Is It Time for Baseball to Adopt Robot Umpires? (msn.com) 100
The case for robot umpires in baseball got some new interest this week — especially for Silicon Valley's baseball fans. As America settled in to watch the final inning of this year's National League Division Series, the Washington Post reports that (human) viewers saw a (human) umpire "call a third strike on a checked swing by San Francisco Giants infielder Wilmer Flores...ending the night, and season, of MLB's best team of 2021." (Though instead of swinging "Flores clearly appeared to hold up.")
But the backlash raises the question of whether a so-called robo-umpire — essentially, a set of highly placed and well-programmed cameras — could have automatically adjudicated the checked swing...
It's not a hypothetical question: MLB is in the middle of a three-year partnership with the independent Atlantic League for just such a robo-umpire, a system called Automatic Balls and Strikes (ABS), that this past season rendered a home-plate umpire moot for his most important job. MLB hasn't given a timetable for when the system could reach the big leagues, but it's clearly a trial balloon. ABS is overseen by TrackMan, a Denmark-based start-up that began by helping golfers with their swing and then expanded to baseball before broadening again to auto-officiating responsibilities. Under their ABS system, players are measured for a strike zone before the season, with their info then fed into the machine. Then, during the game, the company's sensor in the stands behind home plate uses Doppler technology to determine where the ball is thrown and where it should have been thrown based on the player's strike zone. The sensor then relays the call to, well, whoever wants to hear it. In the case of the Atlantic League, this is an actual umpire behind the plate who, in an ironic reversal, is a human who simply does what the machine tells him to do and announces the call.
The system is not being used for checked swings, but the technology is equally applicable; it makes little difference whether a ball is crossing the plate in one direction or a bat crosses it the other way...
But accuracy is only part of the equation. Presumably TrackMan could have made the right call — but what effect would such automation have on us socially? An argument can be made that it would increase consumer confidence and eliminate discord; an equal argument could be made the other way, that subjectivity is what makes the public realm, or at least baseball, a dynamic and interesting place.
The Flores checked swing, in other words, gets at the question that stretches across much of innovation: Just because we could, does that mean we should?
"Some fans have questioned whether judgment calls are part of the fun of baseball and a legalistic rendering is contrary to the spirit of the game," the article points out. And another issue: currently catchers will sometimes even move their glove with the caught ball so it looks like it passed through the strike zone when it didn't. (Or, as Deadspin puts it, "It's lying about where the pitch came in to fool the umpire into giving your team a strike when he shouldn't have." Though they call it "a beautiful art that defines the catcher position... and it will be rendered useless by the emergence of robot umpires.")
Deadspin tracked down the President of TrackMan Baseball, who said that after an entire season of use in the Atlantic league, "Our system was accurate to about a half-inch, and we do this at hundreds of baseball stadiums every single day." But Deadspin worries that if it's actually implemented in Major League Baseball stadium, then pitchers would be afraid to throw borderline pitches, and would be forced to throw more balls over the plate. While endless hits and home runs might sound exciting, it would only lengthen an already slow sport, and the high that comes from witnessing incredible offensive feats would slowly fade as they would become more commonplace.
But the backlash raises the question of whether a so-called robo-umpire — essentially, a set of highly placed and well-programmed cameras — could have automatically adjudicated the checked swing...
It's not a hypothetical question: MLB is in the middle of a three-year partnership with the independent Atlantic League for just such a robo-umpire, a system called Automatic Balls and Strikes (ABS), that this past season rendered a home-plate umpire moot for his most important job. MLB hasn't given a timetable for when the system could reach the big leagues, but it's clearly a trial balloon. ABS is overseen by TrackMan, a Denmark-based start-up that began by helping golfers with their swing and then expanded to baseball before broadening again to auto-officiating responsibilities. Under their ABS system, players are measured for a strike zone before the season, with their info then fed into the machine. Then, during the game, the company's sensor in the stands behind home plate uses Doppler technology to determine where the ball is thrown and where it should have been thrown based on the player's strike zone. The sensor then relays the call to, well, whoever wants to hear it. In the case of the Atlantic League, this is an actual umpire behind the plate who, in an ironic reversal, is a human who simply does what the machine tells him to do and announces the call.
