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BU study with MORE evidence for an automated K zone
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Post by Guidas on Apr 9, 2019 10:41:37 GMT -5
From BU: www.bu.edu/today/2019/mlb-umpires-strike-zone-accuracy/I posted another fairly comprehensive study a while back with a massive data set that showed that umps were most often wrong on close pitches in counts which completely changed the at bat. The gentleman’s strike on 3-0 is my own pet peeve, along with a K zone that changes with LH and RH batters, and inning by inning. That Atlantic League experiment cannot happen soon enough.
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Post by incandenza on Apr 9, 2019 10:49:01 GMT -5
I just happened to come across this argument by Joe Posnanski against instant replay, and it's the best argument against it I've seen. I think I agree with his idea that instant replay should be allowed but only at full-speed - no slo-mo. Anyway, it got me to thinking about some of the unintended consequences that might result from automatic and literal interpretation of the strike zone. One that comes to mind is that pitchers would get calls on the corners to go their way much more often. How would that affect the game? Would it advantage pitchers with great control who can reliably hit the corners? Would it be such a boon to pitchers that it leads to a significant decline in offense, and makes the spike in K rates even more extreme?
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Post by James Dunne on Apr 9, 2019 10:56:08 GMT -5
I would guess that the zone would become narrower, and that low breaking balls would be strikes a lot more often. In general, movement would become a priority as making pitches that pass through (but don't stay in) the strike zone are the most unhittable but now will be called strikes.
I mean, that was always the key in wiffle ball right? Get the spin right so it clips the lawn chair for a strike?
Also, pitch framing will be a thing of the past, which I'm here for. Base stealing becomes harder, as catchers can position themselves better to throw without worrying about costing their pitcher a strike. Backup catchers will probably be mashers rather than "receivers" because holding the ball in place to steal a call is no longer a thing.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Apr 9, 2019 11:05:24 GMT -5
Let me separate two things here:
1. We should use technology to make more accurate ball and strike calls, or to assist umpires in making more accurate ball and strike calls
2. We should call the "rulebook strike zone".
The rulebook strike zone is about as real as the Easter Bunny. The actual strike zone as understood by players and umpires has NEVER particularly resembled the rulebook definition of the strike zone; nor is it even particularly well defined. I'm all for making the calls more accurate and consistent, but the idea that we actually know what the strike zone should be is not based on anything. The strike zone as actually called is more round than square, it changes size based on the count, all these weird things, and that's what it's been for well over a hundred years. Does a truly square strike zone make the game better? Does a non-sympathetic strike zone make the game better? How would ABs look with a rulebook zone? Would it massively favor pitchers or hitters? We really have no idea.
So yeah, let's start doing the trials. I want the answers to these questions. But the notion that we're just going to use the rulebook zone and that's going to be fine is completely unfounded.
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Post by jimed14 on Apr 9, 2019 11:11:01 GMT -5
Let me separate two things here: 1. We should use technology to make more accurate ball and strike calls, or to assist umpires in making more accurate ball and strike calls 2. We should call the "rulebook strike zone". The rulebook strike zone is about as real as the Easter Bunny. The actual strike zone as understood by players and umpires has NEVER particularly resembled the rulebook definition of the strike zone; nor is it even particularly well defined. I'm all for making the calls more accurate and consistent, but the idea that we actually know what the strike zone should be is not based on anything. The strike zone as actually called is more round than square, it changes size based on the count, all these weird things, and that's what it's been for well over a hundred years. Does a truly square strike zone make the game better? Does a non-sympathetic strike zone make the game better? How would ABs look with a rulebook zone? Would it massively favor pitchers or hitters? We really have no idea. So yeah, let's start doing the trials. I want the answers to these questions. But the notion that we're just going to use the rulebook zone and that's going to be fine is completely unfounded. I think the hope is that with an automated strike zone will prevent bias, which is the biggest perceived problem because everyone remembers the calls that screw your team but forget all the ones that didn't. But the conspiracy theorist in me thinks they'll still build bias into the automated strike zone because everyone knows that if a Yankee didn't swing at a pitch then it's not a strike.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Apr 9, 2019 11:21:00 GMT -5
But the conspiracy theorist in me thinks they'll still build bias into the automated strike zone because everyone knows that if a Yankee didn't swing at a pitch then it's not a strike. Reminder that conspiracy theories are uniformly ridiculous.
