Quote:
Originally posted by Patrick Szalapski
This from AP.
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NEW YORK
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To aid umpires, baseball agreed to a five-year contract with Questec Inc., which will provide five devices that can track balls and strikes to within two-fifths of an inch.
Questec already has developed technology for Fox's baseball telecasts that can track pitches within two inches.
"It will determine at the end of the day how many pitches umpires were correct and incorrect on," Nelson said. "It's an effort to develop consistency in the strike zone among umpires. We're not trying to replace umpires and we're not using this to evaluate umpires. We're using this to train."
When the system is in place, Nelson said, an umpire would receive a disk after a game that will allow him to review pitch calls. A similar system was used after last season in the Arizona Fall League.
"He can work on areas of his game that need help and he can go over it with his supervisors," Nelson said. "The umpires were very involved with the development as we were rolling this thing out."
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EEYAAAHH! How long do we think this will remain simply a training tool? Who will be the first MLB umpire to get fired because he was consistently unable to match his calls to the machine? How long will it be before this training tool is used to decide who gets the plate in a World Series game? Only God, Sandy Alderson and Ralph Nelson know, apparently. (grin)