Remarkably, the television wasn’t the technology that forced the MLB’s hand on this. You would think it would…football and tennis went for challenges a long time ago, and viewers can easily see when an ump misses a call. But baseball has managed to stay human on balls and strikes for a long time.
Then along comes sports betting and they basically have no choice but to use robots.
It’s sad to me how much sports betting changes sports. When I watch, I wonder if the referee has accepted a bribe every time a call is a little funky. Considering the millions of dollars riding on every play, some of them must have taken some money at some point.
> When I watch, I wonder if the referee has accepted a bribe every time a call is a little funky.
As someone that has been a soccer (makes me throw up a little to say that word), ahem, football referee, I can tell you that not all funky calls are because the ref is rigging the game. Sometimes, you just miss stuff. Sometimes, you just see it differently. Sometimes, you just fuck up. Yes, a few have definitely admitted to taking bribes. Granted, I never was an official on anything professional. Even still, you'd make a call and the fans of the team you call a foul against all go crazy. Two minutes later, you make a call going the other way, and the other fans go nuts. I always laughed when I'd hear comments about needing glasses and "how much they pay you". You can't make 100% happy, ever. Fan is short for fanatic, and it's very appropriate.
To that end, I'm surprised that MLB never introduced replays. Cricket has replays and even have microphones that they watch the waveforms to see if there was contact or not.
I'm totally with you – 99.99% of ref calls are a legitimate attempt to arbitrate the rules and almost every mistaken call is better explained by human error than malice.
My point is the existence of the question...It's possible that someone could wager $10,000 on some player striking out and give the ump $5k for making sure the slightly-outside ball is a called strike. And with all $150,000,000,000 sloshing around sports right now, we'd be foolish to think that _never_ happens.
I have no idea how many calls are intentionally blown for money, but I'm confident it's not zero.
I just watched the replay, and I'm convinced VAR would rule it offside. So the hand of god would be irrelevant. The AR on the far side of the pitch is just out of frame at the crucial moment, so he was clearly behind the play. That's a position you never want to find yourself as an AR. I always found the AR role much more demanding than the referee. Keeping that offside line is difficult at best and nearly impossible if you're 30+ something trying to keep up with fit professional athletes in peak fitness in their 20s. Now, after that call was blown, again due to the framing, it is hard to see where the ref was looking. You can see his last position easily 30 yards from goal while Maradona makes contact about 8 yards from goal. There are at least 15 players in between the ref and the play at that point. Also, a very telling thing is that there was no conversation between the AR and the ref. On contentious plays, you'd see the ref back peddle to the AR (never take your eyes of the pitch) and have a chat about who saw what. I don't know if the ref crew had radios back in 1986, but the fact that the ref did not think it was worthy of a chat with his AR who would have had a different angle to view it says a lot about the ref's thinking. If the AR had seen it and wanted to chat with the ref, he would have stood still with his flag raised. If he felt the goal was good, he would keep his flag down and make a little run up the touchline towards midfield. The linked YT footage is cropped (pushed in I assume to remove any network branding) so the AR is out of frame. In the very last replay with the camera from behind the goal line on the near side, you can barely make out the AR but it cuts before he signals. My guess is he turned and ran up the touchline. Again, it is obvious he is out of position behind the play, so his view was more than likely blocked.
At the end of the day, if you can't absolutely positively tell that something happened, you pretty much let it stand. Just because all of the defenders raised their arms does not make it offside. There's only one person that can tell you that, and he couldn't make the call so had to let it go. There's no way the ref was going to call offside. The one thing they do teach you is that if you're unsure, make a call and make everyone think you're sure. Just own it, and move on. Never had to do that for a goal, but there's plenty of times I don't know who was last to touch the ball before it went out so you turn to the AR to get a clue. It's always fun when they shrug. You just pick on what you think you saw and just confidently rule that way. It's a damn throw, just put the ball back in play. Corners vs goal kicks are more risky, so always safe to rule for the defense with a goal kick. Never want a team to score on a bad call from a ref. Of course, none of that is ever taught to a ref...in those terms.
However, I think if you use the enhance feature to zoom into the ref's back pocket, you can see the cash he was paid to let it happen /s
Very casual football/soccer fan checking in - offside seems like a challenging call to make, most of the time. I understand the rules and all of its subtleties. It seems like the AR bears a lot of responsibility for the call - marking the penultimate defender. And yeah - if the ref just glanced at the sideline -- lack of AR flag means no offside because I didn't see it and AR didn't see it ergo there's no one left to consult ergo it didn't happen.
But yeah the objection IIUC was not over offside despite what the announcer says. He realizes at the end that it's an apparent handball. "At what point was he offside ... or was it a use of the hand that England are complaining about?"
> ... back peddle to the AR (never take your eyes of the pitch)
Is this because of the risk of violence from the players?
> Is this because of the risk of violence from the players?
that's part of it, but just in general you can't be in control if you can't see it.
> But yeah the objection IIUC was not over offside despite what the announcer says. He realizes at the end that it's an apparent handball. "At what point was he offside ... or was it a use of the hand that England are complaining about?"
wow, i wrote a whole diatribe about offside, and that had nothing to do with your comment <face-palm>
In the modern game, VAR would wind the goal scoring play to the beginning of the play to see if there was anything missed. They would look for the first reason to stop the play. In that case, the offside would be seen first and the goal would be disallowed for that.
Back then, the offside was missed by the AR so play continued. Even the England players didn't complain about the offside. They were complaining about the hand ball. It should have been the more obvious thing for a ref to see.
If you see how the players are screaming about the hand ball, it is with the hand raised over the head which does look like what every defender does to imitate the AR raising the flag. However, you see the other hand comes up to slap the wrist indicating they want the foul for handling the ball. To be fair, from the commentator's perspective, the offside was clearly visible. It's only natural to think that's what everyone would be complaining about. It is possible that even the ref was looking at his AR waiting for the flag to go up and wasn't even looking at the play and missed the hand in his befuddlement at the no offside call
Any time someone is talking about the ref's influence on sports I get to plug one of my favorite books, Scorecasting by Moskowitz and Wertheim. The premise of the book is simple: using statistical analysis, can you prove or disprove various beliefs about sports? Several chapters are dedicated to various ways that officials influence the games that they're calling. The book does make a compelling case that they do, but in the least expected and to my mind genuinely most noble way: it seems that when officials do bend the rules, it's usually to avoid doing anything at all. In baseball, strike zones shrink on an 0-2 count because a called third strike feels like the official deciding the outcome but a swing and miss, or contact in-play, feels like the two teams playing the game and deciding the winner. In Association Foot-the-Ball, the tendency in big matches, in close matches and later on in matches isn't to call more penalties on any one team than the others, it's to penalize less overall. In matches that aren't that close or important the tendency is that the underdog will receive fewer penalties, or in blowouts the team in the lead tends to take more penalties than the team that's behind. What's really fun is that because human behavior is feedback loops that accept feedback loops as input even the appearance of bias can sometimes introduce bias. When they studied hockey they went with the assumption that, all other things being normalized for, each team should be equally likely to be the next to take a penalty. Some individual teams might be more likely than others to take a penalty, but across dozens of teams and dozens of seasons it should more or less shake out square. But it turns out that similar patterns apply: in close games, or during the playoffs fewer penalties overall but also the first strong evidence of something that hockey folk have always suspected: make-up calls. You're right, sometimes it's really close and sometimes the officials just get it wrong, and this book demonstrates statistically that after close or incorrect calls, or calls that seemed to have an inordinate effect on the game, the team that was put at a disadvantage is much more likely to be the next put at an advantage.
So yeah, officials do influence play and frankly I think it's a good and healthy thing for the sport overall when they do. In the case of balls and strikes I support automated calls because that's very simple (the ball is either in the box or not, and we can hem and haw about how we define the box during the off-season) and the infra to do it is already in-place. But in difficult, judgment-call situations (to take american football as an example, what's the actual, objectively-defined line between a corner getting handsy and defensive pass interference?) I not only think humans are necessary despite their biases but because of them. Obv bias in favor of any one team or style of play needs to be rooted out but the way that officials actually call games, even when it varies from the rules, seems to actually benefit the sport, the athletes and the fans in a lot of unexpected ways.