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Post by jimed14 on Apr 9, 2019 11:22:17 GMT -5
But the conspiracy theorist in me thinks they'll still build bias into the automated strike zone because everyone knows that if a Yankee didn't swing at a pitch then it's not a strike. Reminder that conspiracy theories are uniformly ridiculous. Which is why it's so effective to label everything one.
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Post by jerrygarciaparra on Apr 9, 2019 11:38:01 GMT -5
I don't really know if I am for automated zone. I feel like hitters would become to familiarized with it over time, like the basketball 3 pointer. I understand that baseball is more random, but it is a concern to me. Some variance in the zone should occur
I think the best way to improve performance would be to penalize / incentivize correctness with umpires. It will meet resistance, but that would be expected
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Apr 9, 2019 11:48:54 GMT -5
The league in 2018 hit .170/.227/.278 after getting to a 1-2 count. That’s with the “sympathetic” zone that favors whichever party is behind in the count. Per the rule book, hitters should be at an even greater disadvantage after 1-2. Does that make for a more interesting, more exciting, better game of baseball?
Again, there’s an assumption that it’s wrong for the strike zone to ever change based on (for instance) the count. But how do we know that? It’s possible that the sympathetic zone is the only thing that ever made this dumb game watchable in the first place. We don’t know!
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Post by Guidas on Apr 9, 2019 13:16:34 GMT -5
I think it would make games faster. Also think they should pair with enforcing making batter stay in the box to go with it.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Apr 9, 2019 13:54:45 GMT -5
Here's another question: you have this automated strike zone. It's a perfect rectangle. How much of the ball has to pass through it to be a strike? If one seam of the ball just nicks the corner of the zone, is that a strike? Does the ball have to be more than 50% in the zone to count? Or is it probabilistic, where if half the the ball is in the zone, there's a 50% chance it goes for a strike?
Again, I'm all for an improved, more consistent strike zone. I just think the question of what that actually entails is waaaaaaay more complicated than anyone is giving it credit for.
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Post by sittingstill on Apr 9, 2019 14:20:50 GMT -5
Here's another question: you have this automated strike zone. It's a perfect rectangle. How much of the ball has to pass through it to be a strike? If one seam of the ball just nicks the corner of the zone, is that a strike? Does the ball have to be more than 50% in the zone to count? Or is it probabilistic, where if half the the ball is in the zone, there's a 50% chance it goes for a strike? The existing rule already calls for a strike if "any part of the ball passes through any part of the strike zone" so I'm not sure why that would change. Also, the strike zone is a pentagonal volume, even if it's not always accurately called that way.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Apr 9, 2019 14:51:24 GMT -5
Here's another question: you have this automated strike zone. It's a perfect rectangle. How much of the ball has to pass through it to be a strike? If one seam of the ball just nicks the corner of the zone, is that a strike? Does the ball have to be more than 50% in the zone to count? Or is it probabilistic, where if half the the ball is in the zone, there's a 50% chance it goes for a strike? The existing rule already calls for a strike if "any part of the ball passes through any part of the strike zone" so I'm not sure why that would change.Also, the strike zone is a pentagonal volume, even if it's not always accurately called that way. Because right now you're not getting a strike call when one seam nicks the corner on a 0-2 count.
