Pitch perfect

If you have a calculator and only a few seconds to complete a problem, will you multiply 10-digit numbers by hand? If you need to go a mile in a minute, will you hop in a car or run?

PITCHf/x, the tracking system used on TV to show whether pitches are balls or strikes, has three tracking cameras and a $10 million zone evaluation system in every major league ballpark. PITCHf/x has been around for a decade now and has proven its accuracy: Major League Baseball (MLB) now uses it to rate umpires.

Mike Port, MLB’s vice president of umpiring, acknowledges that his men in black and blue are only 95 percent accurate when calling balls and strikes. That’s putting the best spin on it, because pitching really is a game of inches, and the real question is what happens to the minority of pitches that are an inch inside or outside the strike zone. Umpires get those right only about half the time.

The use of PITCHf/x in an actual game to replace an umpire calling balls and strike is no longer an abstract, theoretical notion. Last year a PITCHf/x system umpired balls and strikes in two games between California minor league teams. No glitches. No delays. The plate umpire did not join the ranks of the unemployed, for he still had to decide on check swings, foul tips, and plays at home plate—but batters and pitchers could do their best without having to alter their play to accommodate iffy umpiring.

Last year a PITCHf/x system umpired balls and strikes in two games between California minor league teams. No glitches. No delays.

One argument against computerized calling of balls and strikes: Most of those calls aren’t as crucial as safe-or-out calls at the bases and fair-or-foul calls down the line. But averages go way down when batters have to swing an inch outside the strike zone to protect themselves against expansive umpiring—and home runs go way up when pitchers have to throw an inch closer to the center of the strike to protect against constrictors.

(What difference does it make? The Atlantic in 2014 analyzed the record of Marlins outfielder Giancarlo Stanton, an excellent hitter. With a count of two balls, one strike, he was batting .385. With a count of one ball, two strikes, he batted .176.)

A second argument: The human element is part of the game—but baseball has already reduced that in the interest of accuracy for most umpiring decisions: Close calls almost always go under the replay microscope, unless they involve balls and strikes. And yet, those calls are often the hardest: A runner can go 20 mph, but a pitch can travel 100 mph, and the umpire has to peer over a catcher.

Unless we love “the human element” so much that arguing is a highlight of our day, we can learn from the experience of tennis: Who misses the era of infuriated brats in white shorts screaming at that sport’s umpires? Hawk-eye technology now shows everyone where the ball lands, and tennis rather than temper is now the highlight of the day.

No one these days pretends that pen-and-paper produces more accurate answers to big multiplication problems than calculators do. Let’s kill not the umpires but the bad calls they sometimes make, given the limitations of the human eye and the passions of the game.