Baseball

Ah, baseball. The great American pastime. Two teams, nine players each, millions of fans, seventh inning stretches, and hotdogs for all. It’s a tradition that has evolved for over 100 years. Yet, for a league that’s been around since the late 1800s, you would think that the game has evolved enough where nothing can break the sport, right?

“Ref, you suck! Ref, you suck! Ref, you suck! Ref, you suck! Ref, you suck! Ref, you suck! Ref, you suck!”

Oh yeah, umpires. Ever since the development of instant replay and electronic pitch tracking, the margin of error for an umpire has become slim—Slim Shady slim. But umpires are not immune to mistakes; they are human after all. And with the use of technology becoming increasingly more popular in baseball, human error is becoming less and less acceptable. So unacceptable, in fact, that the last decade has been host to an ongoing debate among fans and executives of Major League Baseball, or the MLB, over the abolishment of umpires and the implementation of a robotic rules system. On one hand, robotic rules would be perfect: no missed pitches, no missed outs, and no judgement calls. But on the other hand lies 100 plus years of baseball tradition that has made the sport what it is today. I’m your host Logan Boal, and welcome to Rules Rule where today I’m going to tell you why baseball should never give up their umpires.

(“All That" plays)

Thank you bensound.com for that jazzy sax.

The two main arguments people use to advocate a robotic rules system are blown calls and messed up pitches.

A blown call is when an umpire clearly makes an incorrect call on a resulting play, concerning anything from a simple out/safe call to an out-of-play/fair-ball call. There have been thousands of blown calls over the years of baseball, but with instant replay now being used in every MLB game, blown calls have more weight than ever before. A perfect example of this is documented by Ben Cosman in a 2015 article for Cut4, an official news outlet for the MLB. On June 2, 2010, the Detroit Tigers were playing the Cleveland Indians at home. Armando Galarraga, veteran pitcher for the Tigers, was throwing a perfect game. 26 batters stepped up to the plate; 26 sat back down. Jason Donald steps up to the plate and drills a ground ball right between 1st and 2nd base. First baseman Miguel Cabrera snags the ball and throws it to Galarraga who is now covering first. Galarraga catches the ball, puts his foot on the bag, and the umpire calls Donald safe. The stadium was in shock. Nobody on the field could believe the call, let alone the Tiger’s dugout. Even the announcers were in disbelief. Listen to the play in real time, courtesy of the MLB.

[Commentator One] “Ground ball. Right side. Cabrera will cut it off. Galarraga covers. He’s out! No—he’s safe. He is safe?!”

*Crowd boos loudly*

“He is safe at first base. And here comes Jim Leyland. Oh my goodness. Jim Joyce said he was safe at first base.”

*Crowd boos loudly*

“You make the call. Cabrera, Galarraga.“

[Commentator Two] “Did he miss the bag? He’s out. Why is he safe?”

[Commentator One] “He must’ve missed the base.”

[Commentator Two] “Are you kidding me? Why is he safe?”

[Commentator One] “We’ll see right here.”

[Commentator Two] “Why is he safe? Oh my goodness, Jim Joyce, no!”

[Commentator One] “Jeez Louise.”

[Commentator Two] “Oh my goodness.”

[Commentator One] “What a travesty. What an absolute travesty for Armando Galarraga.”

What you can’t see is Galarraga’s foot clearly beating Donald’s to the bag by at least a step. Every single replay showed the same result: out. Jim Joyce, the umpire who called Donald safe, even admitted his mistake in a press conference on June 3, 2010, the day after the game:

[Interviewer] “And you got the call correct?”

[Jim Joyce] “No, I did not get the call correct. I kicked the [bleep] out of it. I had a great angle on it. I had great positioning on it. I just missed the damn call. I missed it. I missed it from here to the wall.”

[Interviewer] “Did you think—”

[Jim Joyce] “I thought he beat the play. I thought he beat him to the bag. At that particular time, I thought he beat the play, and now that I am standing here and I’ve seen it on the replay. . . . And naturally, every Tiger out there was telling me that I had kicked the call because they had seen the replay. So the first thing I did when I got in this locker room was look at that—I told Tim, our clubhouse guy, to queue it up, and I missed it. I missed it.”

According to Cosman in that Cut4 article, instant replay was not available to use on that play. However, a robotic rules system wouldn’t have needed instant replay; it would have just gotten the call right and Galarraga would have earned his spot on the legendarily short list of pitchers who have thrown perfect games.

Except, Galarraga did make the list. According to news station Baseball Essential, the MLB went back into the record books and officially awarded Galarraga the honor of a perfect game on April 1, 2016 (and no, it was not an April Fool’s prank). He is now the 23rd pitcher in MLB history to throw a perfect game. This may seem to argue in favor of a robotic rules system, but it doesn’t. The MLB uncovered a rabbit hole. If we have the power of hindsight to retroactively change decisions, then that means one of two things: either a robotic rules system would be irrelevant because it only decreases the amount of time before calls are overturned, or, if the MLB did adopt robotic rules, they would have to go back and review every other controversial call on tape. The Galarraga decision became the standard the MLB must consistently hit in play reviews, and a robotic rules system became worthless because of it.