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dd
Veteran
Posts: 979
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Post by dd on Apr 9, 2019 15:44:17 GMT -5
I just happened to come across this argument by Joe Posnanski against instant replay, and it's the best argument against it I've seen. I think I agree with his idea that instant replay should be allowed but only at full-speed - no slo-mo. Anyway, it got me to thinking about some of the unintended consequences that might result from automatic and literal interpretation of the strike zone. One that comes to mind is that pitchers would get calls on the corners to go their way much more often. How would that affect the game? Would it advantage pitchers with great control who can reliably hit the corners? Would it be such a boon to pitchers that it leads to a significant decline in offense, and makes the spike in K rates even more extreme? Can't agree. Ponanski's reasoning seems to be that if he thinks the runner earned the base but by rules (upon further review) he was out, then he should get the base. I think if Posnanski doesn't like the rules he should propose a change rather than propose not checking with the best technology. 2¢
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Post by incandenza on Apr 9, 2019 22:00:49 GMT -5
Let me separate two things here: 1. We should use technology to make more accurate ball and strike calls, or to assist umpires in making more accurate ball and strike calls 2. We should call the "rulebook strike zone". The rulebook strike zone is about as real as the Easter Bunny. The actual strike zone as understood by players and umpires has NEVER particularly resembled the rulebook definition of the strike zone; nor is it even particularly well defined. I'm all for making the calls more accurate and consistent, but the idea that we actually know what the strike zone should be is not based on anything. The strike zone as actually called is more round than square, it changes size based on the count, all these weird things, and that's what it's been for well over a hundred years. Does a truly square strike zone make the game better? Does a non-sympathetic strike zone make the game better? How would ABs look with a rulebook zone? Would it massively favor pitchers or hitters? We really have no idea. So yeah, let's start doing the trials. I want the answers to these questions. But the notion that we're just going to use the rulebook zone and that's going to be fine is completely unfounded. You know, this is a perfect example of what James C. Scott describes in Seeing Like a State. Scott describes two kinds of knowledge, which he calls metis and episteme. Metis comes from the kind of traditional practice that develops organically over time; episteme is a kind of abstract, top-down rationalism (and is the way that states "see," to frame it in terms of the title of the book). His whole argument is that when we replace metis with episteme, we tend to screw things up. Here's one example: a village divides up the surrounding land in a very irregular way, so that some people have larger plots of land than others, some people have contiguous parcels while others' are broken up, and so on. Then some government official looks at this division of land and says, "Well that don't make no sense," orders the villagers to divide up the land in a "rational" way, in which every family has an equal parcel of land defined by a rectilinear grid. What happens? Everything goes to crap. Because it turns out that the villagers' system made sense, even if they couldn't quite explain why. Maybe it's because some portions of land are actually swamp, so a family that has the largest parcel of land only looks like they get the best deal, because most of their parcel is useless for growing crops. Maybe it's because every family needs some land for grazing and some for planting, but the best grazing land is far from the best planting land, so it makes sense for them to have plots separated far from each other. Who knows? The point is that when the authorities came in and "rationalized" the system of land allocation, they actually screwed everything up. Here's another example: modernist urban design. Older cities tend to be a jumble, with irregular street patterns, and homes and businesses all mixed together. (A certain large city in eastern Massachusetts comes to mind.) In the 20th century some modernists (like Le Corbusier and Robert Moses) showed up and said "Hey you guys. You guys. This is so irrational." And so they proceeded to tear down a lot of these old irrational neighborhoods and replace them with the sort of "towers-in-a-park" developments that you have probably seen somewhere or another. (Think New York City housing projects, for example.) This was a much more orderly system, which put everything in a nice grid, and separated homes from businesses so that everything had its proper place in the order of things... and of course it was terrible. These modernist developments were so dreadful that a lot of them have already been destroyed, despite being only a few decades old. Turns out the old "messy" neighborhoods functioned very well for the people who lived there, and provided a real sense of place, even if it looked irrational from the outside. Once again, imposing an abstract rational order on a complex organic system totally screwed everything up. And so now, the strike zone. Sure, sure, we all know what the rulebook says. But as FTHW points out, this is not what the actual strike zone is. The actual strike zone is something that has organically developed over time, and works with the game as it's played. It's not perfect. Umps miss calls sometimes. But it basically works. To treat what the rulebook says as real, and to empower computers to enforce it, is to overturn an organic practice with an abstract rationalism. As with the examples above, things often go poorly when you do this. Okay, I think I'm convinced. Robot umps are bad. At least if they're just going to call the rulebook strike zone.