In weekend tournament situations where there are a lot of games to play, amateur not professional, having a game end in a draw requiring extra time or shots put a lot of pressure on keeping things on schedule. Referees are often reminded "we need winners". The obvious take away from that is to be generous with penalties. If there's something you might normally let slide, call it and avoid making the match last longer than necessary. There's no direct instruction on what to do, but as a ref that has a game ending in a draw, it might not be received well by the tournament organizers and/or the referee assigner. You might just not get another game.
For other situations of officials influencing the game, the big one is how often they use their whistle to stop play. If they are calling ticky tacky fouls, the game slows down to nothing but restarts and there's no real flow. In youth matches, parents love it when the ref protects their precious little angel. Players HATE it. A ref that players like are the ones that let the game play. If two players are both strong in their fight for the ball with some possible pulling/holding equally from both sides, let it go. Let the stronger player win. If one player obviously is using the dark arts to gain unfair advantage, sure stop the play.
As far as blow out games with the stronger team getting more penalties, it could be a much more simple explanation as the ball just spends more time in the area which raises the likelihood of a penalty occurring. A game with back and forth will see less penalties. A game where one team is putting constant pressure on the goal is much more likely for a defender to make a mistake. Just like the awarding of an own goal. They only happen because the attacking team was putting pressure where an own goal could even be possible.
>As far as blow out games with the stronger team getting more penalties, it could be a much more simple explanation as the ball just spends more time in the area which raises the likelihood of a penalty occurring
This may be specific to hockey but that's the game I care and know most about: as a rule if there's a blowout it's usually the defenders taking penalties. Whether it's a blowout because defenders are taking penalties, leading to a lot more time at a disadvantage or defenders are taking penalties because its a blowout, they're getting dominated and they can't defend without breaking the rules is difficult to tease out objectively but anecdotally it's the latter. Nobody's faster than you if you grab them by the jersey. No one is stronger than you if you trip them with your stick. You try doing it legally at first but if that doesn't work then you try getting away with doing it illegally. Whereas if you're just absolutely imposing your will on a team anyway why bother grabbing a stick that isn't lifting yours up anyway, or holding onto the jersey of someone who's already behind you? But the data reveal the opposite: the team in the lead tends to be more likely to take a penalty and the theory is that the refs just assume they can afford it and it won't affect the outcome or create an appearance of impropriety. But a tickytack holding call against a team that's already down by 3 feels like piling on at best and intentionally influencing the game at worst, and that's why officials tend to avoid it.
Taking a penalty in hockey is not the same in football. In football, it’s an actual scoring play. In hockey, it’s a time out for the player while the team reshapes to play short handed. Lots of penalty killing units go on to score.
They tried replays 50 years ago and the umpires refused to budge and so they banned them so fans couldn't know.
the above is from https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Luciano 's book but wikipedia doesn't mention it. Though it was 40 years since I read the book so maybe I don't remember right?
I think it makes the game human. also football with replays on ever play is too slow.
Gambling is evil. We’ve known that in this country for hundreds of years and that’s why it’s been illegal. Gambling on smartphones is the most evil type of gambling yet invented. The only reason it’s been legalized is that it’s very profitable and the forces of profit in the government are stronger than the forces of good.
At the very least, I would hope that we could curb their ability to Advertise the same way we do with a variety of other social harms. People, kids especially, do not need to intake 35 DraftKing ads while watching a game with their family.
The ability to bet on short term individual events (such as a single pitch) means that even a single pitch, otherwise nearly inconsequential, can be abused.
I don't think the bribe risk is any different as its always been. Sports betting is nothing new in the U.S., people just used to either have to plan a vacation to vegas or find a bookie who would take their action. Wasn't hard to do. I knew a lot of people who had bookies and were betting every weekend. Legalization just meant they didn't have to maintain a relationship with a bookie, kind of like how dispensaries put a bunch of pot dealers out of work.
Computer usage is nothing new in the U.S., people just used to find a university or business to buy mainframe time from. Microcomputers just meant that they didn't have to maintain a relationship with a university.
How did you come to that conclusion that this is a function of betting? As a baseball fan, this feels like a long overdue feature (at least in the world of video review challenge). I think it's simply going to make the game better. MLB is losing to the NFL/NBA, and they need to put out a better product.
He oversaw the last collective bargaining agreement in 2021/22. It’s expiring this year. That’s one of the reasons why the rule change is going through now.
I won’t deny that sports betting could be a factor, but Manfred wants faster more engaging baseball. That’s been his stated goal for a long time as he worked through rule changes.
That makes absolutely no sense. If it’s a chip in the collective bargaining agreement, why would he give it away for free prior to negotiations beginning?
Why would the owners? “Good will” has never worked in MLB negotiations and I don’t see that changing.
You may be correct, but the rate of change in baseball is glacially slow compared to the other sports. One of baseball's intrinsic values is it's legacy, tradition, and history. Some may scoff at that, and I think there are good arguments against legacy/tradition as a reason to withhold change, but there are a lot of people out there that believe this. The MLB Commissioner's have largely been tasked with protecting that tradition and history.
I don't know how any baseball fan can be against this. I would bet that man has made at least one season-ending mistake on every team out there throughout his career, and he's completely unapologetic and arrogant about it. Everyone was relieved when he retired, but there's been plenty of others happy to play the king villain now.
We're already there. Emmanuel Clase is under investigation for fixing pitches and can't play right now.
I don't love sports betting in general, but I really hate betting on short term events like specific pitches or a strikeout. There is way too much incentive to fix.
Legal sports betting via app which turned gambling into a casual activity for hundreds of millions of new players. These apps made a market that previously placed 4 billion in bets to 125 billion. This is very new.
Their rise and market is so large that only 5% of sports bets aren't placed through one of these apps.
Legalized, league-approved sport betting is new-ish (2018). And sports betting has grown 25x since then.
Not sure if I agree with OPs take though. It might just be that baseball is a traditional, conservative game and they are hesitant to change it. maybe that's why they're just using robo umps for challenges, and not for every pitch, which would be easy to do and would further the all-about-betting theory.
It is almost impossible to fully remove that voice in the back of your head that will question if you were cheated. Because the fact is at the end of the day sports are played by humans and humans make mistakes, humans are susceptible to bribes, humans are susceptible to threats and there are many other factors that could influence or force cheating by players or bad calls by the officials.
There are literally countless incidents of people cheating. So my suggestion is to hope it doesn't happen but also just avoid making bets if you are not comfortable with the fact that you may lose.
Nothing makes me feel more like a grumpy old man than the new strike zone box. My favorite part of watching a baseball game with friends was the heated arguments about what was or wasn't a strike.
I realize that it's an objectively ridiculous thing to have strong feelings about, but boy do I hate it :D
I started watching baseball 5 years ago when I had a roommate who loves the Red Sox. I don't have cable at home so I cant say Im a true fan or anything; but if its on and I happen to be in front of a TV, Im content watching a game.
At the time, every umpire had their own strike box, and I loved it! It added variance to the pitches and swings each game. Some batters would turn their head and confirm with the umpire where one edge of the box was when they called a strike (and others would silently curse without turning their head haha)
No, I'm with you. And maybe it's just because I'm an old man, but this is another place where joy and wonder (meaning arguing with friends lol) are replaced with data. It just sucks some of the fun out.
We’ll see but I don’t think that’s going to be the case.
The primary use case is the glaring wrong calls. 1/2 a ball in/out of the zone called wrong. The batter/catcher/pitcher have to do the challenge, so, ideally, the “obvious” ones should be readily challenged.
But the close calls, the squeakers, the players have very little time to make the challenge and we saw lots of failures in Spring Training this year.
So, there’s still a lot of judgement and uncertainty to deal with. And don’t forget the the Umpires have been being evaluated based on the automated box for years. They review each game and the Umpires performance. It’s just not had actual game impact before.
I have no doubt that there will be some important, game impacting “bad calls” going forward. It just that there will be fewer of them. Also be interesting to see if the get extra challenges in the post season/WS games.
