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AI

Minor League Baseball is Now Using AI Umpires to Call Strikes (abqjournal.com) 37

Posted by EditorDavid from the robo-ump dept.
"There's no guarantee that robot umpires will make their way to the majors," writes the San Francisco Chronicle. "But the system is as close as it has been now, one level below."

Here's how it looks for a minor league/Triple-A team, the Albuquerque Isotopes: Using the same computerized optical tracking technology known as Hawk-Eye that has been used for several years now in pro tennis and some other sports, MLB's new Automated ball-strike system is a rather in-depth setup. In early April, MLB set up eight high-speed cameras and hundreds of receivers around Isotopes Park that, along with the video from the cameras, add to a triangulation process that can help determine exactly where the ball crosses the strike zone — despite there being no camera directly over or behind the plate.

The MLB says it is confident a foul ball hitting one camera or a light drizzle of rain during a game won't affect the data accuracy.

"It's here," said Albuquerque Isotopes manager Warren Schaeffer. "We'll all get used to it. As long as we don't see it really messing things up, we'll adjust."
The manager also added, "I don't know what human umpires miss in a game — maybe three or four calls a game? And this system seems like it's missing three or four a game, I guess. I'm sure that they can improve it and it's always going to keep improving I guess." "The technology is there," said an MLB official who spoke to the Journal about the implementation of the automated ball-strike system... At this point, MLB is trying to get enough of a sample size to see how the game is affected and troubleshoot any unforeseen issues.
There's still an umpire behind the plate making the punching gesture for a strike — but he's just repeating whatever call the system has beamed into his ear.

The paper shares this story from a relief pitcher watching another pitcher disagree with a "called ball" early in the game, and asking the umpire whether it was in the strike zone and why it wasn't called a strike.

"And the umpire just shrugged and said, 'I don't know.'"
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Minor League Baseball is Now Using AI Umpires to Call Strikes More

Minor League Baseball is Now Using AI Umpires to Call Strikes

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  • Gotta call balls a ball

    Of course, you can NOT call anything and that is a ball, but still

  • 3 or 4? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Pascoea ( 968200 ) on Sunday May 29, 2022 @02:15PM (#62575360)

    I don't know what human umpires miss in a game — maybe three or four calls a game?

    I'm watching the Twins game right now, bottom of the 3rd I saw two blown calls in one at bat. Quick Google search would indicate the BEST umps are 96%, the worst are 91%. Average of 300 pitches per game (150/team) puts that spread at 12 to 27 bad calls/game.

    • Good call. I've seen plenty of pitch replays where the ball was called a strike despite being nowhere near the plate. The anchors will sometimes say crap like, "the ump has a big strike zone today" as if balls and strikes are a matter of style or preference. This is a game of stats and accuracy, and the calls should reflect that.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Pascoea ( 968200 )
        I'd tend to agree. The purists will argue that bad calls are just part of the game, but I think that's a shit answer. I would tend to agree with you, if we have the technology to make the game more fair than we should be using it.

      • Re:3 or 4? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by larryjoe ( 135075 ) on Sunday May 29, 2022 @04:51PM (#62575634)

        Good call. I've seen plenty of pitch replays where the ball was called a strike despite being nowhere near the plate. The anchors will sometimes say crap like, "the ump has a big strike zone today" as if balls and strikes are a matter of style or preference. This is a game of stats and accuracy, and the calls should reflect that.

        Certainly in Little League, some umpires have big (generally wide outside) strike zones. I've seen an occasional Little League game where the umpire has a "true" strike zone, and the game is generally painful to watch with a ton of walks. This tendency toward bigger strike zones doesn't disappear with MLB umps. Watching MLB games in the 90's with strike zones extended 4-6 inches off the plate was almost a joke and allowed a few pitchers to reach the hall of fame.

        My guess is that human umps have far less consistency (the distribution of strike zone sizes across humans vs. computers) and far greater bias (same human will tend to have the same tendency toward larger/smaller or shifted strike zones). Even if the error rate were similar between humans an computers, the computer should be far more consistent. And consistency is the real target. Players already know that human umps are not consistent across different umps and even different days, but the hope is that consistency exists for a given game so that pitchers and batters both know where the strike zone is.

    • Another way to look at it is that not all those bad calls are honest bad calls, and this A.I thing centralizes that sort of dishonesty making it even more powerful.
  • Surely this is a sign of the Mammon Millennium.

  • MLB set up eight high-speed cameras and hundreds of receivers around Isotopes Park that, along with the video from the cameras, add to a triangulation process that can help determine exactly where the ball crosses the strike zone — despite there being no camera directly over or behind the plate.

    Um... so why not put cameras over and behind (and on either side of) the plate?
    Certainly high-speed footage from those would show where the ball traveled, w/o needing "triangulation".

    (Or would that make it too hard to manipulate a marginal call? /cynical)

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Burdell ( 228580 )

      Catchers and umpires are behind the plate, and batters stand on one side or the other (although they may be using a camera opposing the batter). Directly overhead would be hard to do reliably, especially without potentially interfering with a pop-up.

      • How about a radar system built into home plate? Although, that by itself wouldn't be able to read the part of the strike zone that is dependent upon the batters' height and stance.

  • Umpire error and fan rage are not necessary.