The system is not being used for checked swings, but the technology is equally applicable; it makes little difference whether a ball is crossing the plate in one direction or a bat crosses it the other way...
But accuracy is only part of the equation. Presumably TrackMan could have made the right call — but what effect would such automation have on us socially? An argument can be made that it would increase consumer confidence and eliminate discord; an equal argument could be made the other way, that subjectivity is what makes the public realm, or at least baseball, a dynamic and interesting place.
The Flores checked swing, in other words, gets at the question that stretches across much of innovation: Just because we could, does that mean we should?
"Some fans have questioned whether judgment calls are part of the fun of baseball and a legalistic rendering is contrary to the spirit of the game," the article points out. And another issue: currently catchers will sometimes even move their glove with the caught ball so it looks like it passed through the strike zone when it didn't. (Or, as Deadspin puts it, "It's lying about where the pitch came in to fool the umpire into giving your team a strike when he shouldn't have." Though they call it "a beautiful art that defines the catcher position... and it will be rendered useless by the emergence of robot umpires.")
Deadspin tracked down the President of TrackMan Baseball, who said that after an entire season of use in the Atlantic league, "Our system was accurate to about a half-inch, and we do this at hundreds of baseball stadiums every single day." But Deadspin worries that if it's actually implemented in Major League Baseball stadium, then pitchers would be afraid to throw borderline pitches, and would be forced to throw more balls over the plate. While endless hits and home runs might sound exciting, it would only lengthen an already slow sport, and the high that comes from witnessing incredible offensive feats would slowly fade as they would become more commonplace.
What about baseball's other problem (Score:2)
Re:What about baseball's other problem (Score:4, Informative)
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Watching an opera too exciting for you and keeping you awake? Golf puts you to sleep for the rest of the day instead of a nice short nap?
We've got just the thing for you! Baseball! It's almost as boring as golf, but not quite! Guaranteed to let you spend the afternoon snoozing!
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One of many bigger problems is that people who enjoy the slow pace of the game are not interested in watching guys with a mouth full of tobacco.
The sport has a major culture problem that is a turnoff to the type of fans who would otherwise like the sport these days. Almost nobody else in society uses chewing tobacco, it is a weird and gross thing for them to be doing during their work hours.
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It's not natural, it's highly processed and adulterated, and when it WAS natural people chewed a plug, not a pinch; they stuffed a pinch, not a pouch. But who gives a fuck if it's natural or not? What's relevant is that it was disgusting then, and it's disgusting now, if you know anything about it. I associate chew with cups, cans, and bottles of spit that smell disgusting on a good day.
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It's weird, gross, but highly effective. Caffeine and nicotine are both stimulants. But they're not at an office job, so they can't use Starbucks as their performance-enhancing drug.
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It isn't a strong enough stimulant to help their performance, and if it was they could use nicotine patches.
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Ah, somebody lives in a trailer park in the deep South, and they're all, "I'm a mouse, and I'm stirring. There must be lots of mice stirring, because everybody worth knowing about is just like me!"
Yes.. (Score:1)
Just yes...
Re:Yes.. (Score:4, Interesting)
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Almost all the "checked swings" that they get away with now would have been swings when I was a kid. And the announcers would have laughed at the try, "He almost bunted but he changed his mind!"
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It is also the best game ever devised by man.
players union is going strike soon and they may no (Score:2)
players union is going strike soon and they may not stuff like this.
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They have to be careful. One more strike and they're out.
Next up : robot players (Score:2)
Umpires are part of the game too. It takes skill and experience. Umpires train and learn how to improve their skills. Their imperfections are part of the game as well. It would be as pointless to replace them than to replace the players with robots as well.
Next up, simulators for baseball. Who needs to actuslly play the game.