MLB lost the narrative of what it is and what people like about it. It's looking at other sports, seeing what they're doing, and starting to take itself too seriously.
Speak for yourself. The most fun part of baseball for me was having a correctly called game by the rules, and not being at the mercy of some septuagenarian with an ego.
Now, if only there was some way to distinguish between the performance of the players and the performance of the umpires. Oh! Oh! I know! Players don't have to be perfect, but umpires do! Yes, now we have really gotten at the spirit of competition: who is the best physically, vs "the umpire screwed up and blew the call, this is fun!"
Is this even a serious argument? Come on. I would almost think you were trolling, conflating the performance of the umpires vs the performance of the players, were this not HN.
I think it would 100% work for someone who truly finds the "most-fun part of baseball" "having a correctly called game by the rules".
Initially I was going to argue that that's a silly thing to prioritize in a game, but it's a matter of taste and I'm not going to tell you what to like or not. It's not like you said that you liked arguing with your friends or something.
In all seriousness though, sure, everyone wants a fair game, but there's limitations. For instance, I only watch minor league baseball, and it's not because they got the pitch clock and ABS first, it's because the teams aren't completely optimized like the majors, and the game isn't as refined - it's closer in spirit to the first game of baseball ever played.
Frankly, I'd rather watch a pick-up game without an umpire if it weren't weird (and I could get a beer and some hotdogs).
Long story short (too late), baseball's a lot of different things to a lot of different people. The stats, the camaraderie, the competition, or the culture around the game itself. If you prized a game going off like clockwork, I couldn't fault you, even if that doesn't factor into my love of the game at all.
I'd prefer they'd show the location of the ball without drawing the box (even if just the location at the front edge of the plate). I like seeing where the ball reached the plate, which is quite hard to see with the typical camera angle.
In a very literal sense a non-trivial part of the entertainment value of sports has been taken from you. I don't think it's ridiculous at all, I think the people making the decisions to have computer accurate refs don't understand what makes sports fun to watch holistically.
I think it's very double-edged. I don't think anybody genuinely wants refs affecting outcomes with bad calls.
The problem is we have more and more technology (camera angles, first down markers, strike zones, HD and 4K resolution, etc) that make it easier to see errors after the fact.
Not using technology to get things right starts to feel like dereliction of duty by the leagues as evidence of errors pile up.
I accept the "human element" but I wouldn't say I like it. I do think umps having their own strike zones is one of the better instances of human element, though (so long as they're consistent).
Umps aren’t consistent tho and because of the way seniority works, the worst umps (the older ones) get the jobs in the playoffs and World Series.
If you want a human element this is just using it as a challenge system. So the players have to have a good eye to decide whether an ump was right or wrong and they can’t get help from anyone else to decide to challenge a call.
I personally don't care for the challenge system because if the ABS is the ground truth, why aren't we using that for every single pitch? Why put the burden on the batter to say "tell me the correct call" when you could just have the correct call be radioed into the umpire's earpiece? It just means that the rules of the game aren't being applied every pitch, just when the batter asks. I do not find this to be a strategically interesting role for the batter to play. I want them to bat well, and hit the ball. Not have to sit there and have a call we know for certain is incorrect go through because their team happened to challenge the wrong calls earlier in the game. I just cannot imagine a situation where I think it is better for a call that we know is incorrect to stand. I know this is an ice cold take, but if the tech is there, just use it.
It’s the slippery slope and necessary path so umpires can maintain a role. I really wish it could be a fully automated system that just immediately displays whether a pitch is a strike or ball. The umpires could be reserved for other judgment calls. Maybe 20 years from now there won’t be an umpire behind the plate.
The system as implemented maintains both the umpire and the catchers role (in terms of framing pitches). I can appreciate the elegance of the solution to meet a middleground, but the "fairness gremlin" in me just wants calls to be consistent and correct.
They had this during spring training and it was fantastic. The challenge limit meant it was used rarely, but when it was used it added a fun dramatic element. Players getting to stick it to umpires when they got it wrong, and umpires getting to smirk at players when they got it right.
And at the end of it all, some missed calls get to be corrected.
Agreed - Plenty of hitters have experience with it as well, since it's been around the minors for even longer than this season.
I saw it in practice a few times this year during spring training games, and it was _fast_. Add to that the fact that only pitchers, catchers, and hitters can request one (no managers holding the game up while the replay room checks on it), and it really won't slow the game down at all.
The fun part will be seeing how teams learn to game the system. The batter can call it, but I think it would be hard to stifle any kind of communication from the dugout.
/something higher tech than banging a garbage can obviously.
It will be fun to see if teams prefer batters or catchers use the system. Or if they will coach either side to use it situationally. I think, so far, catchers have better challenge success rates?
It's been pretty wild to watch the MLB go through the exact same arguments that the Cricket world went through 15 years ago when DRS was first introduced.
There’s universal agreement that DRS has massively improved cricket, but the sport was already using technology for decision-making well before DRS. In fact, Hawk-Eye was first used in cricket before gaining popularity with tennis. I’d go as far as to say cricket has been the best adopter of technology in sports for a long time.
I had to look it up. But yet, the system seems to be framed as helping the official rather than some third party to overcome a dispute. It looks like the umpires can decide to get the review on their own?
In cricket, yeah, the umpires can ask for the review themselves.
Sometimes it isn't really clear, like, if the ball is caught very close to the boundary line, given the size of the field, it can be tricky for the umpire to tell if it was caught over the boundary, representing the difference between the current batsman being caught out (meaning either the next batsman has to come take his place - assuming there are any of the 11 left) or adding 6 runs to his team's tally.
Some of the most memorable cricket games have had such situations.
It also adds some suspense to games as everyone waits on umpires to review data to make their call.
Safe to assume ejections will fall off dramatically. I remember Lou Pinella being thrown out of Wrigley Field because a runner was called out at 3rd base a few years before challenges. Pinella was wrong and in another world he would have simply challenged the call rather than kicking dirt at the ump. Wilson Contreras got thrown out a few weeks back for theatrics after a ball / strike call.
The last frontier of ejections will probably be discretion when players get plunked at the plate.
Yeah, and I'm an old man, so let me lament how this takes some more fun out of baseball. Those arguments were always a bit of kayfabe, but they were glorious! Who didn't love Earl Weaver kicking dirt on homeplate, or Billy Martin endangering his blood pressure, or Tommy Lasorda turning himself into a tomato? Bleah.
Granted, I didnt grow up a baseball fan and am only now getting into through my kids being in baseball, but coming from less "traditional" sports like basketball I really dont care for the whole spectacle side of baseball. Even in little league you get way more arguing with umpires from coaches and parents alike and its all so juvenile.
Right there with you. The faux drama (soccer/football "flops", F1 drivers complaining of 'dangerous' actions of everyone else), of some sports is as bad as the actual theatrics and temper-losings of others. Takes away from the playing, for me.
Overall this seems good to me, esp. since it’s limited to 2x a game, leaving space for framing and other human elements to the calling, like make up calls, which I generally think are good.
That said. Strike zone height is between 53.5% and 23% of a player’s height. WTFBBQ. That’s a major change, and I don’t understand how it’s going to go with an Ump’s calling the zone — right now a player’s stance can affect the zone height. How will umps assess 53.5% of a player’s height realtime?
I wish mlb would bring all the cricket tech.
The audio meter thing is wiiiiild. (Where they use high precision microphones to determine if the ball made contact with the bat).
Also there’s no excuse for not having full 360 3D representative video for each base. Having some sort of pressure sensor would be useful too.
Better safety features would be useful (like better face protection like the cricket steel grill).
And just more damn cameras for all the edges (like home run or foul lines).
Some numbers: A typical MLB game sees about 292 pitches thrown. Of the pitches called a ball or strike—so ignore any pitches fouled off or put in play—93% are called correctly by umpires. That's equivalent to umpires missing a call every 3.6 batter appearances.
So in terms of volume, this isn't much. In terms of potential effects, it becomes a question of how well players utilize their teams' two challenges (teams retain challenges if they correctly use them, but only the batter, the catcher, and the pitcher can request a challenge).