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Post by Guidas on Apr 10, 2019 9:03:59 GMT -5
Let me separate two things here: 1. We should use technology to make more accurate ball and strike calls, or to assist umpires in making more accurate ball and strike calls 2. We should call the "rulebook strike zone". The rulebook strike zone is about as real as the Easter Bunny. The actual strike zone as understood by players and umpires has NEVER particularly resembled the rulebook definition of the strike zone; nor is it even particularly well defined. I'm all for making the calls more accurate and consistent, but the idea that we actually know what the strike zone should be is not based on anything. The strike zone as actually called is more round than square, it changes size based on the count, all these weird things, and that's what it's been for well over a hundred years. Does a truly square strike zone make the game better? Does a non-sympathetic strike zone make the game better? How would ABs look with a rulebook zone? Would it massively favor pitchers or hitters? We really have no idea. So yeah, let's start doing the trials. I want the answers to these questions. But the notion that we're just going to use the rulebook zone and that's going to be fine is completely unfounded. You know, this is a perfect example of what James C. Scott describes in Seeing Like a State. Scott describes two kinds of knowledge, which he calls metis and episteme. Metis comes from the kind of traditional practice that develops organically over time; episteme is a kind of abstract, top-down rationalism (and is the way that states "see," to frame it in terms of the title of the book). His whole argument is that when we replace metis with episteme, we tend to screw things up. Here's one example: a village divides up the surrounding land in a very irregular way, so that some people have larger plots of land than others, some people have contiguous parcels while others' are broken up, and so on. Then some government official looks at this division of land and says, "Well that don't make no sense," orders the villagers to divide up the land in a "rational" way, in which every family has an equal parcel of land defined by a rectilinear grid. What happens? Everything goes to crap. Because it turns out that the villagers' system made sense, even if they couldn't quite explain why. Maybe it's because some portions of land are actually swamp, so a family that has the largest parcel of land only looks like they get the best deal, because most of their parcel is useless for growing crops. Maybe it's because every family needs some land for grazing and some for planting, but the best grazing land is far from the best planting land, so it makes sense for them to have plots separated far from each other. Who knows? The point is that when the authorities came in and "rationalized" the system of land allocation, they actually screwed everything up. Here's another example: modernist urban design. Older cities tend to be a jumble, with irregular street patterns, and homes and businesses all mixed together. (A certain large city in eastern Massachusetts comes to mind.) In the 20th century some modernists (like Le Corbusier and Robert Moses) showed up and said "Hey you guys. You guys. This is so irrational." And so they proceeded to tear down a lot of these old irrational neighborhoods and replace them with the sort of "towers-in-a-park" developments that you have probably seen somewhere or another. (Think New York City housing projects, for example.) This was a much more orderly system, which put everything in a nice grid, and separated homes from businesses so that everything had its proper place in the order of things... and of course it was terrible. These modernist developments were so dreadful that a lot of them have already been destroyed, despite being only a few decades old. Turns out the old "messy" neighborhoods functioned very well for the people who lived there, and provided a real sense of place, even if it looked irrational from the outside. Once again, imposing an abstract rational order on a complex organic system totally screwed everything up. And so now, the strike zone. Sure, sure, we all know what the rulebook says. But as FTHW points out, this is not what the actual strike zone is. The actual strike zone is something that has organically developed over time, and works with the game as it's played. It's not perfect. Umps miss calls sometimes. But it basically works.To treat what the rulebook says as real, and to empower computers to enforce it, is to overturn an organic practice with an abstract rationalism. As with the examples above, things often go poorly when you do this. Okay, I think I'm convinced. Robot umps are bad. At least if they're just going to call the rulebook strike zone. This is a long way of saying you think the strike zone “works” when in fact there is a large body of data they clearly suggests it doesn’t. It’s like the argument against instant replay saying “we don’t need it, the human factor ‘works’,yet since it’s been instituted, instant replay has show that umps are wrong 51% of the time with safe and out and fair and foul calls, which are theoretically easier than balls and strike. If you look to tennis, which has instituted a robotic sensor for in or out balls, the accuracy has greatly improved as well, as has the pace of play. This comes down to whether one wishes to use thetech at hand to improve the game at this level or not. You apparently prefer not, which is fine, but there are many here who disagree with you. We can talk about this “statist” theory some other time (which sounds rather subjective , and treats multivariate problems a single variate to ‘prove’ its solution - then again, I didn’t read the book.)
