Robots- What is a Strike?

[BruisedCrew]

Not a game thread goes by without some calls for “Robots” and/or claims that “a strike is a strike”. 
 

This article covers some of the challenges facing the possible implementation of automated balls and strikes. 
 

What is a strike

The most “striking” things to me in this article are (1) that (no surprise) there is no consensus on where an automated strike zone should be drawn, and (2) the fact that the strike zones shown on TV telecasts are not the same as the zone on which umpires are graded.

I remain in favor of automated balls and strikes if only to create consistency and to eliminate any risk of an umpire being influenced by players involved or the game and home crowd situation. But, in the meantime it would probably be a good idea not to get too excited about “blown” calls that are right on the edge of the TV graphic strike zone.

 

[rickh150]

I have to agree with you… those calls on the edge or just off, how accurate is that zone? Who knows?

I am all for R2D2 to be behind the plate. I expect 12-6 curve ball pitchers to be the rave nipping the front bottom and back top of the strike zone (remember everybody, regardless of that 2D zone you see on tv, the strike zone is 3-D). But yeah, tiring of calls 4 inches off plate called strikes.

[LouisEly]

These are good points.  How do you automate a strike zone with players of different heights?

I get a kick out of the box on TV because I've noticed that the top of the box isn't even at Wiemer's belt. 

[rickh150]

3 minutes ago, LouisEly said:

These are good points.  How do you automate a strike zone with players of different heights?

I get a kick out of the box on TV because I've noticed that the top of the box isn't even at Wiemer's belt. 

Yep… and really why have the box on tv? I’d prefer that they didn’t and just use it showing replays of meaningful pitches, like they used to. More maddening now… really could avoid the anger at a 1-0 pitch that should be a ball called as a strike. Umpires would love the change too.

[Playing Catch]

11 hours ago, BruisedCrew said:

Not a game thread goes by without some calls for “Robots” and/or claims that “a strike is a strike”. 
 

This article covers some of the challenges facing the possible implementation of automated balls and strikes. 
 

What is a strike

The most “striking” things to me in this article are (1) that (no surprise) there is no consensus on where an automated strike zone should be drawn, and (2) the fact that the strike zones shown on TV telecasts are not the same as the zone on which umpires are graded.

I remain in favor of automated balls and strikes if only to create consistency and to eliminate any risk of an umpire being influenced by players involved or the game and home crowd situation. But, in the meantime it would probably be a good idea not to get too excited about “blown” calls that are right on the edge of the TV graphic strike zone.

 

This is totally on point. The TV box is often wrong. 

[wildcat83]

12 hours ago, LouisEly said:

These are good points.  How do you automate a strike zone with players of different heights?

I get a kick out of the box on TV because I've noticed that the top of the box isn't even at Wiemer's belt. 

I watched a video about it a while back.  The computer tracks something like the past 1,000 swings for each player.  It records the zone at the moment the bat crosses the plate, and takes the average zone from those swings.  They did it that way to eliminate the zone being affected by a huge crouch preswing or something like that.

 

They talked about players just called up with no data, but don’t remember exactly what the plan was.  I think it might record during BP or something like that to get the initial data.

[Brock Beauchamp]

I feel like the OP missed a real opportunity by not naming this topic "Do Robots Dream of Electric Strikes?"

[AKCheesehead]

3 minutes ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

I feel like the OP missed a real opportunity by not naming this topic "Do Robots Dream of Electric Strikes?"

Or, Strike Zone What Robots Want?

[Nola Beery]

21 hours ago, rickh150 said:

I have to agree with you… those calls on the edge or just off, how accurate is that zone? Who knows?

I am all for R2D2 to be behind the plate. I expect 12-6 curve ball pitchers to be the rave nipping the front bottom and back top of the strike zone (remember everybody, regardless of that 2D zone you see on tv, the strike zone is 3-D). But yeah, tiring of calls 4 inches off plate called strikes.

Thanks for the reminder that the strike zone is 3D.  I've occasionally seen a 3D graphic of the zone, but not often.  