  • Either the sensors can map the 3d space and the ballâ(TM)s trajectory through it, or they cant. Similarly for the initial setup of the strike zone based on batterâ(TM)s height.

    • Because if its just sensors and some if/then/else statements, someone might take the blame for something, but if its a neural network that was trained on those very same if/then/else statements, then its a black box that might even be racist.

  • Then the crowd rose to its feet, as one... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Applehu Akbar ( 2968043 ) on Sunday May 29, 2022 @02:48PM (#62575422)

    And yelled: "pkill -f 'Ump' "

  • Is this just to save money? (Score:5, Informative)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Sunday May 29, 2022 @02:54PM (#62575430)
    I can't think of a good reason to do something the stupid otherwise. A huge part of the fun of a baseball game is bad umpire calls and arguing about good umpire calls. There's no fun if it's a machine because the machine is going to get it right. This seems like a short-sighted and remarkably stupid thing to do and definitely not something the fans would be calling for.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Pascoea ( 968200 )

      definitely not something the fans would be calling for.

      I'm a baseball fan, and I'm 100% onboard with a computer calling the balls and strikes. So in our sample size of 2, we're a 50/50 split.

      A huge part of the fun of a baseball game is bad umpire calls and arguing about good umpire calls. There's no fun if it's a machine because the machine is going to get it right.

      Here I thought the fun of baseball was the competition and the play of the game. Having shitty calls adds nothing. The ONLY thing I would miss with the more perfect ball/strike calls is the dudes getting ejected for arguing the calls. Don't worry, you can still drunkenly the argue safe/out calls with your buddies after the game.

      • A huge part of the fun of a baseball game is bad umpire calls and arguing about good umpire calls. There's no fun if it's a machine because the machine is going to get it right.

        Here I thought the fun of baseball was the competition and the play of the game. Having shitty calls adds nothing.

        And allowing shitty fights in hockey adds nothing to the competition and play too. Yet fans love that shit.

        As we move forward and try to embrace the perfectly imperfect machine, rest assured there will be some human resistance.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Pascoea ( 968200 )

          And allowing shitty fights in hockey adds nothing to the competition and play too. Yet fans love that shit.

          I disagree with this statement. Hockey is a physical game, fights are part of a physical game. I see that as a completely different than horrible officiating changing the course of a game.

          • And allowing shitty fights in hockey adds nothing to the competition and play too. Yet fans love that shit.

            I disagree with this statement. Hockey is a physical game, fights are part of a physical game. I see that as a completely different than horrible officiating changing the course of a game.

            Saying fights are part of hockey is like claiming car crashes are part of F1 racing. Uh, no it's not. It's the imperfect human addicted to violence that assumes a fight in hockey is somehow necessary or expected. Those aren't boxing gloves, and that's not a damn coliseum they're playing in to the death.

            And when fighting or targeting with aggressive impact ends up taking out a teams best player, you better believe it can change the outcome of a game. Even end a career. Unnecessarily too.

      • Are you kidding me? Shitty calls add an element of randomness that otherwise won't be there. That's what makes football so god-awful boring unless you're watching the super bowl. Odds are you already know which team is going to win because the teams aren't all that well matched in a lot of cases. The NBA knows better than they have tons of rules explicitly designed to prevent teams with better athletes from just steamrolling over everybody else. Otherwise it just becomes a money game and who has the most mo

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Pascoea ( 968200 )
          Hey, to each their own man. I've seen too many games changed at the hands of awful umpiring. I'm just not a fan of "randomness" in professional sports. Why bother even having hard-and-fast rules if you're not going to enforce them?

    • This fan's calling for it. If incompetence/corruption can be culled from the game, I'm for it, especially if it can be automated. Could it eliminate good ol' human error, similar to all the automation I've done over my career? We shall see. I think I would want a lot better accuracy, though, than "as good as a human ump", perhaps by an order of magnitude.

    • > There's no fun if it's a machine because the machine is going to get it right.

      The summary says:
      The manager also added, "I don't know what human umpires miss in a game â" maybe three or four calls a game? And this system seems like it's missing three or four a game, I guess.

      And that's presumably based on ACTUAL right and wrong.
      Fans will ARGUE that it wasn't a strike when it passed within an inch of the center of the plate. U

      You can see this clearly in the sport of politiball. Fans are presented wit

  • like football does. if there's a contested decision, you go to the VAR (video assistant referee).

    in other words, you only consult the other system (video, AI, etc) when there's a call that is disputed that might affect the result of a game

  • ...for example, see this video example: https://youtu.be/HG12q63ICzU [youtu.be]

    • That's not actually much of an "example". At no point in that video can you actually see where the ball is in relation to the plate, and they don't even show the PitchFX display that's common on TV broadcasts now. What you see is a batter that's upset with the call, but that's going to happen whether a call is good or bad.

  • Players will need to adjust to the actual rectangular strike zone being called, rather than the somewhat oval approximation of the strike zone that human umpires tend to call.

    Also, MLB may decide to adjust the top of the strike zone somewhat downward. Human umpires have almost never called balls in the top of the zone a strike, and that's pretty well ingrained in the game.

  • Does the strike zone automatically adjust/comply to the individual batter's stature? [wikipedia.org]
  • I could have sworn this was already happening 2 years ago.

  • The system has several very remote cameras installed to make the call. What if the ump or their mask had a built in AR display that displayed strike zone and possibly ball position?

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