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Post by James Dunne on Apr 10, 2019 9:12:04 GMT -5
yet since it’s been instituted, instant replay has show that umps are wrong 51% of the time with safe and out and fair and foul calls When your sample is "plays that the team who the call went against chose to review," that actually seems pretty good. One of the best arguments for robot umps is that we don't seem to have a lot of ideas for how to get **better** human umps. Take pitch framing. Pitch framing, recent research has showed, is a huge part of the game. Framing skills have added something like 20 wins to Russell Martin's career bWAR. 20 GAMES worth of "holding his glove in the right place so umpires will call a strike" seems like a MAJOR error that nobody talks about as one. If we have the skills to train catchers how to steal strikes and evaluate what strikes they've stolen, shouldn't we be able to do the same for umpires? If pitch framing is having THAT kind of outcome isn't it necessary that MLB does that sort of evaluation and training?
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Apr 10, 2019 11:01:21 GMT -5
This is a long way of saying you think the strike zone “works” when in fact there is a large body of data they clearly suggests it doesn’t. It’s like the argument against instant replay saying “we don’t need it, the human factor ‘works’,yet since it’s been instituted, instant replay has show that umps are wrong 51% of the time with safe and out and fair and foul calls, which are theoretically easier than balls and strike. If you look to tennis, which has instituted a robotic sensor for in or out balls, the accuracy has greatly improved as well, as has the pace of play. This comes down to whether one wishes to use thetech at hand to improve the game at this level or not. You apparently prefer not, which is fine, but there are many here who disagree with you. We can talk about this “statist” theory some other time (which sounds rather subjective , and treats multivariate problems a single variate to ‘prove’ its solution - then again, I didn’t read the book.) You're treating this issue like a binary, when it's anything but. I've said multiple times in this thread that I am in favor of using technology to improve the strike zone. I just think that doing that is a lot more complicated, and comes with a lot more unanswered questions, than the "robo umps now!" crowd wants to admit. Here's another example: modernist urban design. Older cities tend to be a jumble, with irregular street patterns, and homes and businesses all mixed together. (A certain large city in eastern Massachusetts comes to mind.) In the 20th century some modernists (like Le Corbusier and Robert Moses) showed up and said "Hey you guys. You guys. This is so irrational." And so they proceeded to tear down a lot of these old irrational neighborhoods and replace them with the sort of "towers-in-a-park" developments that you have probably seen somewhere or another. (Think New York City housing projects, for example.) This was a much more orderly system, which put everything in a nice grid, and separated homes from businesses so that everything had its proper place in the order of things... and of course it was terrible. These modernist developments were so dreadful that a lot of them have already been destroyed, despite being only a few decades old. Turns out the old "messy" neighborhoods functioned very well for the people who lived there, and provided a real sense of place, even if it looked irrational from the outside. Once again, imposing an abstract rational order on a complex organic system totally screwed everything up. My urban planning knowledge is pretty sketchy, but my basic impression here is that putting things in orderly grids is good, but eliminating mixed zoning has been a complete disaster. So I have a hard time getting dogmatic about "top down technocratic decisions are best" versus "respecting traditions and the natural evolution is best". Not to get all squish "both sides" but I think you have to consider and respect both methods. So to get back to my stance on the strike zone, YES, we should have a better, more consistent strike zone, BUT "just call the rulebook strike zone" is a completely inadequate answer for what a better strike zone should look like. You have to understand and respect the actual strike zone that's sustained this game for a century, and move forward from that point.
