems that umpire Clint Fagan operates with a low strike zone, and Samardzija wound up walking Blackmon both times. Time for digital umpiring? “No way,” Samardzija said last week. “I wish we’d go the other way, back to when we didn’t use technology of any kind. Back in the day, the strike zone wasn’t talked about that much. It definitely wasn’t so harshly viewed.”
Those two opinions illustrate the extremes of a crucial issue, surfacing almost daily on the field and being addressed with great concern by Commissioner Rob Manfred. He’s all for progressive steps to improve the quality of play, particularly as it regards the pace of games, but instant replay has removed much of the human element from umpiring; he wonders whether a computerized strike zone might be going too far.
“I think it would be a pretty fundamental change in the game,” Manfred told reporters recently. “The fact of the matter is, umpires get ’em right more than 90 percent of the time. There’s a human aspect, something that has always been an important part of our game. I don’t think you can just jump to the conclusion that you want to replace that human element with a machine.”
Watching televised games at home, fans would conclude that the technology is in place. Either in real time or on replays, we learn whether a pitch landed within a designated strike zone clearly outlined by a rectangular graphic. It’s not that simple, however.
“The technology isn’t there yet,” Manfred said. “We don’t have a system that, in real time, can more accurately call balls and strikes than our umpires.”
Machine learning
From 2001 to ’08, MLB used the QuesTec system in a number of ballparks to privately grade the umpires’ work at home plate. In 2009, MLB turned to SportVision and a product known as Pitch f/x, installed in every ballpark. That was the system employed in San Rafael two years ago when digital umpiring, aggressively touted by ex-player Eric Byrnes, was used experimentally for an independent league game. Using three cameras to triangulate the full trajectory of pitches, Pitch f/x was said to determine balls and strikes within a half-inch of accuracy.
Over this past offseason, MLB switched to Statcast, the all-encompassing system used to determine pitch velocity, launch angle, exit speed (on batted balls), spin rate (on pitches) and other functions, using radar tracking along with cameras. Statcast operates under the wing of MLB Advanced Media and is used to evaluate umpires and provide televised ball-and-strike depictions for viewers — but to date it has been deemed unsuitable to make calls on the field.
About all we know for certain about pitch-tracking is that calls are determined by where the pitch crosses the batter’s body, not where it winds up in the catcher’s glove. There’s a strike-zone database on every player, ranging from 6-foot-7 Aaron Judge to 5-foot-6 Jose Altuve. Among the complications MLB is addressing, no acceptable technology exists for sudden adjustments — say, the arrival of an uncharted player or if Judge were to suddenly bat out of a deep crouch.
Plate umpires would not vanish from the scene in this brave new world. They’d still be set up behind the catcher, signaling balls and strikes after receiving information through (most likely) headphones. They’d still have plenty of responsibility, such as calling plays at the plate, balks, catcher’s interference and fair-or-foul calls on the infield. “When we did this in San Rafael,” said Byrnes, plate umpire Dean Poteet “and all of the umpires were totally in favor of it. They told me, ‘You’re giving me a tool that makes my job easier.’ ”
Rising tensions
Meanwhile, in the big show, player-umpire relations have grown increasingly hostile. After a particularly contentious game against Arizona in mid-August, the Cubs’ Ben Zobrist, Kris Bryant and manager Joe Maddon all came out in favor of digital umpiring. In a scene that was at once comical and disturbing, with the A’s in Toronto July 17, Little ejected the Blue Jays’ catcher (Russell Martin) and pitcher (Marcus Stroman) simultaneously.
Detroit’s Ian Kinsler tore into plate umpire Angel Hernandez last month, saying, “He’s messing with baseball games, blatantly. I told him, ‘No one wants you behind the plate any more.’ He needs to find another job.” After a tough loss to Arizona two weeks ago, climaxing with a called third strike on Marwin Gonzalez, Houston manager A.J. Hinch said, “I’d like to play with 27 outs and not get at-bats taken away from us. I know we’re not supposed to talk about the umpires, but honestly, today, that was garbage.”
Above all, there are two things players find difficult to accept: umpires becoming a show in themselves, ripping off their masks and angrily ejecting players at the slightest hint of discord, and the fact that scouting reports are necessary to isolate the quirks and preferences of every umpire’s strike zone.
Giants broadcaster Mike Krukow has become an expert at this. “Well, we’ve got Mike Winters working the plate tonight,” Krukow said before a Giants game in May. “He’s got a big strike zone. He looks for strikes. But he tightens up as the game goes on.” In June, scouting out Hernandez, Krukow said, “What’s unique about his strike zone is it’s pretty low early in the game, and it kind of rises up as the game goes on. You won’t see many high strike zones early, but you will late.”
Is this sort of daily exercise really necessary? Byrnes certainly doesn’t think so.
“I fell in love with this game because of the human element,” Byrnes said. “But it was always about the players, not the umpires. I don’t understand why people wouldn’t want consistency; take the mystery out of it. It’s an easy change. Aesthetically, everything will look the same. If there’s a big push to raise or lower the strike zone, just do it, boom, it’s done. You want to speed up the game? This gets rid of the endless bickering, guys getting ejected or stepping away from the action to reveal how upset they are.
“I’m not really that progressive. I don’t want to see pitch clocks, or starting the 12th inning with a runner on second base. Here’s a pace-ofgame solution that doesn’t interfere with the game’s fabric. Think about this: It’s the World Series, and the people at home get to see this box on the telecast, watching blown call after blown call. They might be 3,000 miles from where the game is played. People sitting in the stands instantly have this information available to them. The
person who doesn’t is the one making the call. That doesn’t make sense to me.”
Bruce Jenkins is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. Email: bjenkins@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Bruce_Jenkins1