It all becomes an interesting question in terms of strategies. A catcher when he's batting? Does he want to risk one of his team's challenges as a batter that he might want for his pitcher? A mediocre hitter in a low-stakes situation? Does he want to risk one of his team's challenges? What about a really good hitter in a low-stakes situation? Lots here for teams to consider, and since it's up to the players to decide on a challenge (not managers or coaches), teams will have to determine their approaches such that players can make decisions without assistance.
This obscures the fact that umpires are worse than 93% when the pitch is close to the boundary of being a ball or a strike (shadow zone). Obvious balls and obvious strikes are obvious, but umpire accuracy when it is close is only 81%, and their accuracy was even worse 15 years ago.
Right, but as that article notes, the numbers show it's an average of 4.5 pitches per team in the shadow zone in each game. And those pitches are not clear-cut instances where players will be confident in challenging, more like 50/50. So what remains is how teams decide to let their players use this finite challenge resource.
Look at it from the other direction. If there was a contest between two athletes or teams and it was adjudicated without bias, would you think "You know what would give this more soul? A flawed judge with poorer vision, who may or may not have been pressured or baited before the game to influence their decisions!"
Review systems for cricket and tennis seem to have enabled more crowd involvement and anticipation in the lead up to a decision being revealed.
If the viewers didn't know it was a blown call, there wouldn't be a problem. That's how baseball worked for 100 years.
But now when the viewers can see the pitch in 1000fps 8K slow motion, they expect better from the umpires. The entire premise of sports relies on the assumption that the rules are adjudicated correctly.
I agree entirely. Baseball is about the accumulation of (very) small advantages. No umpire is being unfair (whatever particular fans may think about certain umpires - though, yes, some are better than others), but each umpire is unique, and learning and adapting to individual umpires' idiosyncrasies is a dimension across which the best players can distinguish themselves. Removing that flattens the game.
I don't hate the challenge system as much as I would an entirely-automated strike zone - and I'll probably appreciate the occasional corrected call, and the game-within-a-game of when to spend your challenges - but it's all of a piece with the general flattening of baseball. The DH, and now the universal DH. Interleague play. Balanced schedules. Three true outcomes hitters. Outlawing certain defensive positioning. Maniacal pursuit of spin-rate. Manfred runners. All of these eliminate elements of the game that made it more interesting - at least from this Old Man's perspective.
(As counter-examples: I like the pitch clock, and I'm OK with enlarging the bases; those increase the premium that accrues to specific skills, and heighten the stakes of particular situations. Those are the directions in which positive changes should point.)
"The tie goes to the runner" died with instant replay, and I think that is sad. If you need multiple super slow-motion angles to determine if they were out or safe, it should be a tie, in my opinion.
I also just say watch every angle at full speed for those types of replay, no slow-mo. Keeps the magic, but let's you correct egregious calls.
if a baseball is the width of two or three baseballs away from the "zone" (dynamic based on player usually), then providing a way to challenge the call (it was called a strike when it is clearly a ball) is completely fair and retains the soul of the game. Baseball is really a game of fairness. There's no "buzzer beaters" or timed sessions. Everyone has their chance per inning to impact the game. In a game of relative fairness, adding more strict honesty when it comes to something like this will only improve the game.
As a baseball fan, I for one welcome this change. I have seen how the system dramatically improved tennis matches. Players have built an implicit trust in the calls, and the game is more about the athleticism on display than ever before.
I'm a huge fan of the automatic balls and strikes challenge system baseball is going to adopt.
Awful calls need to be struck from the game and this should do that. Tonight my Blue Jays had a double taken away on a foul call and a ball 2 inches off the plate called a strike in the same at bat with the bases loaded. Between this and the horrible reviews last week it feels like the fix is by MLB to keep us from winning the division.
Unlike tennis where in and out have always been strictly defined and we just didn't have the technology to enforce it, baseball has always involved the human element to the strike zone and some umpire judgement on whether the pitcher hit the spot or just got lucky and what a given batter's zone is. I want some of that to stay, with catchers holding game-long discussions about the zone with umpires, and batters having their own sense of the zone.
I don't want full automatic balls and strikes, so I like the challenge. There is some new strategy on when to deploy it and who can be trusted to recognize a missed call. It leaves some room for a pitcher and catcher to work a corner over a few innings to expand little by little.
I think as long as they use the limited challenge system, framing skills can still co-exist and matter.
I only hope they don't switch to a system entirely governed by an automated strike zone without umps.
It'll allow the "human element" many players still prefer along with some level of framing, while keeping umps honest (there are way too many egregious calls these days).
heartbroken that the practical upshot of this isn't using the existing automated system to actually call balls and strikes rather than our current system of letting umpires call balls and strikes and then using the existing automated system to shame them. I was hoping for fully-robotic umpires a la SNES cult game Super Baseball 2020. I was also hoping that they'd just switch to letting the existing system get every call right instantly and automatically rather than a challenge system that intentionally limits the number of calls that are made correctly while slowing down the pace of play and increasing costs.
I'm only a casual baseball viewer, but balls and strikes are so easy to see on TV and the umpires miss a lot of obvious calls. It makes a lot of sense to make this a game mechanic that is managed by the machine, rather than requiring humans to judge this. Humans are still judging baserunning and the more subjective aspects of the game.
I'll also note that MLB isn't doing the "replace umpires with software". Teams get 2 challenges to use, and those are adjudicated by robots. The initial call is made by humans and a human has to say "use my finite resource to engage the robots". (I would just make all calls by robot and have a challenge to have humans look at it, but whatever. Baby steps. We know where this is going.)
The NFL uses the same technology to measure first downs now. No more carrying the chains out to measure by hand. But the officials still spot the ball where they think they play ended, so the computer isn't doing anything important. It's just doing the tedious part.
Nobody is losing their job and no fun is being removed from the game.
Remarkably, the television wasn’t the technology that forced the MLB’s hand on this. You would think it would…football and tennis went for challenges a long time ago, and viewers can easily see when an ump misses a call. But baseball has managed to stay human on balls and strikes for a long time.
Then along comes sports betting and they basically have no choice but to use robots.
It’s sad to me how much sports betting changes sports. When I watch, I wonder if the referee has accepted a bribe every time a call is a little funky. Considering the millions of dollars riding on every play, some of them must have taken some money at some point.
> When I watch, I wonder if the referee has accepted a bribe every time a call is a little funky.
As someone that has been a soccer (makes me throw up a little to say that word), ahem, football referee, I can tell you that not all funky calls are because the ref is rigging the game. Sometimes, you just miss stuff. Sometimes, you just see it differently. Sometimes, you just fuck up. Yes, a few have definitely admitted to taking bribes. Granted, I never was an official on anything professional. Even still, you'd make a call and the fans of the team you call a foul against all go crazy. Two minutes later, you make a call going the other way, and the other fans go nuts. I always laughed when I'd hear comments about needing glasses and "how much they pay you". You can't make 100% happy, ever. Fan is short for fanatic, and it's very appropriate.
To that end, I'm surprised that MLB never introduced replays. Cricket has replays and even have microphones that they watch the waveforms to see if there was contact or not.
I'm totally with you – 99.99% of ref calls are a legitimate attempt to arbitrate the rules and almost every mistaken call is better explained by human error than malice.
My point is the existence of the question...It's possible that someone could wager $10,000 on some player striking out and give the ump $5k for making sure the slightly-outside ball is a called strike. And with all $150,000,000,000 sloshing around sports right now, we'd be foolish to think that _never_ happens.
I have no idea how many calls are intentionally blown for money, but I'm confident it's not zero.
They already did introduce replays:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant_replay_in_Major_League...
But replays weren’t allowed for balls and strikes, the subject of the new system.
I've always wanted to ask an actual ref (fans are a dime a dozen)... what would have been your takeaway from how Maradona's Hand of God was called?