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Post by incandenza on Apr 10, 2019 11:06:19 GMT -5
You know, this is a perfect example of what James C. Scott describes in Seeing Like a State. Scott describes two kinds of knowledge, which he calls metis and episteme. Metis comes from the kind of traditional practice that develops organically over time; episteme is a kind of abstract, top-down rationalism (and is the way that states "see," to frame it in terms of the title of the book). His whole argument is that when we replace metis with episteme, we tend to screw things up. Here's one example: a village divides up the surrounding land in a very irregular way, so that some people have larger plots of land than others, some people have contiguous parcels while others' are broken up, and so on. Then some government official looks at this division of land and says, "Well that don't make no sense," orders the villagers to divide up the land in a "rational" way, in which every family has an equal parcel of land defined by a rectilinear grid. What happens? Everything goes to crap. Because it turns out that the villagers' system made sense, even if they couldn't quite explain why. Maybe it's because some portions of land are actually swamp, so a family that has the largest parcel of land only looks like they get the best deal, because most of their parcel is useless for growing crops. Maybe it's because every family needs some land for grazing and some for planting, but the best grazing land is far from the best planting land, so it makes sense for them to have plots separated far from each other. Who knows? The point is that when the authorities came in and "rationalized" the system of land allocation, they actually screwed everything up. Here's another example: modernist urban design. Older cities tend to be a jumble, with irregular street patterns, and homes and businesses all mixed together. (A certain large city in eastern Massachusetts comes to mind.) In the 20th century some modernists (like Le Corbusier and Robert Moses) showed up and said "Hey you guys. You guys. This is so irrational." And so they proceeded to tear down a lot of these old irrational neighborhoods and replace them with the sort of "towers-in-a-park" developments that you have probably seen somewhere or another. (Think New York City housing projects, for example.) This was a much more orderly system, which put everything in a nice grid, and separated homes from businesses so that everything had its proper place in the order of things... and of course it was terrible. These modernist developments were so dreadful that a lot of them have already been destroyed, despite being only a few decades old. Turns out the old "messy" neighborhoods functioned very well for the people who lived there, and provided a real sense of place, even if it looked irrational from the outside. Once again, imposing an abstract rational order on a complex organic system totally screwed everything up. And so now, the strike zone. Sure, sure, we all know what the rulebook says. But as FTHW points out, this is not what the actual strike zone is. The actual strike zone is something that has organically developed over time, and works with the game as it's played. It's not perfect. Umps miss calls sometimes. But it basically works.To treat what the rulebook says as real, and to empower computers to enforce it, is to overturn an organic practice with an abstract rationalism. As with the examples above, things often go poorly when you do this. Okay, I think I'm convinced. Robot umps are bad. At least if they're just going to call the rulebook strike zone. This is a long way of saying you think the strike zone “works” when in fact there is a large body of data they clearly suggests it doesn’t. It’s like the argument against instant replay saying “we don’t need it, the human factor ‘works’,yet since it’s been instituted, instant replay has show that umps are wrong 51% of the time with safe and out and fair and foul calls, which are theoretically easier than balls and strike. If you look to tennis, which has instituted a robotic sensor for in or out balls, the accuracy has greatly improved as well, as has the pace of play. This comes down to whether one wishes to use thetech at hand to improve the game at this level or not. You apparently prefer not, which is fine, but there are many here who disagree with you. We can talk about this “statist” theory some other time (which sounds rather subjective , and treats multivariate problems a single variate to ‘prove’ its solution - then again, I didn’t read the book.) The evidence that it does work is that baseball is fun to watch. The fact that it doesn't work perfectly is self-evident, but the point I'm trying to make here (or add to the point FTHW was making) is that to program the robot umps to call the rulebook strike zone would be to change the strike zone, and in some pretty dramatic ways. That's disanalogous from tennis, or even from out/safe calls, where the only question is whether the umpire accurately perceived what happened. The point is not that nothing can be done about the human error of umpires; it's that the onus is on the pro-robot people to recognize this and acknowledge that there may be some considerable unintended consequences of what they want to do.
