March 4, 2025
***
This week we asked our writers to reposnd to the following:
What are your thoughts on the new robo-ump behind home plate?
Here are their replies:
***
Ed Botti - Finding the correct balance between adapting technology and preserving the substance of sports is vital for the future of the game.
Robo Umps, like any technology, are not perfect and not without their own limitations and restrictions.
Software errors, hardware issues, and technical problems, will interrupt the flow of the game which will potentially end up in delays or even game postponements.
From what I see and read this spring (since they are using it) teams will have two challenges each at the start of each game. My first questions are who decided that, and why only 2?
They are allowed to use a challenge whenever they'd like to challenge a ball or strike call.
Only the batter, pitcher, or catcher can start a challenge. The challenge must be made immediately after the call without any assistance from the dugout.
The robo ump will determine whether the pitch was a ball or a strike. A successful challenge will change the call and teams will be able to keep the challenge. An unsuccessful attempt, forces a team to lose a challenge.
When you listen to or read some of these “experts” it would sound like there are plenty more than only 2 bad calls a game. If the point is to get every call correct, why then limit it to only two pitches out of the average amount thrown per team/per game of 146 pitches?
So, they can challenge 1.37% of the pitches thrown during a normal MLB game, and that is going to solve this perceived problem? Really?
The loss of the human component in sports is not good. After all, the game is played by us very same humans. The passion of fights with umpires, and the ongoing discussions and debates surrounding controversial calls are all part of the very fabric of the game.
It is one of the aspects that makes sports electrifying and arbitrary.
What makes sense to me, is simply eliminating the umps that never should have been there in the first place (see Angel Hernandez, as a start along with Laz Diaz and C.B. Bucknor ….there are others as well). Those umps never should have gotten past high school games, and yet, for some reason, we see them at the highest level, night after night. Why?
Put guys there that deserve to be there, and I’ll bet much of this perceived problem will simply go away, organically.
With technology, always remember that just because you can, doesn’t mean you should!
***
Cary Greene - I'm by no means an expert on the robo-ump system, but I do think it's time to consider alternatives and the reason I support doing that centers on the vast amount of strike zone inconsistency from umpire to umpire. I do think it's time for a change. The biggest single question which I feel requires a concrete definition involves this: Is the strike zone a one dimensional square, a two dimensional shape or a three dimensional shape with 15 different edges? Also, does the strike zone expand on taller players and shrink for shorter players? By definition, the human strike zone has always been three dimensional and the robo-zone was two dimensional last season in the Minors.
Feeling confused? I know I sure am! Now that MLB is also expanding with challenges - which are bound to make a game that's already too long and losing popularity with new fans. Human umps are far from perfect, but until they can build a 3-D strike zone that is the same size for all players, I think just rolling with human umps is the best way to go. Human umps are far from perfect, but they're rather perfect for the game of baseball - which is a very imperfect game as we know it to be.
***
Derek McAdam - I personally don’t mind the rule, but I do think it needs to be tweaked. Some players are using this in the 1st inning, which is somewhat ridiculous. But I wouldn’t mind if it could only be used after the end of the 4th or 5th inning.
***
Mike Whiteman - I'm torn on this. As a traditionalist I like things "the way they were" back in the 1980s, maybe the most enjoyable brand of baseball in my lifetime. There were no robo-umps, and most of the time it worked out just fine.
I also want umpiring to get it right. If this is a route to a consistent and correctly judged strike zone, then I'm open to seeing MLB test it out and see where it goes.
***
Paul Semendinger - I greatly dislike challenge systems. All challenges do is add another non-game related gimmick to the sport. The talking points then become things other than the focus of what the game is all about. We will hear talk of "Who can challenge? Should it only be the star of the team?" Discussions will focus on players who have high success rates for challenges." New strategies will develop ("Only challenge after the seventh inning"). And such. On and on. None of this has anything to do with playing baseball. It's all a gimmick.
If the sport wants to use technology to get the calls correct, they should use technology to get the calls correct. This is obvious on its face. As with all the other challenge rules, if the technology is there to get the calls correct, it should be used 100% of the time not only sometimes. We see an example of how quickly the technology can make a call in tennis. In that sport, close calls are examined in real time with virtually no delay in the game. Baseball can do this as well.
Instead of challenges there should be an additional umpire in a booth, away from the field watching every close play. If the call of the field is wrong, this person, very quickly (because we can all see it quickly on TV) can tell the homeplate umpire through a device in his ear that the call was wrong. The home plate ump would then hold up his hand, note the changed call, and the game would go on. No challenges. No pretend new strategy. No gimmick. It would only be... the correct call which is what all of this is supposed to lead to anyway.
Adding a gimmick doesn't make the game better. With a gimmick, there will still be a host of incorrect calls ("If only they still had a challenge left" or "They should challenge that, but they don't want to use their last one here") which defeats the whole purpose of using the technology. Getting the calls correct should be the purpose, nothing else.
***
Ethan Semendinger - I'm torn, as many of the other writers here are too. I want baseball to be as accurate as possible, but losing the human element to the sport does take away something special that the sport has...even if the wrong calls can change the results of a game.
Ultimately, as long as the process doesn't add too much "dead time" to the sport, I'll quickly learn to live with with. Take a sport like tennis, for example. Quick challenges and reviews are done, and the players are able to quickly get back to it. For baseball, the goal should be to get to that level of timeliness when referring to the robo-umps.
The last thing I would do is trust a computer program, because it's just too easy to hack.
Watching the system in the minors these last couple of years, I don't mind the challenge system, but in the minors it's fine a lot faster. But I gotta agree with retired pitcher Latrell Hawkins, who said, I believe when he was pitching for Colorado, and yes I'm paraphrasing and maybe expanding here, "why keep adding technology to cover up the umpire mistakes? How about if an umpire makes too many, how about replacing him? Hey, if I give up a big bit, do I get to take that pitch back? No I don't. If if I do things like that too often. I'm out of a job."
I can hardly wait for all-tech ball/strike calls. (And they are starting small with two, retainable challenges to see if any challenge system can be done efficiently.) It's more important to get the calls right than it is to preserve the "human" (i.e., erroneous) element. Any among us who bemoaned the Judge Zone, where strikes are called mid-shin, should welcome this result.