For those unfamiliar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ccNkksrfls
I just watched the replay, and I'm convinced VAR would rule it offside. So the hand of god would be irrelevant. The AR on the far side of the pitch is just out of frame at the crucial moment, so he was clearly behind the play. That's a position you never want to find yourself as an AR. I always found the AR role much more demanding than the referee. Keeping that offside line is difficult at best and nearly impossible if you're 30+ something trying to keep up with fit professional athletes in peak fitness in their 20s. Now, after that call was blown, again due to the framing, it is hard to see where the ref was looking. You can see his last position easily 30 yards from goal while Maradona makes contact about 8 yards from goal. There are at least 15 players in between the ref and the play at that point. Also, a very telling thing is that there was no conversation between the AR and the ref. On contentious plays, you'd see the ref back peddle to the AR (never take your eyes of the pitch) and have a chat about who saw what. I don't know if the ref crew had radios back in 1986, but the fact that the ref did not think it was worthy of a chat with his AR who would have had a different angle to view it says a lot about the ref's thinking. If the AR had seen it and wanted to chat with the ref, he would have stood still with his flag raised. If he felt the goal was good, he would keep his flag down and make a little run up the touchline towards midfield. The linked YT footage is cropped (pushed in I assume to remove any network branding) so the AR is out of frame. In the very last replay with the camera from behind the goal line on the near side, you can barely make out the AR but it cuts before he signals. My guess is he turned and ran up the touchline. Again, it is obvious he is out of position behind the play, so his view was more than likely blocked.
At the end of the day, if you can't absolutely positively tell that something happened, you pretty much let it stand. Just because all of the defenders raised their arms does not make it offside. There's only one person that can tell you that, and he couldn't make the call so had to let it go. There's no way the ref was going to call offside. The one thing they do teach you is that if you're unsure, make a call and make everyone think you're sure. Just own it, and move on. Never had to do that for a goal, but there's plenty of times I don't know who was last to touch the ball before it went out so you turn to the AR to get a clue. It's always fun when they shrug. You just pick on what you think you saw and just confidently rule that way. It's a damn throw, just put the ball back in play. Corners vs goal kicks are more risky, so always safe to rule for the defense with a goal kick. Never want a team to score on a bad call from a ref. Of course, none of that is ever taught to a ref...in those terms.
However, I think if you use the enhance feature to zoom into the ref's back pocket, you can see the cash he was paid to let it happen /s
Very casual football/soccer fan checking in - offside seems like a challenging call to make, most of the time. I understand the rules and all of its subtleties. It seems like the AR bears a lot of responsibility for the call - marking the penultimate defender. And yeah - if the ref just glanced at the sideline -- lack of AR flag means no offside because I didn't see it and AR didn't see it ergo there's no one left to consult ergo it didn't happen.
But yeah the objection IIUC was not over offside despite what the announcer says. He realizes at the end that it's an apparent handball. "At what point was he offside ... or was it a use of the hand that England are complaining about?"
> ... back peddle to the AR (never take your eyes of the pitch)
Is this because of the risk of violence from the players?
> Is this because of the risk of violence from the players?
that's part of it, but just in general you can't be in control if you can't see it.
> But yeah the objection IIUC was not over offside despite what the announcer says. He realizes at the end that it's an apparent handball. "At what point was he offside ... or was it a use of the hand that England are complaining about?"
wow, i wrote a whole diatribe about offside, and that had nothing to do with your comment <face-palm>
In the modern game, VAR would wind the goal scoring play to the beginning of the play to see if there was anything missed. They would look for the first reason to stop the play. In that case, the offside would be seen first and the goal would be disallowed for that.
Back then, the offside was missed by the AR so play continued. Even the England players didn't complain about the offside. They were complaining about the hand ball. It should have been the more obvious thing for a ref to see.
If you see how the players are screaming about the hand ball, it is with the hand raised over the head which does look like what every defender does to imitate the AR raising the flag. However, you see the other hand comes up to slap the wrist indicating they want the foul for handling the ball. To be fair, from the commentator's perspective, the offside was clearly visible. It's only natural to think that's what everyone would be complaining about. It is possible that even the ref was looking at his AR waiting for the flag to go up and wasn't even looking at the play and missed the hand in his befuddlement at the no offside call
Any time someone is talking about the ref's influence on sports I get to plug one of my favorite books, Scorecasting by Moskowitz and Wertheim. The premise of the book is simple: using statistical analysis, can you prove or disprove various beliefs about sports? Several chapters are dedicated to various ways that officials influence the games that they're calling. The book does make a compelling case that they do, but in the least expected and to my mind genuinely most noble way: it seems that when officials do bend the rules, it's usually to avoid doing anything at all. In baseball, strike zones shrink on an 0-2 count because a called third strike feels like the official deciding the outcome but a swing and miss, or contact in-play, feels like the two teams playing the game and deciding the winner. In Association Foot-the-Ball, the tendency in big matches, in close matches and later on in matches isn't to call more penalties on any one team than the others, it's to penalize less overall. In matches that aren't that close or important the tendency is that the underdog will receive fewer penalties, or in blowouts the team in the lead tends to take more penalties than the team that's behind. What's really fun is that because human behavior is feedback loops that accept feedback loops as input even the appearance of bias can sometimes introduce bias. When they studied hockey they went with the assumption that, all other things being normalized for, each team should be equally likely to be the next to take a penalty. Some individual teams might be more likely than others to take a penalty, but across dozens of teams and dozens of seasons it should more or less shake out square. But it turns out that similar patterns apply: in close games, or during the playoffs fewer penalties overall but also the first strong evidence of something that hockey folk have always suspected: make-up calls. You're right, sometimes it's really close and sometimes the officials just get it wrong, and this book demonstrates statistically that after close or incorrect calls, or calls that seemed to have an inordinate effect on the game, the team that was put at a disadvantage is much more likely to be the next put at an advantage.
So yeah, officials do influence play and frankly I think it's a good and healthy thing for the sport overall when they do. In the case of balls and strikes I support automated calls because that's very simple (the ball is either in the box or not, and we can hem and haw about how we define the box during the off-season) and the infra to do it is already in-place. But in difficult, judgment-call situations (to take american football as an example, what's the actual, objectively-defined line between a corner getting handsy and defensive pass interference?) I not only think humans are necessary despite their biases but because of them. Obv bias in favor of any one team or style of play needs to be rooted out but the way that officials actually call games, even when it varies from the rules, seems to actually benefit the sport, the athletes and the fans in a lot of unexpected ways.
In weekend tournament situations where there are a lot of games to play, amateur not professional, having a game end in a draw requiring extra time or shots put a lot of pressure on keeping things on schedule. Referees are often reminded "we need winners". The obvious take away from that is to be generous with penalties. If there's something you might normally let slide, call it and avoid making the match last longer than necessary. There's no direct instruction on what to do, but as a ref that has a game ending in a draw, it might not be received well by the tournament organizers and/or the referee assigner. You might just not get another game.
For other situations of officials influencing the game, the big one is how often they use their whistle to stop play. If they are calling ticky tacky fouls, the game slows down to nothing but restarts and there's no real flow. In youth matches, parents love it when the ref protects their precious little angel. Players HATE it. A ref that players like are the ones that let the game play. If two players are both strong in their fight for the ball with some possible pulling/holding equally from both sides, let it go. Let the stronger player win. If one player obviously is using the dark arts to gain unfair advantage, sure stop the play.
As far as blow out games with the stronger team getting more penalties, it could be a much more simple explanation as the ball just spends more time in the area which raises the likelihood of a penalty occurring. A game with back and forth will see less penalties. A game where one team is putting constant pressure on the goal is much more likely for a defender to make a mistake. Just like the awarding of an own goal. They only happen because the attacking team was putting pressure where an own goal could even be possible.
>As far as blow out games with the stronger team getting more penalties, it could be a much more simple explanation as the ball just spends more time in the area which raises the likelihood of a penalty occurring
This may be specific to hockey but that's the game I care and know most about: as a rule if there's a blowout it's usually the defenders taking penalties. Whether it's a blowout because defenders are taking penalties, leading to a lot more time at a disadvantage or defenders are taking penalties because its a blowout, they're getting dominated and they can't defend without breaking the rules is difficult to tease out objectively but anecdotally it's the latter. Nobody's faster than you if you grab them by the jersey. No one is stronger than you if you trip them with your stick. You try doing it legally at first but if that doesn't work then you try getting away with doing it illegally. Whereas if you're just absolutely imposing your will on a team anyway why bother grabbing a stick that isn't lifting yours up anyway, or holding onto the jersey of someone who's already behind you? But the data reveal the opposite: the team in the lead tends to be more likely to take a penalty and the theory is that the refs just assume they can afford it and it won't affect the outcome or create an appearance of impropriety. But a tickytack holding call against a team that's already down by 3 feels like piling on at best and intentionally influencing the game at worst, and that's why officials tend to avoid it.