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Post by incandenza on Apr 10, 2019 11:18:01 GMT -5
This is a long way of saying you think the strike zone “works” when in fact there is a large body of data they clearly suggests it doesn’t. It’s like the argument against instant replay saying “we don’t need it, the human factor ‘works’,yet since it’s been instituted, instant replay has show that umps are wrong 51% of the time with safe and out and fair and foul calls, which are theoretically easier than balls and strike. If you look to tennis, which has instituted a robotic sensor for in or out balls, the accuracy has greatly improved as well, as has the pace of play. This comes down to whether one wishes to use thetech at hand to improve the game at this level or not. You apparently prefer not, which is fine, but there are many here who disagree with you. We can talk about this “statist” theory some other time (which sounds rather subjective , and treats multivariate problems a single variate to ‘prove’ its solution - then again, I didn’t read the book.) You're treating this issue like a binary, when it's anything but. I've said multiple times in this thread that I am in favor of using technology to improve the strike zone. I just think that doing that is a lot more complicated, and comes with a lot more unanswered questions, than the "robo umps now!" crowd wants to admit. Here's another example: modernist urban design. Older cities tend to be a jumble, with irregular street patterns, and homes and businesses all mixed together. (A certain large city in eastern Massachusetts comes to mind.) In the 20th century some modernists (like Le Corbusier and Robert Moses) showed up and said "Hey you guys. You guys. This is so irrational." And so they proceeded to tear down a lot of these old irrational neighborhoods and replace them with the sort of "towers-in-a-park" developments that you have probably seen somewhere or another. (Think New York City housing projects, for example.) This was a much more orderly system, which put everything in a nice grid, and separated homes from businesses so that everything had its proper place in the order of things... and of course it was terrible. These modernist developments were so dreadful that a lot of them have already been destroyed, despite being only a few decades old. Turns out the old "messy" neighborhoods functioned very well for the people who lived there, and provided a real sense of place, even if it looked irrational from the outside. Once again, imposing an abstract rational order on a complex organic system totally screwed everything up. My urban planning knowledge is pretty sketchy, but my basic impression here is that putting things in orderly grids is good, but eliminating mixed zoning has been a complete disaster. So I have a hard time getting dogmatic about "top down technocratic decisions are best" versus "respecting traditions and the natural evolution is best". Not to get all squish "both sides" but I think you have to consider and respect both methods. So to get back to my stance on the strike zone, YES, we should have a better, more consistent strike zone, BUT "just call the rulebook strike zone" is a completely inadequate answer for what a better strike zone should look like. You have to understand and respect the actual strike zone that's sustained this game for a century, and move forward from that point. Sure - mass vaccination is a rationalist, top-down scheme. Likewise rural electrification, public education, and social security - all good things. It's not that abstract rationalist programs are inherently bad; it's just that what makes a given system work is not necessarily visible from such a perspective. Which means that interventions based on that perspective can disrupt stuff that developed over time according to some organic logic, producing unintended consequences. It just struck me that your points about the strike zone fit nicely into that analysis.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Apr 10, 2019 12:06:31 GMT -5
You're treating this issue like a binary, when it's anything but. I've said multiple times in this thread that I am in favor of using technology to improve the strike zone. I just think that doing that is a lot more complicated, and comes with a lot more unanswered questions, than the "robo umps now!" crowd wants to admit. My urban planning knowledge is pretty sketchy, but my basic impression here is that putting things in orderly grids is good, but eliminating mixed zoning has been a complete disaster. So I have a hard time getting dogmatic about "top down technocratic decisions are best" versus "respecting traditions and the natural evolution is best". Not to get all squish "both sides" but I think you have to consider and respect both methods. So to get back to my stance on the strike zone, YES, we should have a better, more consistent strike zone, BUT "just call the rulebook strike zone" is a completely inadequate answer for what a better strike zone should look like. You have to understand and respect the actual strike zone that's sustained this game for a century, and move forward from that point. Sure - mass vaccination is a rationalist, top-down scheme. Likewise rural electrification, public education, and social security - all good things. It's not that abstract rationalist programs are inherently bad; it's just that what makes a given system work is not necessarily visible from such a perspective. Which means that interventions based on that perspective can disrupt stuff that developed over time according to some organic logic, producing unintended consequences. It just struck me that your points about the strike zone fit nicely into that analysis. I agree, but I'd also say that "call the rulebook strike zone" doesn't even rise to the level of being rationalist. I'm not sure exactly how I'd characterize it... it's sort of like constitutional literalism, but for parts of the constitution that have never been used. It's like insisting that the US has to get serious about stopping the king of England from quartering soldiers in our houses or something.