How about robot fans? (Score:2)
Just wondering if the players will feel better with fake followers and likes? Maybe a computer can keep up with them, unless "AI" becomes Artificial Indifference...
I can't wait for cries of ... (Score:5, Funny)
kill -9 umpire
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the play res have bats and they can knock it out
Re: I can't wait for cries of ... (Score:2)
I for one welcome our new ... (Score:2)
... nah, too easy.
The unstoppable American tendency (Score:5, Insightful)
The unstoppable tendency of people in the United States to take a good thing and keep "improving" it until everything that made it good in the first place is sucked out of it and the original thing is irrevocably destroyed.
Go complain to Theseus and the Greeks first (Score:2, Offtopic)
The unstoppable tendency of people in the United States to take a good thing and keep "improving" it until everything that made it good in the first place is sucked out of it and the original thing is irrevocably destroyed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
or cry harder, whichever.
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I won't disagree with that either.
However IIRC the call for "instant reply" in multiple sports came from the extreme end of the fan base (root word: fanatic), and that was the wedge that is heading for electronic refereeing.
instant replays (Score:2)
In the NFL, it went fro an experiment that probably wasn't going anywhere, to a rule change after a team advanced instead of being eliminated on a clearly wrong call. (iirc, there were *two* clearly wrong calls on the play).
It's taken them two decades to get it close to balanced, though--and personally, I'd lean even further from the coach-initiated, and just to fast booth calls--if it isn't clearly wrong after they watch it a couple of times, it's not wrong enough to reverse.
and fanatical fans have been
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What... precisely... about allowing crooked umpires to call the game so they can hand the game over to whoever they want to win (Or, considering it was the dodgers, whoever paid them off.), as opposed to having the game play out and be won by the actual better team, is "everything that made it good in the first place?"
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Agreed. Humans are all flawed and I enjoy the flawed nature of officiating as well. What really is the bad call rate in the majors? I enjoy seeing pitchers, catchers, and batters adjusting to different umps. I think if implemented, you'll see a much more boring game as things will migrate to whatever the numbers show is the optimal pitching approach under the robotic system.
I think that one of the challenges is that pitchers and batters both have to adjust how they execute over the season so that they're ha
And robotic players (Score:2)
Why stop with the umpires?
It would be even cheaper to replace "live games" with big screens and a baseball simulator computer.
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Might actually be fun to do - if you used a point system for generating player stats, and limited each player's AI to n lines of code in a standardized scripting language. Leave enough possibilities in the game that nobody could optimize a player for all circumstances, so you'd get players tuned to each role and they'd be less effective when they needed to step outside it.
Then throw it all through a random number generator and render the output for viewing.
You'd get people trying to min/max the best possib
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Core Wars: Baseball Edition!
Actually core wars became dull once the dominant strategy was found . . .
What is wrong with people? (Score:5, Insightful)
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I'd advocate fixing the problem like the NFL did, which was to give coaches / managers a limited number of calls that could be reviewed by instant reply. Keeps the overall human element in place, makes good use of available technology, and adds an interesting new strategic element to the mix.
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Interesting. It's been quite a few years since I've watched an MLB game. I'm glad they're at least doing that much. Honestly, I'm pretty happy with where things stand in football. Are baseball fans not satisfied with that current compromise? To me at least, the important thing is that you don't lose an entire game on one bad call. But it sort of takes the fun out of things if you just roboticize everything.
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make the last 30 seconds of cameras available in the dugout--and if it's not clearly one to challenge in 10 seconds or so, move on . . .
nerdy historical note: when Monday Night Football introduced the instant replay, it was done with a computer hard drive (the old 14" or whatever they are) adjusted to record the analog signal, rather than the encoded digital
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“The incident hurt the sport”
Why? Did it affect the outcome of the game, or was it just a record thing that didnt affect any actual outcome of the game or season?
