Striking Out: Major League Baseball’s Umpire Problem

Major League Baseball has a big problem, and it’s not that games are too long. It’s far more fundamental than that.

Human umpires are incapable of calling the strike zone accurately, and MLB must replace them with an automated system of computers calling balls and strikes.

I’m going to write a series of posts describing the strike zone, how poorly umpires call it, the reasons why humans are incapable of doing this job, why technology can do it better, the current PITCHf/x system, how it needs to be improved to take over for humans, and why MLB’s reluctance to do so is misguided and temporary, and how the change would improve baseball.

It might take me a while to write these things. I will not claim that the ideas I describe here are completely original, as much of it seems to be “intuitively obvious to the casual observer” (thanks Dr. Stageberg). I will note source material, or places where concepts have been previously discussed if I’ve read them. And I’ll add links to previous work if it’s brought to my attention.

Please send me a message or a comment. I’m happy to discuss any of these issues. And thanks for reading.