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Post by orion09 on Apr 10, 2019 12:22:34 GMT -5
From BU: www.bu.edu/today/2019/mlb-umpires-strike-zone-accuracy/I posted another fairly comprehensive study a while back with a massive data set that showed that umps were most often wrong on close pitches in counts which completely changed the at bat. The gentleman’s strike on 3-0 is my own pet peeve, along with a K zone that changes with LH and RH batters, and inning by inning. That Atlantic League experiment cannot happen soon enough. So a couple points about this article: 1) Their metric for umpire accurary captures the ratio of blown strikezone calls to correct strikezone calls in a binary sense, which IMO shows a serious lack of understanding of what makes a good umpire. A called strike that’s 5 inches outside the strikezone is much worse than a called strike that’s 0.5 inches outside the strikezone. They need to take into account both how bad each blown call is, and - not only that - how consistent each umpire is within his own personal strike zone. 2) The article does a poor job of addressing the most important issue: does a more consistent strike zone make the game more enjoyable? I don’t think the answer is as obvious as it might seem. Baseball is first and foremost an entertainment product, which means it’s supposed to make us feel things. Does having a superhumanly consistent strike zone make the game more enjoyable - more emotional? Does taking away the all the late-night/next day conversations around the bar/watercooler/message board about how much “the umpire f***ing sucks and totally screwed us with that call” actually benefit the game as a whole? Does it benefit the commissioner’s office, whose ultimate goal is to increase viewership and engagement as much as possible for the benefit of the owners?
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Post by jimed14 on Apr 10, 2019 13:06:53 GMT -5
Sure - mass vaccination is a rationalist, top-down scheme. Likewise rural electrification, public education, and social security - all good things. It's not that abstract rationalist programs are inherently bad; it's just that what makes a given system work is not necessarily visible from such a perspective. Which means that interventions based on that perspective can disrupt stuff that developed over time according to some organic logic, producing unintended consequences. It just struck me that your points about the strike zone fit nicely into that analysis. I agree, but I'd also say that "call the rulebook strike zone" doesn't even rise to the level of being rationalist. I'm not sure exactly how I'd characterize it... it's sort of like constitutional literalism, but for parts of the constitution that have never been used. It's like insisting that the US has to get serious about stopping the king of England from quartering soldiers in our houses or something. Why can't they program the robot umps to just "call the umpires' strike zone" instead? The pitchers and batters would all be used to it and it should theoretically be more consistent. I don't think they would have a hard time adjusting to a consistent zone for every count as long as they knew the zone well enough.
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Post by umassgrad2005 on Apr 10, 2019 14:27:35 GMT -5
The existing rule already calls for a strike if "any part of the ball passes through any part of the strike zone" so I'm not sure why that would change.Also, the strike zone is a pentagonal volume, even if it's not always accurately called that way. Because right now you're not getting a strike call when one seam nicks the corner on a 0-2 count. That might be the best argument for an electronic zone. A strike is a strike, take out the human side of things. The count shouldn't matter. If the ump had a bad day shouldn't matter. You just eliminate all the variance from ump to ump. The zone is 100% the same every game, for every pitch. It just makes so much sense. Nothing worse than watching clear strikes and balls being called wrong.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Apr 10, 2019 17:23:42 GMT -5
Because right now you're not getting a strike call when one seam nicks the corner on a 0-2 count. That might be the best argument for an electronic zone. A strike is a strike, take out the human side of things. The count shouldn't matter. If the ump had a bad day shouldn't matter. You just eliminate all the variance from ump to ump. The zone is 100% the same every game, for every pitch. It just makes so much sense. Nothing worse than watching clear strikes and balls being called wrong. Since when, and why not? What is the evidence that a rigid strike zone which has never existed is definitively better? Because right now you're not getting a strike call when one seam nicks the corner on a 0-2 count. That might be the best argument for an electronic zone. A strike is a strike, take out the human side of things. The count shouldn't matter. If the ump had a bad day shouldn't matter. You just eliminate all the variance from ump to ump. The zone is 100% the same every game, for every pitch. It just makes so much sense. Nothing worse than watching clear strikes and balls being called wrong.Yeah, let's get rid of that. Bad calls are bad. The practical definition of the strike zone as it has existed for over a century is not necessarily bad! Two different issues.
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