BTW, Cricket has some nerdy video devices that baseball could earn from, including friction sensors that can tell if a ball grazed a bat or a batter.  

[CheezWizHed]

How about "Robots on strike: Scrub umpires are taking our jobs!"

16 hours ago, LouisEly said:

These are good points.  How do you automate a strike zone with players of different heights?

I get a kick out of the box on TV because I've noticed that the top of the box isn't even at Wiemer's belt. 

I thought I read/watched something where they stated each player was measured to match a strike zone to their height. 

[BruisedCrew]

In light of the excitement on today’s game thread I thought it would be a good time to call up  this thread. 
 

 

 

 

[BruisedCrew]

It’s a strike/It’s a ball

 

A Player’s Perspective

Some additional food for thought for fans who think they know with absolute certainty if a pitch should be called a ball or a strike based only on the strike zone box on TV.

[wiguy94]

1 minute ago, BruisedCrew said:

It’s a strike/It’s a ball

Some additional food for thought for fans who think they know with absolute certainty if a pitch should be called a ball or a strike based only on the strike zone box on TV.

Literally nobody is relying strictly on the TV box and everyone is aware those boxes suck especially the top of the zone. That ball 4 to Riley was a strike according to the TV broadcast, baseball savant, mlb gameday, and umpire scorecards so people were not just going off the TV box.
 

[BruisedCrew]

Except that the instant reactions do come from just the telecast.

There have been times this season when a specific poster has declared emphatically “It was a strike” when some of the other sources have indicated otherwise. 

Even then, a pitch like this that is so close begs the question of how accurate any of the two dimensional strike zone boxes 
 

 

[sveumrules]

I saw Dead Astaire dancing with a vacuum cleaner on TV a quarter century ago.

Hologram Tupac at Coachella…over a decade ago now.

I’ve seen Arnold Schwarzenegger’s face morphed into a number of popular shows and movies.

How hard would it really be at this point to just laser project a custom hexagonal blob floating over the plate for each player strike zone?

[owbc]

The good news is that all of these issues seem solvable. 

Prior to the pitch clock implementation there were a million questions about how it could possibly work. Same for limiting the number of disengagements. It took a few years of tinkering but they managed to roll out a system that has worked almost flawlessly since day 1. Theo Epstein is doing excellent work so I trust his approach on the automated strike zone and I'm sure he's the one making the call that it isn't ready for primetime yet. 

If they implement a challenge system, it could be implemented with a "grey area" at the edge of the zone where the call on the field stands. As a frequent viewer of Umpire Scorecards, it looks like the average number of badly missed calls is no more than ~3-5 per game unless it's one of the notoriously bad umpires. If a challenge system can clean up that handful of really bad calls, then we'll be fine. I do think they will eventually figure it out though and have an exact zone figured out. 

[Brewcrew82]

2 hours ago, BruisedCrew said:

Except that the instant reactions do come from just the telecast.

There have been times this season when a specific poster has declared emphatically “It was a strike” when some of the other sources have indicated otherwise. 

Even then, a pitch like this that is so close begs the question of how accurate any of the two dimensional strike zone boxes 
 

 

If you think my reactions just come from the telecast, then you don't know what you're talking about, considering I simultaneously follow almost every game on baseball savant.

That pitch yesterday was a strike on the telecast AND on gameday AND on baseball savant AND on umpscorecards. 

[BruisedCrew]

15 minutes ago, Brewcrew82 said:

If you think my reactions just come from the telecast, then you don't know what you're talking about, considering I simultaneously follow almost every game on baseball savant.

That pitch yesterday was a strike on the telecast AND on gameday AND on baseball savant AND on umpscorecards. 

I hesitate to engage with you again, but if you have been following my comments on this, you would know that this is not just about the call in yesterday’s game or whether or not that pitch showed as nipping the strike zone in 4 different two dimensional presentations on TV and websites. 
 