Taking a penalty in hockey is not the same in football. In football, it’s an actual scoring play. In hockey, it’s a time out for the player while the team reshapes to play short handed. Lots of penalty killing units go on to score.
They tried replays 50 years ago and the umpires refused to budge and so they banned them so fans couldn't know.
the above is from https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Luciano 's book but wikipedia doesn't mention it. Though it was 40 years since I read the book so maybe I don't remember right?
I think it makes the game human. also football with replays on ever play is too slow.
Gambling is evil. We’ve known that in this country for hundreds of years and that’s why it’s been illegal. Gambling on smartphones is the most evil type of gambling yet invented. The only reason it’s been legalized is that it’s very profitable and the forces of profit in the government are stronger than the forces of good.
At the very least, I would hope that we could curb their ability to Advertise the same way we do with a variety of other social harms. People, kids especially, do not need to intake 35 DraftKing ads while watching a game with their family.
I'd go a step further and say gambling on smartphones while pretending it's not gambling is more evil.
It was mentioned elsewhere in the thread but this article is relevant: https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/guardians-reliever-emmanu...
The ability to bet on short term individual events (such as a single pitch) means that even a single pitch, otherwise nearly inconsequential, can be abused.
I don't think the bribe risk is any different as its always been. Sports betting is nothing new in the U.S., people just used to either have to plan a vacation to vegas or find a bookie who would take their action. Wasn't hard to do. I knew a lot of people who had bookies and were betting every weekend. Legalization just meant they didn't have to maintain a relationship with a bookie, kind of like how dispensaries put a bunch of pot dealers out of work.
Computer usage is nothing new in the U.S., people just used to find a university or business to buy mainframe time from. Microcomputers just meant that they didn't have to maintain a relationship with a university.
If you have a point why not be direct with it?
We're so far from The Sandlot the game has lost all passion. (Go A's)
I almost knee-jerk downvoted you as a baseball fan when I read "has lost all passion" but then I immediately stopped when I read, "Go A's."
As a Cubs fan, I still read that and thought, "So say we all."
Wrigley is a great house.
The current state is such first-order thinking. When will we be able to bet on whether or not the umps have taken a bribe?
How do you decide who won the bet?
If the ump is caught you have a winner. Otherwise indeterminate.
With another ump.
I want to bet on the ump that umps that ump.
How did you come to that conclusion that this is a function of betting? As a baseball fan, this feels like a long overdue feature (at least in the world of video review challenge). I think it's simply going to make the game better. MLB is losing to the NFL/NBA, and they need to put out a better product.
They’ve had the technology for over 20 years. The only thing that’s changed in the last 5 is betting.
> They’ve had the technology for over 20 years. The only thing that’s changed in the last 5 is betting.
What has not changed since before both of those timelines is baseball umpires have a union[0].
Maybe, just maybe, their union fought the introduction of this to the bitter end.
0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_League_Baseball_Umpires_...
Manfred (Commissioner) started 10 years ago.
He oversaw the last collective bargaining agreement in 2021/22. It’s expiring this year. That’s one of the reasons why the rule change is going through now.
I won’t deny that sports betting could be a factor, but Manfred wants faster more engaging baseball. That’s been his stated goal for a long time as he worked through rule changes.
That makes absolutely no sense. If it’s a chip in the collective bargaining agreement, why would he give it away for free prior to negotiations beginning?
Why would the owners? “Good will” has never worked in MLB negotiations and I don’t see that changing.
You may be correct, but the rate of change in baseball is glacially slow compared to the other sports. One of baseball's intrinsic values is it's legacy, tradition, and history. Some may scoff at that, and I think there are good arguments against legacy/tradition as a reason to withhold change, but there are a lot of people out there that believe this. The MLB Commissioner's have largely been tasked with protecting that tradition and history.
I couldn't count the number of things that have changed in the last five years. However, related to Baseball here's a small list to start. https://www.baseball-almanac.com/rulechng.shtml
There's also Angel Hernández retiring.
I don't know how any baseball fan can be against this. I would bet that man has made at least one season-ending mistake on every team out there throughout his career, and he's completely unapologetic and arrogant about it. Everyone was relieved when he retired, but there's been plenty of others happy to play the king villain now.
Yeah - I like how no one ever talks about Tim Donaghy
It’s sort of been swept under the rug even though it was initially reported on
Professional NBA referee betting on games he was refereeing - what a joke
Is sports betting new?
Betting as a major sponsor and league endorsed? Yes, very new.
We've come a long way from the black sox and Pete Rose being banned for life over gambling
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sox_Scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Rose#Permanent_ineligibil...
It's only a matter of time before we're right back there.
We're already there. Emmanuel Clase is under investigation for fixing pitches and can't play right now.
I don't love sports betting in general, but I really hate betting on short term events like specific pitches or a strikeout. There is way too much incentive to fix.
Online/mobile sports betting is relatively new, was only legalized in the last decade. It’s grown massively in popularity
Legal sports betting via app which turned gambling into a casual activity for hundreds of millions of new players. These apps made a market that previously placed 4 billion in bets to 125 billion. This is very new.
Their rise and market is so large that only 5% of sports bets aren't placed through one of these apps.
Legalized, league-approved sport betting is new-ish (2018). And sports betting has grown 25x since then.
Not sure if I agree with OPs take though. It might just be that baseball is a traditional, conservative game and they are hesitant to change it. maybe that's why they're just using robo umps for challenges, and not for every pitch, which would be easy to do and would further the all-about-betting theory.
It is almost impossible to fully remove that voice in the back of your head that will question if you were cheated. Because the fact is at the end of the day sports are played by humans and humans make mistakes, humans are susceptible to bribes, humans are susceptible to threats and there are many other factors that could influence or force cheating by players or bad calls by the officials.
There are literally countless incidents of people cheating. So my suggestion is to hope it doesn't happen but also just avoid making bets if you are not comfortable with the fact that you may lose.
Nothing makes me feel more like a grumpy old man than the new strike zone box. My favorite part of watching a baseball game with friends was the heated arguments about what was or wasn't a strike.
I realize that it's an objectively ridiculous thing to have strong feelings about, but boy do I hate it :D
I started watching baseball 5 years ago when I had a roommate who loves the Red Sox. I don't have cable at home so I cant say Im a true fan or anything; but if its on and I happen to be in front of a TV, Im content watching a game.
At the time, every umpire had their own strike box, and I loved it! It added variance to the pitches and swings each game. Some batters would turn their head and confirm with the umpire where one edge of the box was when they called a strike (and others would silently curse without turning their head haha)
No, I'm with you. And maybe it's just because I'm an old man, but this is another place where joy and wonder (meaning arguing with friends lol) are replaced with data. It just sucks some of the fun out.
The quest for eternal optimization is exhausting.
We’ll see but I don’t think that’s going to be the case.
The primary use case is the glaring wrong calls. 1/2 a ball in/out of the zone called wrong. The batter/catcher/pitcher have to do the challenge, so, ideally, the “obvious” ones should be readily challenged.
But the close calls, the squeakers, the players have very little time to make the challenge and we saw lots of failures in Spring Training this year.
So, there’s still a lot of judgement and uncertainty to deal with. And don’t forget the the Umpires have been being evaluated based on the automated box for years. They review each game and the Umpires performance. It’s just not had actual game impact before.
I have no doubt that there will be some important, game impacting “bad calls” going forward. It just that there will be fewer of them. Also be interesting to see if the get extra challenges in the post season/WS games.
MLB lost the narrative of what it is and what people like about it. It's looking at other sports, seeing what they're doing, and starting to take itself too seriously.