The other most popular argument in favor of a robotic rules system is pitch tracking. Currently, home plate umpires are the only people who can call balls or strikes, and whatever the call, it is non-reviewable. It seems straightforward enough, but how hard is it to call a strike? According to the MLB (2019), the strike zone for a batter is defined as the “area over home plate the upper limit of which is a horizontal line at the midpoint between the top of the shoulders and the top of the uniform pants, and the lower level is a line at the bottom of the knees. The strike zone shall be determined from the batter's stance as the batter is prepared to swing at a pitched ball.” In other words, the strike zone is subjective, different for every single player, and changes every second. So it should come as no surprise that major league umpires make a few mistakes, especially considering they have to judge pitches coming in at 100 miles per hour. According to a 2018 article in Futurism, a journal dedicated to investigating the new technology facing our world, Yale professor Toby Moskowitz studied close to one million major league pitches and found that umpires typically make an incorrect call about 12% of the time. That’s a pretty big margin of error. An electronic strike zone, however, would have a margin of error of almost 0%. In a 2015 article for the MLB, reporter Lindsay Berra examined the widespread use of PITCHf/x. PITCHf/x is a program that uses three permanently mounted cameras to accurately track a pitch’s trajectory, speed, and spin rate to within one mile per hour and one inch. If you’ve ever watched a baseball game and seen a screen pop up with a strike zone and where the ball went through it, that’s PITCHf/x. It’s been used in pretty much every major league game broadcast since 2006, yet it has absolutely no impact on the actual game; umpires cannot, and do not, use it. The main reason why is because of the subjectivity of the strike zone. In a 2017 interview with ESPN, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred voiced his concern over the limitations of PITCHf/x, saying that the strike zone is different for everyone, but PITCHf/x uses the same zone. According to Berra, however, this is not true. PITCHf/x calibrates a batter’s strike zone using one of its three mounted cameras, and it does this to standards provided by the MLB’s umpiring department. PITCHf/x also has a database of strike zones for every MLB player, and it uses a rolling average over a player’s career to help the calibration. Every day, the system becomes and more precise and more reliable. Manfred did also say in that ESPN interview, though, that despite the limitations he sees in PITCHf/x, he senses that the MLB will turn to a robotic strikes system relatively soon. When that may happen though, nobody knows.

A robotic rules system would hurt nobody: players would never get angry because the calls would be right and consistent, umpires would never get yelled at by players, coaches, or fans, and nobody would ever be ejected. The rules of baseball would always be followed and never broken. The MLB would almost be perfect. And that’s exactly why we can never adopt robot rules.

(“Semi-Funk” plays)

The sport of baseball is synonymous with tradition. Almost every aspect of the game can be traced back to the sport’s roots in the late 1800’s. The game literally stems from generation after generation of talent and custom. Adding robotic rules to the game—well it just wouldn’t be baseball anymore.

There’s a reason people call it the sport of yesteryear: the legacy of baseball is more important than the present. In the revered history of baseball, how many perfect games were ruined by an umpire’s decision? How many games were won by an umpire’s judgement of a strike? How many of the billions and billions of umpire calls were wrong, and how many of them would we have to go back and overturn? Humanity is what makes baseball baseball; without umpires, the game ceases to have the identity it spent so much time building.

One could argue that the MLB start a Modern Era of baseball and differentiate between the time of umpires versus the time of computers. But again, that just wouldn’t be baseball. The sport is rooted in the past, and replacing umpires with machines would force the MLB to go back and review every single game they have video for. It sounds unnecessary, yes, and it definitely sounds stubborn, but that’s just baseball culture; making the past correct is more important than updating the present.

Really, the argument to keep umpires is brief, but there is so much sustenance in what little there is to say. The identity of the MLB and the culture of baseball itself is implanted in American history. Once we remove those stems, American culture loses one of its most valuable inventions: the great American pastime, the sport of yesteryear, the game of baseball.

I’m Logan Boal for Rules Rule, and thanks so much for listening.

(“Acid Trumpet” plays)

REFERENCES

Baseball Reference. (2017, March 01). Instant Replay. Retrieved February 14, 2019, from https://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Instant_replay

Bensound. (2019). All That | Chill Hop Royalty Free Music. Retrieved from https://www.bensound.com/royalty-free-music/track/all-that-chill-hop

Berra, L. (2015, November 30). Electronic strike zone would be a game changer. Retrieved February 14, 2019, from https://www.mlb.com/news/electronic-strike-zone-would-be-a-game-changer/c-158512610

Blake, R. (2016, April 01). MLB to Award Perfect Game to Armando Galarraga. Retrieved February 14, 2019, from http://www.baseballessential.com/news/2016/04/01/mlb-award-perfect-game-armando-galarraga/

Cosman, B. (2015, June 2). Armando Galarraga threw a one-hit perfect game 5 years ago. Retrieved February 14, 2019, from https://www.mlb.com/cut4/armando-galarraga-threw-a-one-hit-perfect-game-5-years-ago/c-127909514

Houser, K. (2018, August 20). Baseball players are sick of fallible umpires. Robots should make calls instead. Retrieved February 14, 2019, from https://futurism.com/the-byte/electronic-strike-zone-baseball

Incompetech Music Search. (2019). Retrieved from https://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/music.html

Jens95. (2017, December 26). Ref You Suck Chants. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozGmEuCxikI

Marchand, A. (2017, August 22). Rob Manfred says game will have to decide whether to turn to computer plate umpires in due time. Retrieved February 14, 2019, from http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/20421613/mlb-commissioner-rob-manfred-says-computer-umpires-available-sooner-later

MLB. (2010, June 03). Ump Joyce on controversial call | 06/03/2010. Retrieved from https://www.mlb.com/video/ump-joyce-on-controversial-call/c-8632475

MLB. (2019). Umpires: Strike Zone. Retrieved February 14, 2019, from http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/official_info/umpires/strike_zone.jsp