Computer to help umps call balls, strikes

NEW YORK Get ready for strikes by robots.

No, overworked machines aren’t walking out in a labour protest.

Computers will be used for ball/ strike calls starting April 28 in the independent Atlantic League, where the distance between home and first will be shortened by three inches. The distance between the mound and home plate will lengthen by two feet for the second half of the season beginning July 12.

The 60-foot-6-inch distance between the front of the pitching rubber and the back point of home plate has been standard since 1893, but Major League Baseball reached a three-year deal to experiment in the Atlantic League, an eight-team circuit that occasionally produces big leaguers. Infield defensive shifts will be limited. Pitchers there will have to get used to 62 feet, two inches this summer.

Plate umpires will wear earpieces and be informed of ball/ strike calls by a TrackMan computer system that uses Doppler radar. Umps will have the ability to override the computer, which considers a pitch a strike when the ball bounces and then crosses the zone. TrackMan also does not evaluate check swings.

“The beauty of baseball is that it’s not foolproof. You’ve got to hit a round ball with a cylindrical bat square, and then you’ve got to get it past people,” said Joe West, who umpired his first big-league game in 1976.

MLB began to install a QuesTec system in 2001 that umpires initially criticized as being inaccurate. QuesTec was used at a maximum of 11 ballparks in 2008, its final year.

A PitchF/x system, a partnership between MLB Advanced Media and Sportvision, was the basis of evaluations from 2009-16, and the TrackMan system was tested during the final year of that span. TrackMan has been used to evaluate umpires since 2017.

West, who has umpired more than 5,000 big-league games and is on track to break Bill Klem’s record next year, said the 2016 test was far from perfect.

“It missed 500 pitches in April, and when I say it missed 500 pitches, that didn’t mean they called them wrong. They didn’t call them at all,” he said.

Atlantic League teams are situated in Bridgewater, N.J.; Central Islip, N.Y.; High Point, N.C.; Lancaster, Pa.; New Britain, Conn.; Sugar Land, Texas; Waldorf, Md., and York, Pa.