"No matter how good you are, you're going to lose one-third of your games. No matter how bad you are you're going to win one-third of your games. It's the other third that makes the difference." ~Tommy Lasorda
There have been lots of times, even in the last year or two, that Dan Brooks of brooksbaseball.net has been aware that a system at a particular park needed to be recalibrated for a while before it would get done, there just hasn't been the urgency that you'd expect if there was more at stake.
"Reality tells us there are no guarantees. Except that some day Jon Lester will be on that list of 100-game winners." - Peter Gammons
I'm not against the technology. But I've done enough large scale systems integration and computer software projects to know there are an *awful* lot of things to work out to put a system like this into live play. And a gazillion things can (and do) go wrong and need to be worked out.
It's one thing to say that "oh, they have it all now, it will all work perfectly" and then take a *really* close look at it (because baseball wonks like us will) and work out the technical minutiae of everything that's done.
If MLB is serious about it, put it in place in a pilot down in single A ball where the mistakes won't be magnified. Work out all the kinks, fixes mistakes, work out issues, and take a season to get it right and prove it out. Because from what I've read in here, umps are right 92-95% of the time and the current technology is right 97% of the time. This is a *huge* change in the game for that extra 3% and you damn well get it right the first time out in a MLB park. Because if you don't, you'll get crucified over it. My favorite saying when asked about a project is "anything is possible with time and money". So put some time and money in at it.
She used to wake me up with coffee ever morning
Well, no disrespect, but don't you have about 20 years of umpiring experience (or something like that).. If they let you ump the minors for a few years fulltime, do you really think there'd be that much of a drop off in quality from a MLB ump to you? I kind of doubt it (assuming you have decent eyesight).
Umpiring is not that difficult, and it will be even easier when the computer is calling balls and strikes.
Can I prove that the scab umpires were as good as the regular umps? Well, since we can't agree on what the criteria is, it can't be proven.
[Phil ] Castellini celebrated the team's farm system and noted the team had promising prospects who would one day be great Reds -- and then joke then they'd be ex-Reds, saying "of course we're going to lose them". #SellTheTeamBob
Nov. 13, 2007: One of the greatest days in Reds history: John Allen gets the boot!
Its funny, I call my best games sitting on my couch watching the game on TV with slow motion replays and numerous different camera angles. The thing that sucks is they make me go out in the heat or cold and force me to judge a 90MPH pitch without benefit of an instant replay or different camera angle. To bad they wont just let me sit here on my couch, put the games on TV and let me some how call it from here. If I could do that then I would definitely agree with you that umpiring really is not that difficult.
"Boys, I'm one of those umpires that misses 'em every once in a while so if it's close, you'd better hit it." Cal Hubbard
"Boys, I'm one of those umpires that misses 'em every once in a while so if it's close, you'd better hit it." Cal Hubbard
This isn't software, it's instrumentation. And they figured that out before WWII. An automated strikezone isn't that much more complex than the motion sensor for the lights in my neighbor's driveway or electronic toll payment. It's a thing passing through a space.
I agree they ought to take a year to perfect the system before they switch. Test it to death, work out any glitches. But this isn't hard. I was talking to folks about laser-fired disaster recovery systems more than a decade ago. As has been noted, we've created Higgs-Boson particles in a super collider. We've mapped the human genome. If we really wanted to, we could probably monitor the strikezone via satellite. Just for giggles.Originally Posted by Roy Tucker
Last edited by M2; 11-15-2012 at 11:59 PM.
I'm not a system player. I am a system.
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