Re: What is wrong with people? (Score:1)
Re: What is wrong with people? (Score:1)
No there's never going to be robot umpires (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:No there's never going to be robot umpires (Score:4, Interesting)
So what you're saying is that one of the major reasons people watch baseball is to see umpires get the call wrong, and to see the arguments that occur? And when you say the fun of the game is seeing what you can get away with, you're talking about what the umpires can get away with by making bad calls, right? Like, what is the worst bad call the umpire can get make and not get a manager in their face about it, or do you mean and not get fired by the league for being a bad umpire?
Are you sure? Because if so, it seems like it would therefore be an improvement to baseball for the umpire to be able to just declare a runner 'out' for no reason, just to rile up the crowd and cause an argument. I bet you and the rest of said viewers must love to see the opposing team given a fourth strike, hopefully resulting in your team losing instead of winning, just so that you have something to gripe about for a while?
Are you super sure? Because I think it's the reverse, that most people want to see the game played according to the actual rules, and would rather see the batter called for a strike only when they actually swung the bat, and see what the _players_ can do, according to the rules... for example can the pitcher throw a 'ball' but still convince the hitter to swing at it, or paint the corners of the box close enough to make the hitter think they don't need to swing at it and end up with a strike.
As long as the result is fast and accurate I think for home plate most people would be fine with having the right result every time. It's not like "ball vs strike" requires a lot of subjective determination, like would be necessary for interference calls or something. Look at american football, there was a lot of consternation about having video review at all, and what's in place right now is a relatively speedy system that when used (different argument) either produces the right result or a result so close to the correct result that it's hard to complain about the refs not calling the way you wish they'd called. Losing teams' fans wish their team had played better, they don't really wish the referees had gotten the call wrong. Winning teams' fans are glad the correct result occurred. It's better for the sport because it's better for the better teams and worse for the worse teams, so it depends on player's skills, not some random umpire changing the outcome.
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What was it that John Maynard Keynes said?
"In the long run we are all dead".
That appears to be your argument.
Each MLB team plays 162 games a season. Toronto won 91 of theirs and missed the postseason, Boston and New York damYankees each won 92 which put them in the postseason picture. This story was about a decisive - and apparently bad - call which ended the season of the team which had the best record in the MLB this year (one win ahead of the team which won this game on that call).
Fine margins matter i
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That's what it seems like. It's not as exciting as fighting in hockey, but a bit less gladiatorial I guess. Baseball seems to have a strong element of "what can you get away with" from stealing bases at one end to corking your bat and messing with the ball on the other.
Then you can "crack down" on those things and get on-field drama like players dropping their pants before being inspected. If they wanted to actually reduce cheating they'd just issue standard equipment.
You've got to do something to make base
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Perfect umpires have been possible since television cameras and they haven't done them.
And in the '80s, professional baseball seriously tried. There was a revolt among players and fans alike.
Times have changed. Video review is an accepted part of both indoor volleyball and the NFL, and indeed the choice of making it a coach's strategy has played very well.
Nevermind the umpires,,, (Score:2)
...bring on the robot players.
What will this do to Vegas oddsmakers? (Score:1)
Does it help or hurt?
Everyone knows... (Score:1)
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So they finally jazzed it up!
The game is for humans to play but... (Score:3)
I see no problem from removing human error from the judgement of how the humans who play the game act.
For things that happen extremely quickly and require precise measurement, no human will ever beat decently designed and built machine.
Have the system watch home plate, every base, and the ball itself and decide on who is safe or out. Measurements to the millisecond and millimeter with real-time results and no mistakes so a properly performed action is never punished by chance.
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agreed. The article talks about the catcher's "art" of faking out the umpire with a moving catch. But that's NOT what the game is about. It's one team vs another, not one man vs the referee.
Trying to squeak out an unfair advantage over your opponent seems to be the exact opposite of a game of skill between two opposing teams.
So with robot umpires... (Score:2)
The Astros will stop banging on trash cans and instead hire some of nerds to try hacking the umpires directly. Maybe they can source them from the Cardinals.
A good first step. (Score:2)
It would be a good first step. After that they can replace the players with robots, and then the fans and they might really be on to something.
