Robo-calls all the craze
MLB’s future plays out in Atlantic League
WALDORF, Md. – In its quest for a more efficient, error-free and hopefully optimized game experience, MLB’s transformation of the Atlantic League from the game’s last-chance motel into its test lab has largely been a rousing success.
An automated strike zone that converts the home-plate umpire from arbiter to mere messenger is right far more often than it is wrong. A ban on mound visits and relief specialists undeniably speeds the game’s pace.
And rules changes aimed to encourage balls in play and runners in motion –
Thou shalt not shift defensively, but you may “steal” first base – gives hitters options beyond launching balls over a vexing alignment of fielders.
Yet as its experiment with a “robotic” strike zone and other nuances enters its second month, the formal partnership between MLB and the Atlantic League illustrates the upsides and consequences of optimization.
Umpire-player conflicts might be few. That doesn’t mean players, managers and umpires don’t feel somewhat conflicted about their roles as pioneers when the outcome might eventually marginalize their respective crafts.
“I think it’s really cool to be around this,” says Kent Blackstone, the shortstop for the Southern Maryland Blue Crabs, “because if they can get it right, I see this being in Major League Baseball in three to five years.
“For us to be the first ones to use it, if I want to get into the operations of baseball, I can say I was there during all this. I try to shift it to the positive.”
Spend an August day in the Atlantic League, and you get the overwhelming sense it’s only a matter of when, not if, the radical experiments bubble up to the big leagues. When MLB officials descended on the Blue Crabs’ training camp in Lakeland, Florida, to discuss this most unusual season to come, momentum was palpable.
“There’s a lot of people who say, ‘This will never be passed at the major league level,’ ” says Stan Cliburn, the Blue Crabs’ 62-year-old manager. “Well, people better look back and see that baseball’s about change, life’s about change. Is it the direction Major League Baseball is going? They’re certainly taking a hard look at it.”
Yet the “robot ump” path from independent ball to the big leagues will have its detours. The greater dilemma might revolve around what’s lost on the way.
‘You have to adapt’
An ominous device affixed to Atlantic League stadium façades goes a long way toward making the players feel like bigleaguers.
TrackMan is the device that powers MLB’s Statcast, producing a trove of statistics that are increasingly mainstream. TrackMan also provides the brainpower behind the automated ballstrike system, peering down on home plate. Although inanimate, it pops up in conversations in manners like, “Well, TrackMan missed that one,” or, “I think the TrackMan went out for a bit.”
And TrackMan certainly has its quirks. For one, do not lie to TrackMan.
Blackstone found this out the hard way. Since he has not played affiliated ball, the 25-year-old shortstop had no previous data – such as height or batting stance – in the TrackMan system.
Trouble was, the generous height was entered in the system to establish his strike zone. So in his first few games with the auto strike zone, several very high strikes were called against him.
“I always say I’m 6 foot,” says Blackstone. “But that’s over, man.”
Therein lies one bug. While the strike zone is intended to be uniform, in any stadium, members of the Blue Crabs and Long Island Ducks pointed out parks with obvious variances. High Point likes the high strike. Lancaster (Pennsylvania) was missing the low strike, the true pitcher’s pitch.
Overall, the system received high marks for its lateral work, nailing pitches on either edge of the plate. Vertically? Not so much.
Says Blackstone: “There have been times where the ball hits the ground and they’re calling it a strike. Textbookwise, it might be a strike. We all would like to not get hosed on a strike three on a ball at our ankles. But you have to adapt.”
Or develop a foolproof system. TrackMan is just one of many pitch tracking systems available, though many of the best are on-field devices and not suitable for live game action. Multiple reports indicate MLB will be shifting from TrackMan to the HawkEye tracking system – best known for its work policing tennis serves – for Statcast and other purposes in 2020.
“There were a couple games where TrackMan malfunctioned,” says Blue Crabs right-hander Daryl Thompson, a 2003 draftee of the Expos. “In the middle of the at-bat, the umpire would be like, ‘Hey Stan, this one’s going to be on me. TrackMan’s broke right now.’ That right there to me says this isn’t baseball if we’re going to be doing that.”
MLB commissioner Rob Manfred indicated last month that automated ballstrike systems would get an extended look in affiliated minor league ball before any serious consideration was given toward using them in the majors. “We kind of feel it’s incumbent to figure out whether we could make it work,” he said, “and that’s what we are doing.”
That might put another baseball fixture – the home-plate umpire – on the clock.
Just one four-letter word
After MLB instituted significant replay review for the 2014 season, it was impossible not to notice how much quieter it was on the field, with little for managers to argue. It’s even quieter for Atlantic League umps, who now hear only one-four letter word when they work the plate.
The call comes straight from the automated ball-strike system to their earpiece.
“You hear the pop,” says Atlantic League ump Jerry Martinez of the roughly two seconds it takes for pitch litigation. “And then you hear the voice. Strike, or ball.
“And then you have to render your mechanic. If it’s a strike, you call it a strike.”
Backstop blues
Let’s tally the casualties of baseball’s enacted and proposed rule changes.
Instant replay killed most of the game’s arguments. An automatic strike zone would marginalize the home-plate umpire. A three-batter minimum for relievers – in place in the Atlantic League and slated for enactment in the 2020 MLB season – would render the lefty relief specialist virtually extinct.
And in an automated era of balls and strikes, the catcher would be rendered almost irrelevant.
The most important position on the field – a virtual breeding ground for future major league managers – would be reduced to the mere act of catching the ball, destroying the art of pitch-framing at a time advanced metrics have quantified the skill better than ever.
Mike Falsetti is training the next generation of receivers how to receive. Now, he’s not sure what to think. The 28year-old Blue Crabs catcher is no Crash Davis – he has six home runs and a .188 average in five years of independent ball – but his measured vibe and cerebral nature make him a dead ringer for any major league backup catcher.
Every pitch whose ball-strike fate is determined before it meets his glove feels like another dig at his livelihood.
“The changes it makes to the position are drastic,” he says. “I’ve always thought every single pitch that’s received, the catcher has to earn the strike call. TrackMan rewards the lazy catcher, the bad receiver, and devalues the good receivers, and that’s a big part of the game.”
No more, at least not here. Falsetti says the catcher-ump relationship remains, but it’s more a commiseration of their shared fate, and an occasional ask of whether the pitch would have been a strike if the ump had an actual say in the matter.
“I know they just want to get it right,” says Falsetti. “And it has been right, for the most part. It’s going to take a lot for the (TrackMan zone) to get to the big leagues. And I just hope that process sheds light on just how important that good-receiving catcher is.”
It will be up to Manfred, or perhaps his successor, and the players’ association to determine that cost.
In the meantime, the self-proclaimed guinea pigs of the Atlantic League will play on.
“You can’t yell at that machine up there,” says Cliburn. “He’s not gonna listen.”