I haven’t read any of the comments, but gosh. What a good idea, and it’s so simple.

It’ll never fly. *sigh*

I agree that both plays should be called consistently, by the book, but the umpires have no one to blame but themselves for these controversies because they’ve made a habit of calling them wrong.

I’ve got a list and WPA analysis of all the blown calls this post-season at

http://sonsofsamhorn.net/index.php?s=&showtopic=50363&view=findpost&p=2640764

Regarding the automatic calling of balls and strikes, something I’ve been dreaming about for thirty years: pitch/fx already does a better job of calling balls and strikes than human umpires. But there are several problems with it, and one of them is that the top and bottom of the strike zone are set manually, by operators watching video, and can be very inconsistent from PA to PA or even from pitch to pitch. But it might be possible to implement a better system.

The other thing worth noting is that the average de facto strike zone is not the rulebook zone. It is wider than the plate, and wider to the umpire’s left than right, and it doesn’t go down as far as the rulebook says it should (basically, umps require all the ball to above the knees rather than any part of the ball), and it’s not rectangular — the expansion off the plate is usually not called for pitches at the top and bottom of the zone. But an average de facto strike zone could be determined and easily implemented.

Finally, the impact of inconsistent and/or idiosyncratic home plate umpiring is probably much greater than the impact of blown calls on the bases. Based on the analysis I’ve done with pitch/fx I don’t think it’s at all unusual for one team to be given a edge of over half a run over the other (measured by WPA * 10). And the argument that any strike zone is OK as long as its consistent is bs — why should the ump determine that it’s going to be a bad night for a pitcher who works down in the zone but a good one for his opponent who works up?

You run into an umpire every now and then that refuses to check with the base umps and get help. That is a huge pet peeve of mine. It usually precedes a guy getting thrown out.

At the heart of this issue is, I think, both the way that MLB treats umpires and our understanding of what the umpires’ job actually is. Remember, umpires are not trained by MLB and are often seen as a another piece of equipment, like bases and bats. A “necessary evil.” Furthermore, there is a certain perception that fans have of umpires that is…well…murderous. Puts ‘em in an impossible position. They get a call wrong, and they are excoriated. They get a rightly call a runner safe because the base was not tagged (Ayebar not tagging 2B while turning a DP), and Joe Buck and Tim McCarver say that that the ump made the “wrong” call. The ump can’t win: make the wrong call and fans are all over them; make the correct call, and we invoke “give ‘em the benefit of the doubt…”

There are a host of things that we need to take into account (that Bruce Weber’s recent book and Fay Vincent’s New York Times op-ed piece show) about not only how we think about what umpiring should be but how we understand and perceive those people in blue and those practices and institutions that are responsible for umpiring.

The increase of technology may be part of the solution to this problem, but let’s at least say that it is only “part” of the solution to a much bigger problem.

I hope so! Think how sweet that would be.

How replay would affect those types of calls and if/how the players would change their behavior to get those calls isn’t completely clear (at least to me) and might be something to consider.

I certainly understand the argument for getting all the calls right, but the only replay system I don’t mind is tennis, which is automated and immediately accepted as truth. Like the NFL, baseball has a problem with pacing.