Baseball is full of problems .... (Score:3)
I mean, as a St. Louis Cardinals fan, I'm unhappy that the manager was just fired. It's such a typical problem in the sport though. Everyone LOVES the team manager when the team is winning. But as soon as things go wrong, he's the first to be the "fall guy" and get canned over it. Why? Well, the PLAYERS are all locked into lucrative contracts so they're pretty untouchable. The manager is the only one they can let go.
As far as I'm concerned, all the player contracts should be tied to expected minimum performance metrics. Baseball is such a "stats oriented" game already, I don't see why they wouldn't apply a few of those here? Fire the PLAYER for continual under-performance.
Umpires making poor calls is another issue. Like most sports, baseball started out as a simple game for kids to play. When it went major league and became a big, expensive sport/business, it's obvious some things would receive upgrades. I don't think automation for the sake of more accurate calls has a reason not to become one of them. But I do like the idea someone mentioned to make it more like the NFL. Let the human umpire handle the bulk of the game as it's always been done, but give a certain number of opportunities per game to consult with or defer to the automation's call.
None of this even starts to address issues like the "performance enhancing drugs" or accusations of cheating with the various tricks pitchers and hitters have been known to employ.
(Personally, I think the drugs thing is so rampant in modern times, you're not really going to be able to get around it. The biggest stars in baseball are typically the guys who used these so they could achieve the number of hits the fans go crazy seeing, or the guys with the explosive speed needed to make insane catches right at the wall. With so much money at stake, you know some people are going to overlook that stuff.)
yes and its long overdue (Score:4, Interesting)
Tennis got rid of human line callers during covid and it made the game better.
Human umpires are a necessary evil. That's the nature of the job. If they get every call correct they have not made the game better. So all they can do is diminish the game with incorrect calls. And they do this far too often.
MLB should have a goal of zero-defects policy on umpiring. Especially given that umpiring has no correction mechanism for getting rid of bad umpires. Otherwise Joe West and Angel Hernandez would have been gone decades ago.
measurement manipulation (Score:2)
Under their ABS system, players are measured for a strike zone before the season, with their info then fed into the machine
How are players going to be measured? Based on their batting stance during a live game, or their batting stance while being measured? Because I have a feeling some players would be in a much tighter crouch doing their measurement session to reduce their strike zone than what they would be in a game. Why not just have a tiny sensor built into their jersey at the bottom of the letters and at the knee so they could have a realtime adjusting strike zone that would be true to their stance during a game?
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Why not just have a tiny sensor built into their jersey at the bottom of the letters and at the knee so they could have a realtime adjusting strike zone that would be true to their stance during a game?
We'll see some strangely worn uniforms...
Chip implants maybe? Tattoos?
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Computer vision these days is more than good enough to identify shoulders and knees if you feed it an image where most of it is 'known'. Like, say, a rectangle where 90% of the frame is filled with the human subject.
If you can't find an angle that excludes the catcher or the umpire, you might be able to use a narrow DoF to have only the batter in focus.
No sensors are required on the player.
"Automatic Balls" (Score:2)
Lotsa luck (Score:3)
A robo-ump can at best decide if the ball did or did not pass through the strike zone. It cannot decide if a swing was checked. I don't see it happening any time soon since the official ruled don't actually provide any objective criteria to determine if a swing was checked.
The only advice provided is that a swing is checked if the player has no intention of hitting the ball. As opposed to realizing he is going to swish so he tries to make it look like he meant to do that.
Umpires are divided on the subject. Some consider it a swing if the non-dominant wrist breaks as the bat comes around. Others consider it a swing if the batsman's hands cross the centerline of the plate. Still others take either as a swing.
A robo-ump as they exist today couldn't have helped in the last strike of the Giants-Dodgers game. Good luck making one that could have helped when we can't even agree on the criteria the robo-ump should use.
Then, there's the question of desirability of a robo-ump. Pitchers expanding the strike zone and batsmen shrinking it has long been part of the game as well as catchers selling the strike.