Speak for yourself. The most fun part of baseball for me was having a correctly called game by the rules, and not being at the mercy of some septuagenarian with an ego.
As I recall, some baseball video games will let you set both teams to be controlled by the computer.
Guaranteed perfectly-called games every time.
Doesn't sound particularly fun to me, but to each their own.
Now, if only there was some way to distinguish between the performance of the players and the performance of the umpires. Oh! Oh! I know! Players don't have to be perfect, but umpires do! Yes, now we have really gotten at the spirit of competition: who is the best physically, vs "the umpire screwed up and blew the call, this is fun!"
Is this even a serious argument? Come on. I would almost think you were trolling, conflating the performance of the umpires vs the performance of the players, were this not HN.
I think it would 100% work for someone who truly finds the "most-fun part of baseball" "having a correctly called game by the rules".
Initially I was going to argue that that's a silly thing to prioritize in a game, but it's a matter of taste and I'm not going to tell you what to like or not. It's not like you said that you liked arguing with your friends or something.
In all seriousness though, sure, everyone wants a fair game, but there's limitations. For instance, I only watch minor league baseball, and it's not because they got the pitch clock and ABS first, it's because the teams aren't completely optimized like the majors, and the game isn't as refined - it's closer in spirit to the first game of baseball ever played.
Frankly, I'd rather watch a pick-up game without an umpire if it weren't weird (and I could get a beer and some hotdogs).
Long story short (too late), baseball's a lot of different things to a lot of different people. The stats, the camaraderie, the competition, or the culture around the game itself. If you prized a game going off like clockwork, I couldn't fault you, even if that doesn't factor into my love of the game at all.
I celebrated when Nic Lentz called a perfect game this season. Or when Pat Hoberg did it in the 2022 WS. It's a good feeling, and quite impressive.
https://x.com/UmpScorecards/status/1917951876349284772
I'd prefer they'd show the location of the ball without drawing the box (even if just the location at the front edge of the plate). I like seeing where the ball reached the plate, which is quite hard to see with the typical camera angle.
> My favorite part of watching a baseball game with friends was the heated arguments about what was or wasn't a strike.
I think players liked arguing with the umps, too.
In a very literal sense a non-trivial part of the entertainment value of sports has been taken from you. I don't think it's ridiculous at all, I think the people making the decisions to have computer accurate refs don't understand what makes sports fun to watch holistically.
I think it's very double-edged. I don't think anybody genuinely wants refs affecting outcomes with bad calls.
The problem is we have more and more technology (camera angles, first down markers, strike zones, HD and 4K resolution, etc) that make it easier to see errors after the fact.
Not using technology to get things right starts to feel like dereliction of duty by the leagues as evidence of errors pile up.
I accept the "human element" but I wouldn't say I like it. I do think umps having their own strike zones is one of the better instances of human element, though (so long as they're consistent).
Umps aren’t consistent tho and because of the way seniority works, the worst umps (the older ones) get the jobs in the playoffs and World Series.
If you want a human element this is just using it as a challenge system. So the players have to have a good eye to decide whether an ump was right or wrong and they can’t get help from anyone else to decide to challenge a call.
My point was mainly that leagues are leaning towards computer-accurate stuff because mistakes are increasingly easy to spot.
Arguing about calls when we were watching blurry slow-mo on CRTs isn't the same as when we're watching crystal clear 4K.
Even with a challenge system as you describe, you still have potential for an ump missing calls that are obvious to everyone watching on TV.
Being able to challenge is good, sure, as a bare minimum, but it's very arguable that players shouldn't have to.
I personally don't care for the challenge system because if the ABS is the ground truth, why aren't we using that for every single pitch? Why put the burden on the batter to say "tell me the correct call" when you could just have the correct call be radioed into the umpire's earpiece? It just means that the rules of the game aren't being applied every pitch, just when the batter asks. I do not find this to be a strategically interesting role for the batter to play. I want them to bat well, and hit the ball. Not have to sit there and have a call we know for certain is incorrect go through because their team happened to challenge the wrong calls earlier in the game. I just cannot imagine a situation where I think it is better for a call that we know is incorrect to stand. I know this is an ice cold take, but if the tech is there, just use it.
It’s the slippery slope and necessary path so umpires can maintain a role. I really wish it could be a fully automated system that just immediately displays whether a pitch is a strike or ball. The umpires could be reserved for other judgment calls. Maybe 20 years from now there won’t be an umpire behind the plate.
The system as implemented maintains both the umpire and the catchers role (in terms of framing pitches). I can appreciate the elegance of the solution to meet a middleground, but the "fairness gremlin" in me just wants calls to be consistent and correct.
There’s plenty of judgement calls that will always need to be made close to home plate so I don’t think the home plate ump is ever going away
They had this during spring training and it was fantastic. The challenge limit meant it was used rarely, but when it was used it added a fun dramatic element. Players getting to stick it to umpires when they got it wrong, and umpires getting to smirk at players when they got it right.
And at the end of it all, some missed calls get to be corrected.
Agreed - Plenty of hitters have experience with it as well, since it's been around the minors for even longer than this season.
I saw it in practice a few times this year during spring training games, and it was _fast_. Add to that the fact that only pitchers, catchers, and hitters can request one (no managers holding the game up while the replay room checks on it), and it really won't slow the game down at all.
The fun part will be seeing how teams learn to game the system. The batter can call it, but I think it would be hard to stifle any kind of communication from the dugout.
/something higher tech than banging a garbage can obviously.
It will be fun to see if teams prefer batters or catchers use the system. Or if they will coach either side to use it situationally. I think, so far, catchers have better challenge success rates?
It's been pretty wild to watch the MLB go through the exact same arguments that the Cricket world went through 15 years ago when DRS was first introduced.
The game will be fine.
There’s universal agreement that DRS has massively improved cricket, but the sport was already using technology for decision-making well before DRS. In fact, Hawk-Eye was first used in cricket before gaining popularity with tennis. I’d go as far as to say cricket has been the best adopter of technology in sports for a long time.
I had to look it up. But yet, the system seems to be framed as helping the official rather than some third party to overcome a dispute. It looks like the umpires can decide to get the review on their own?
In cricket, yeah, the umpires can ask for the review themselves.
Sometimes it isn't really clear, like, if the ball is caught very close to the boundary line, given the size of the field, it can be tricky for the umpire to tell if it was caught over the boundary, representing the difference between the current batsman being caught out (meaning either the next batsman has to come take his place - assuming there are any of the 11 left) or adding 6 runs to his team's tally.
Some of the most memorable cricket games have had such situations.
It also adds some suspense to games as everyone waits on umpires to review data to make their call.
It's a net positive but wide/no-ball DRS slows down the game a lot.
Safe to assume ejections will fall off dramatically. I remember Lou Pinella being thrown out of Wrigley Field because a runner was called out at 3rd base a few years before challenges. Pinella was wrong and in another world he would have simply challenged the call rather than kicking dirt at the ump. Wilson Contreras got thrown out a few weeks back for theatrics after a ball / strike call.
The last frontier of ejections will probably be discretion when players get plunked at the plate.
Yeah, and I'm an old man, so let me lament how this takes some more fun out of baseball. Those arguments were always a bit of kayfabe, but they were glorious! Who didn't love Earl Weaver kicking dirt on homeplate, or Billy Martin endangering his blood pressure, or Tommy Lasorda turning himself into a tomato? Bleah.
> Who didn't love [...]
:raises hand:
Granted, I didnt grow up a baseball fan and am only now getting into through my kids being in baseball, but coming from less "traditional" sports like basketball I really dont care for the whole spectacle side of baseball. Even in little league you get way more arguing with umpires from coaches and parents alike and its all so juvenile.
Right there with you. The faux drama (soccer/football "flops", F1 drivers complaining of 'dangerous' actions of everyone else), of some sports is as bad as the actual theatrics and temper-losings of others. Takes away from the playing, for me.
Overall this seems good to me, esp. since it’s limited to 2x a game, leaving space for framing and other human elements to the calling, like make up calls, which I generally think are good.
