Robot Umps in AAA this year

[BobC]

Originally Posted by perezfan

Those are a couple of fantastic questions/observations, for which I would love to know the answers as well. A big breaking curve ball can clip the front corner of the plate, but also be outside of the strike zone when it hits the catcher's mitt. So they would need to have 3 dlimensional technology to be accurate.

That is exactly what I'm thinking Mark, if you want to be truly as impartial as possible. We can all see on TV when the stations do a replay and have their imposed strike zone on the screen so you can possibly see how close a pitch was to being a strike, but I believe those are only 2D measures they are using. Couple that with needing some way to then differentiate between different batters high and low strike zone limits, and my thinking is if you can't properly roll out true 3D ABS Monitoring Systems, with proper measurement and reflection of differing batter's strike zones, don't mess with it at all and just leave the human umpires behind the plate for now. In other words, if you're only going to do it half-ass, don't bother doing it at all.

And you're still going to have a human ump behind the plate anyway, to call out fall tips, check swings, stepping out of the batter's box, plays at the plate, and so on.