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Balls and Strikes Were Called by a Computer, Not an Umpire, at a Professional Baseball Game

posted by takyon on Saturday August 01 2015, @09:31AM   Printer-friendly
from the strike-three-for-humanity dept.

Phoenix666 writes:

A small, but notable moment in baseball history occurred this week. In a US minor-league game between the San Rafael Pacifics and Vallejo Admirals, the home plate umpire did not call balls and strikes. Instead, a computerized video system was used to make the determinations, which were relayed by the game's announcer to the crowd cheering on the home team—and checking out the system's performance—at Albert Park in San Rafael, California.

The system, Pitchf/x from Chicago-based Sportvision, isn't new to baseball. It already provides data for evaluating players and umpires, and it helps TV viewers see where a pitch lands relative to the strike zone. But on July 28 it was used to make actual calls, marking the first time that's happened in professional baseball.

Maybe if Major League Baseball can save money on umpires they can lower ticket prices.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 01 2015, @02:32PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 01 2015, @02:32PM (#216762)

    MLB records each at-bat on video and reviews the footage to evaluate the performance of plate umpires; they then provide feedback, not just to the particular ump, but to all umpires as part of continuous training. This has been going on for years, but it seems that a couple years ago they switched to vendors and now are able to determine with fairly decent precision whether a call was right or wrong. (If you think about it, this is a nontrivial problem, because big league pitches are commonly thrown between 85-98 MPH, and many change direction in the vicinity of the plate).

    The upshot is that the strike zone as called today (and last year) is, in effect, lower and wider than it was just a few years ago. Also, the performance of plate umpires is considered much more uniform across the league - there's much less of a particular umpire calling certain pitches as strikes that most of his peer called as balls, and vice versa. This has lowered batting averages, and has devastated the careers of some older players who haven't been able to adjust.

    So in effect we already have a certain amount of video officiating in place. As for saving money, the big money is made by the players - the *average* MLB player makes $4 million/yr, and there are 25 of them on each roster. Of course, minor leaguers struggling to get to "The Show", e.g. b/c their batting average is 30 points lower than what it needs to be, still live in poverty, just as in many entertainment businesses.