That said. Strike zone height is between 53.5% and 23% of a player’s height. WTFBBQ. That’s a major change, and I don’t understand how it’s going to go with an Ump’s calling the zone — right now a player’s stance can affect the zone height. How will umps assess 53.5% of a player’s height realtime?
Cricket has already been through this and it has only improved the game and made it more fair.
I wish mlb would bring all the cricket tech. The audio meter thing is wiiiiild. (Where they use high precision microphones to determine if the ball made contact with the bat).
Also there’s no excuse for not having full 360 3D representative video for each base. Having some sort of pressure sensor would be useful too.
Better safety features would be useful (like better face protection like the cricket steel grill).
And just more damn cameras for all the edges (like home run or foul lines).
Some numbers: A typical MLB game sees about 292 pitches thrown. Of the pitches called a ball or strike—so ignore any pitches fouled off or put in play—93% are called correctly by umpires. That's equivalent to umpires missing a call every 3.6 batter appearances.
So in terms of volume, this isn't much. In terms of potential effects, it becomes a question of how well players utilize their teams' two challenges (teams retain challenges if they correctly use them, but only the batter, the catcher, and the pitcher can request a challenge).
It all becomes an interesting question in terms of strategies. A catcher when he's batting? Does he want to risk one of his team's challenges as a batter that he might want for his pitcher? A mediocre hitter in a low-stakes situation? Does he want to risk one of his team's challenges? What about a really good hitter in a low-stakes situation? Lots here for teams to consider, and since it's up to the players to decide on a challenge (not managers or coaches), teams will have to determine their approaches such that players can make decisions without assistance.
This obscures the fact that umpires are worse than 93% when the pitch is close to the boundary of being a ball or a strike (shadow zone). Obvious balls and obvious strikes are obvious, but umpire accuracy when it is close is only 81%, and their accuracy was even worse 15 years ago.
https://blogs.fangraphs.com/strike-three-lets-check-in-on-um...
Right, but as that article notes, the numbers show it's an average of 4.5 pitches per team in the shadow zone in each game. And those pitches are not clear-cut instances where players will be confident in challenging, more like 50/50. So what remains is how teams decide to let their players use this finite challenge resource.
Cannot come fast enough. The proposed system eliminates some glaring issues.
Optimize everything so you can take the soul out of it.
Look at it from the other direction. If there was a contest between two athletes or teams and it was adjudicated without bias, would you think "You know what would give this more soul? A flawed judge with poorer vision, who may or may not have been pressured or baited before the game to influence their decisions!"
Review systems for cricket and tennis seem to have enabled more crowd involvement and anticipation in the lead up to a decision being revealed.
You could turn it into a meta game. Teams of umpires :P
Tape to Tape has a team of refs as an opponent if hockey is your thing!
If the viewers didn't know it was a blown call, there wouldn't be a problem. That's how baseball worked for 100 years.
But now when the viewers can see the pitch in 1000fps 8K slow motion, they expect better from the umpires. The entire premise of sports relies on the assumption that the rules are adjudicated correctly.
The entire premise of sports relies on the assumption that the rules are adjudicated fairly.
Part of the soul of the game is learning the umpire's particular strike zone and adjusting accordingly.
I'm with OP. Fun is being replaced by data.
I agree entirely. Baseball is about the accumulation of (very) small advantages. No umpire is being unfair (whatever particular fans may think about certain umpires - though, yes, some are better than others), but each umpire is unique, and learning and adapting to individual umpires' idiosyncrasies is a dimension across which the best players can distinguish themselves. Removing that flattens the game.
I don't hate the challenge system as much as I would an entirely-automated strike zone - and I'll probably appreciate the occasional corrected call, and the game-within-a-game of when to spend your challenges - but it's all of a piece with the general flattening of baseball. The DH, and now the universal DH. Interleague play. Balanced schedules. Three true outcomes hitters. Outlawing certain defensive positioning. Maniacal pursuit of spin-rate. Manfred runners. All of these eliminate elements of the game that made it more interesting - at least from this Old Man's perspective.
(As counter-examples: I like the pitch clock, and I'm OK with enlarging the bases; those increase the premium that accrues to specific skills, and heighten the stakes of particular situations. Those are the directions in which positive changes should point.)
"The tie goes to the runner" died with instant replay, and I think that is sad. If you need multiple super slow-motion angles to determine if they were out or safe, it should be a tie, in my opinion.
I also just say watch every angle at full speed for those types of replay, no slow-mo. Keeps the magic, but let's you correct egregious calls.
Bad calls are not “soul”. There’s plenty of flair and tradition and flavor in baseball.
if a baseball is the width of two or three baseballs away from the "zone" (dynamic based on player usually), then providing a way to challenge the call (it was called a strike when it is clearly a ball) is completely fair and retains the soul of the game. Baseball is really a game of fairness. There's no "buzzer beaters" or timed sessions. Everyone has their chance per inning to impact the game. In a game of relative fairness, adding more strict honesty when it comes to something like this will only improve the game.
That year they finally did it.
They finally replaced you, sir, the ump with a robot.
How long until we have an AI president with an economics degree?
As a baseball fan, I for one welcome this change. I have seen how the system dramatically improved tennis matches. Players have built an implicit trust in the calls, and the game is more about the athleticism on display than ever before.
I'm a huge fan of the automatic balls and strikes challenge system baseball is going to adopt.
Awful calls need to be struck from the game and this should do that. Tonight my Blue Jays had a double taken away on a foul call and a ball 2 inches off the plate called a strike in the same at bat with the bases loaded. Between this and the horrible reviews last week it feels like the fix is by MLB to keep us from winning the division.
Unlike tennis where in and out have always been strictly defined and we just didn't have the technology to enforce it, baseball has always involved the human element to the strike zone and some umpire judgement on whether the pitcher hit the spot or just got lucky and what a given batter's zone is. I want some of that to stay, with catchers holding game-long discussions about the zone with umpires, and batters having their own sense of the zone.
I don't want full automatic balls and strikes, so I like the challenge. There is some new strategy on when to deploy it and who can be trusted to recognize a missed call. It leaves some room for a pitcher and catcher to work a corner over a few innings to expand little by little.
I'm against ABS in general, but this is a good take - and why I'll be OK, though not enthusiastic, about this challenge system.
I think as long as they use the limited challenge system, framing skills can still co-exist and matter.
I only hope they don't switch to a system entirely governed by an automated strike zone without umps.
It'll allow the "human element" many players still prefer along with some level of framing, while keeping umps honest (there are way too many egregious calls these days).
heartbroken that the practical upshot of this isn't using the existing automated system to actually call balls and strikes rather than our current system of letting umpires call balls and strikes and then using the existing automated system to shame them. I was hoping for fully-robotic umpires a la SNES cult game Super Baseball 2020. I was also hoping that they'd just switch to letting the existing system get every call right instantly and automatically rather than a challenge system that intentionally limits the number of calls that are made correctly while slowing down the pace of play and increasing costs.
[dead]
Bit deceptive. Not robots, just a glorified camera tracking system.
'robot' meaning 'automated/non-human', a common English idiom especially in non-technical contexts
Guess we don’t care about AI taking jobs as long as it’s not developer jobs
If this is a joke, sorry, I'm just tired of it.
If it's not a joke, please realize this doesn't replace anyone and is also not doing anything that's meaningfully "AI".
I'm only a casual baseball viewer, but balls and strikes are so easy to see on TV and the umpires miss a lot of obvious calls. It makes a lot of sense to make this a game mechanic that is managed by the machine, rather than requiring humans to judge this. Humans are still judging baserunning and the more subjective aspects of the game.
I'll also note that MLB isn't doing the "replace umpires with software". Teams get 2 challenges to use, and those are adjudicated by robots. The initial call is made by humans and a human has to say "use my finite resource to engage the robots". (I would just make all calls by robot and have a challenge to have humans look at it, but whatever. Baby steps. We know where this is going.)
The NFL uses the same technology to measure first downs now. No more carrying the chains out to measure by hand. But the officials still spot the ball where they think they play ended, so the computer isn't doing anything important. It's just doing the tedious part.
Nobody is losing their job and no fun is being removed from the game.