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Some consider it a swing if the non-dominant wrist breaks as the bat comes around. Others consider it a swing if the batsman's hands cross the centerline of the plate. Still others take either as a swing.
Are those actually criteria or are these back-rationalizations of decisions that were based on intuition, the way a neural net would usually classify things? A "robot umpire" would have the same problem, only without the fake rationalization to cloud it.
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Without the back rationalization, players and fans will eventually all end up demanding that robo-ump be retired.
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This would be super simple. We have 2 classifications, and literal millions of pitches to throw into a classifier. A neural net could perfectly simulate the amalgamation of all the umpire calls and hence could carry on in the future perfectly replicating the calls for what should and shouldn't be a checked swing .
And the bonus is we don't even care what those factors were since even the umps don't seem to know or agree. It will likely find whatever factors the umpires are subconsciously latching on to - who
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Don't forget tht this would just be one function of the umpire. There's also handling close plays at the plate, line calls, and the most difficult to replace: if anything "odd" happens, the umpire's job is to set things as they would have been had the odd thing not happened. Odd things in the past have included a cat running across the field, a pitched ball hits a pigeon. Ball hits a catwalk railing and shoots directly out of a vent pipe into the parking lot (someone must have used the force), ball goes dir
WORLD SERIES! (Score:1)
despite being played by only one country....
want a world series?
go look at the t20 world cup - starting in the UAE tomorrow.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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I had to read an awful lot on than page to understand that it was not a competition in dice-throwing (T20 in my language is D20 in English).
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I don't recall the Yankees flying to Japan to play other teams. Until then sorry the MLB is not a world wide league when teams of one of the best "other" leagues are not participating.
And if it is foreign teams always travelling then it is also not a true world league as you bias the "home" of the games.
Just like other sports, the league is no better - it is just a self reinforcing loop of following the money (and protectionism). If it were to go truly global, and players regularly travelled to japan and pl
Change both the rules and the officiating (Score:2)
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>because it's always been played that way
I read an article a few months ago (from pocket?) about historical baseball recreationists, or whatever they're called.
They play under various nineteenth century rules, sometimes using two different sets of rule on a doubleheader.
Under older set that was described, a fly ball caught on the first bounce was still out . . .
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Balls (Score:2)
I have a better idea. Let's have the robots do the hitting, too. And the running, well, that goes without saying!
Humans can continue to be fielders. Basically glorified ball shaggers for the robots having the fun.
my coach always taught me (Score:5, Insightful)
...that if you have left the game so close that a single bad call means you lose, then that's your problem.
Why stop at Umpires? (Score:2)
Why stop at Umpires? Let's replace all the players too... and them we can replace the fans, oops, didn't we already do that?
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Just replace the whole damn thing with deep fakes.
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Yeah. Then we could have games running 24/7 and anyone could watch any time they want.
But - but - but... (Score:2)
But will robot umpires be woke enough? How can they make it through diversity, inclusion, equity (DIE) training?
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really?
That's downright robophobic!
Is it time for baseball to... (Score:2)
No (Score:2)
Getting Worse (Score:2)
I have been watching Baseball for awhile and I have to say that the Umpiring, according to the Strikebox I see, has been getting worse. There are times where the ball is way off the plate and it's getting called a strike.
I know the Umps try to be fair and maybe make up for the call on another pitch. But there is no consistency when the other team comes to bat. The same pitches are not getting called the same way all the time.
Also the Strike box on some umpires is really an Oval, up/down or left/right based
Just another set of bugs (Score:2)
So instead of missing those calls with human error, it'll miss all sorts of other calls with algorithm bugs. You know, like a slider just off-the-plate to the left will always be a strike.
Think about all of the times when they contest a call at first. Think about all of the replays, and all of the discussions. Think about all the times that it takes a dozen humans and six high-speed cameras, more than five minutes(!) to finally decide that "there isn't enough evidence to overturn the call on the field".
Th
Baseball officiating is the best in sports (Score:1)