A great debate: Automated strike zone
Adam Ottavino threw what he thought was a perfect pitch.
On a full count, the Rockies reliever delivered a 79 mph slider to Arizona’s A.J. Pollock. Ottavino was positive he threw a strike. The Statcast strike zone on TV showed the pitch caught the edge of the strike zone. Home-plate umpire Brian O’nora, however, called it ball four.
Rather than having two outs, the Diamondbacks busted loose for five runs in the seventh inning en route to a 9-5 victory Sept. 1 at Coors Field.
Rockies broadcasters on TV and radio bemoaned the call. Twitter lit up with a heated discussion about whether there is a need for an automated, computerized system for calling balls and strikes.
Ottavino, perhaps not surprisingly, thinks dramatic change is needed.
“Yes, a thousand percent yes,” he said. “Every pitch is too important. I respect the umpires and the work they do, but it’s physically impossible to get all of the calls right. Even if you are the best ump in the world and you are getting 92 percent of the calls right, that means if you have 200 pitches, there are 16 wrong. Those could be hugely impactful on the outcome of the game. I like the players to decide the outcome of the game, not human error by umpires.”
The discussion of an automated strike zone has been brewing for years, but it has boiled over this summer.
After a testy game against Arizona last month, the Cubs’ Ben Zobrist, Kris Bryant and manager Joe Maddon all came out in support of a new system. About the same time, Detroit’s Ian Kinsler got tossed by veteran umpire Angel Hernandez for arguing balls and strikes. Afterward, Kinsler ripped Hernandez, telling reporters, “He’s messing with baseball games, blatantly. I told him, ‘No one wants you behind the plate anymore.’ He needs to find another job.” (Kinsler received a hefty fine for his comments.)
Some, such as Rockies all-star third baseman Nolan Arenado and commissioner Rob Manfred, don’t want to mess with tradition. Others, such as Rockies manager Bud Black, remain on the fence but appear to be warming to the idea.
“When it was initially brought up five or six years ago, I was sort
of opposed to it because I’m a traditionalist and I like the human element,” Black said. “But I think we can discuss it, and if the technology gets to a point where it truly works, I want to talk about it.”
Manfred, though, remains skeptical about using digital umpires.
“It would be a pretty fundamental change in the game, to take away a function that has been performed by our umpiring staff, really with phenomenal accuracy,” Manfred told reporters recently. “The fact of the matter is they get them right well over 90 percent of the time. There is a human aspect to that, a work aspect to it, that’s always been an important part of our game.”
Would it really work?
Baseball fans have become accustomed to tracking balls and strikes when they watch games on TV or follow play-by-play on their computers or smartphones. That’s also led to second-guessing of umpires.
Advocates of the so-called “robo-umpire” believe the technology exists to automate strike and ball calls right now. Mlb.com’s Gameday tracker, for example, is part of the Statcast system operating under the direction of MLB Advanced Media. It uses radar and ultra-high-resolution cameras to calculate pitch location and velocity, as well as launch angle, home run distances, exit speed (on batted balls) and spin rate (on pitches). It works in real time. In theory, therefore, ball and strike calls could be transmitted to the umpire in the blink of an eye. Statcast is also used by MLB to help evaluate umpires.
But it’s far from a perfect system. As reported last month in an article in Sporttechie, “there is about a 2-inch margin for error; that’s about half the width of a baseball.”
That’s part of the reason why Manfred is not yet sold on using an automated ump. “In all candor, that technology has a larger margin of error than we see with human umpires,” Manfred said.
Another issue is how the system would track pitches relative to each player. Balls and strikes in the Statcast system are determined by where the pitch crosses the plate in relation to the batter’s body, be it 6foot-7 Aaron Judge or 5-6 Alexi Amarista. A strike-zone database exists for all major-league players, but it doesn’t account for players batting out of a crouch.
If the technology were incorporated into the game on the field, umpires would still be used behind the plate. Most likely a buzzer system, or headphones, would let the umpire know when a pitch is a ball and when it is a strike. The home-plate ump would still be responsible for calling balls fair or foul, watching for balks and making the safe or out calls at the plate.
What would change is the role of the catcher. The best of them have become adept at “framing pitches.” That is, making sure the ball is called a strike by using a subtle movement of their glove when they receive a pitch.
“I’m on the fence about all of this, but I think it would ruin the catching position,” Rockies center fielder Charlie Blackmon said.
Breaking tradition
The overriding argument against installing a robo-ump is that it would break with baseball’s long tradition, and no one in sports loves its past more than baseball. That’s why Rockies starting catcher Jonathan Lucroy is adamantly against an automated strike zone.
“Whenever you take umpires out of the game, whether you agree with their calls or don’t, I think you are taking away a key part of the game,” Lucroy said. “They are going to make bad calls and make mistakes, but at the same time, we’ve been playing this game for more than what, 140 years?
“If you take away home-plate umpires, you are taking away a huge part of the game, in my opinion. I like the human element of the game. I think that’s part of what makes baseball special.”
Manfred agrees. “Some day (the technology) will be up to the task of calling balls and strikes,” he said. “But I actually believe at that point that you have to ask yourself a question as to whether you want to take that human element out of the game and replace it with a machine.”
Arenado is just 26 but he’s a baseball traditionalist, much like Lucroy.
“I know we want to get calls right and all of that,” he said. “And yeah, it’s frustrating when a ball is called a strike, or when the strike zone seems to change during a game. But I think that’s part of baseball, that’s part of the adjustment you have to make. You have to stay within the game and stay locked in.”
There has already been a trial run with an electronic strike zone. In the summer of 2015, former bigleaguer Eric Byrnes led an experiment, and served as the strikezone umpire, in two games between California independent minor-league teams, the San Rafael Pacifics and Vallejo Admirals. Balls and strikes were called using the Pitch f/x automated system, which at the time was responsible for framing every pitch thrown in MLB.
For those games, at least, an automated umpire worked well.
“There are many baseball traditionalists who think above 90 percent is good enough and they enjoy the ‘human element’ of the game,” Byrnes wrote in a blog afterward. “For me, the human element I fell in love with as a 9-yearold kid has been and always will be the players. … Not the umpires.”
Ottavino’s father, John, umpires youth baseball and high school games in the New York City area, but that doesn’t alter the reliever’s point of view. Ottavino respects umpires, but he believes it’s time for change.
“I didn’t use to be for automated balls and strikes, but for me, it’s become more and more frustrating,” he said. “When you go back and look and see where the pitches were and realize you got the wrong end of the stick, it’s frustrating.
“You want to be fairly rewarded — or penalized — for how you pitch and how you hit. That’s the bottom line.”