Robot Umps Are Here

It was pitchers and catchers who reported to spring training last week. Been there, done that.

But you know who reports to spring training this week who has never been or done any of this? Get ready. Here come the robots.

We’ve never lived in a world in which major-league spring training games had balls and strikes called by robot umps, otherwise known as the Automated Ball-Strike system (ABS). But it’ll happen this spring, when MLB will give its players a chance to test out the ABS challenge system in games all over Florida and Arizona. The dry run begins Thursday in a nationally televised Cactus League game between the Cubs and Dodgers.

So is that a sure sign those robots will arrive in a regular-season ballpark near you by 2026? Not necessarily. The arrival date remains uncertain. The league might want to postpone implementing anything significant until it gets to the other side of the next labor crisis in two years. Or not.

But does it feel inevitable that one of these years, MLB will be using technology to get the big ball-strike calls right? Not much doubt about that.

So it’s a good thing they’re not unleashing the robots without getting extensive feedback from the players. And those reviews will be flowing within days, as soon as teams test-drive a system in which each club will get two chances per game to challenge ball-strike calls. (Just like replay, they won’t burn a challenge if ABS — and the Hawk-Eye cameras that power it — decides: You’re right.)

Fan feedback will also be a thing this spring. MLB will be paying close attention to how fans react to seeing umpires have actual strike calls overturned in actual games played by actual major leaguers. And won’t that be fun? (...)

Lesson one: The strike zone is not the same

We’ve all watched baseball games on TV. We’ve all seen that attractive-looking rectangle that comprises the K Zone. So is that K Zone what big leaguers are about to get dropped into? Um, not quite. This zone — unlike those zones — will actually be accurate.

But there will be one important similarity between those TV zones and the ABS zone — namely…

That rectangle.

We’ll let you in on a critical secret that is about to get exposed. That strike zone called by human umpires in the big leagues may be a rectangle in theory — but it’s more like an oval in real life. That’s because many pitches up and in, or up and away, are not called strikes by human umps, even though they’re technically in the zone.

by Jayson Stark, The Athletic |  Read more:

Image: Mike Janes/Four Seam Images/AP

[ed. The robots are coming.]