I do know for a fact that on, at least one occasion, and maybe some others you have declared something to absolutely be a strike, and Gameday showed it outside the strike zone and Umpire Scorecards (which I don’t think comes out until the next day) did not show the pitch as a missed call. I don’t go to Baseball Savant very often so I don’t know if their strike zone box is any different or better than the others. 
 

You also seem  to be missing or ignoring the real point that I made yesterday that you found to be funny. In addition to not knowing how accurate those sites are at depicting the actual strike zone, we don’t know how the strike zone would be set in any automated system that MLB would adopt. 

I concede (and never disagreed) that that pitch touched the edge of the estimated strike zone in all of those media. Though some of them could have been used to illustrate the geometric concept of a straight line being tangent to a circle and having an intersection of one point of no dimension. Whether those estimated strike zones are accurate presentations of the strike zone as stated in the rule book and as interpreted by umpires is something else again. 

You and I are obviously going to have different reactions to pitches like that that are so close to the edge of the TV and website strike zones. While you claim “It Was a Strike”, I’m going to think “Damn, that could have been a strike”. I save my more indignant comments for the more obvious ones that look bad on TV (with or without a box on the screen) and that are more like a full ball width inside or outside of the box. 

If you think that the controversy over calls on borderline pitches like this is going to be resolved by some form of automated call or challenge system I suspect you are going to be very disappointed. Like other replays, the controversy just takes a different form. 
 

 

[Brewcrew82]

5 minutes ago, BruisedCrew said:

I hesitate to engage with you again, but if you have been following my comments on this, you would know that this is not just about the call in yesterday’s game or whether or not that pitch showed as nipping the strike zone in 4 different two dimensional presentations on TV and websites. 
 

I do know for a fact that on, at least one occasion, and maybe some others you have declared something to absolutely be a strike, and Gameday showed it outside the strike zone and Umpire Scorecards (which I don’t think comes out until the next day) did not show the pitch as a missed call. I don’t go to Baseball Savant very often so I don’t know if their strike zone box is any different or better than the others. 
 

You also seem  to be missing or ignoring the real point that I made yesterday that you found to be funny. In addition to not knowing how accurate those sites are at depicting the actual strike zone, we don’t know how the strike zone would be set in any automated system that MLB would adopt. 

I concede (and never disagreed) that that pitch touched the edge of the estimated strike zone in all of those media. Though some of them could have been used to illustrate the geometric concept of a straight line being tangent to a circle and having an intersection of one point of no dimension. Whether those estimated strike zones are accurate presentations of the strike zone as stated in the rule book and as interpreted by umpires is something else again. 

You and I are obviously going to have different reactions to pitches like that that are so close to the edge of the TV and website strike zones. While you claim “It Was a Strike”, I’m going to think “Damn, that could have been a strike”. I save my more indignant comments for the more obvious ones that look bad on TV (with or without a box on the screen) and that are more like a full ball width inside or outside of the box. 

If you think that the controversy over calls on borderline pitches like this is going to be resolved by some form of automated call or challenge system I suspect you are going to be very disappointed. Like other replays, the controversy just takes a different form. 
 

 

I disagree and think you're very wrong, but I'll let you and your contrarian stance have the last word on this. 

[nate82]

1 hour ago, BruisedCrew said:

I don’t go to Baseball Savant very often so I don’t know if their strike zone box is any different or better than the others. 

Baseball savant is basically MLB.  The strike zone on that site is about 90% accurate.  It is not exactly the same as the one umpires are graded on but it is the closest one we have.

The strike zone on baseball savant can be off a bit depending on where the teams have their cameras setup at their stadiums.  

[SomewhereInTime]

On 7/11/2023 at 4:16 PM, LouisEly said:

These are good points.  How do you automate a strike zone with players of different heights?

I get a kick out of the box on TV because I've noticed that the top of the box isn't even at Wiemer's belt. 

I hate that the magic box has lead to announcers complaining about calls too, especially on pitches that may have missed by less than an inch.  I really wish networks would get rid of it.