Strike zone

[buckweat]

Originally Posted by SAump

It appears Questec has the same problem I do.

"A core weakness of the system is that it consistently misses certain types of pitches, mostly sweeping pitches (sliders and curves), as well as late, hard, 'boring' pitches such as the cut fastball. These pitches can land all the way into the opposite batter's box, but because they caught a tiny slice of the front corner of the plate, the computer calls them strikes. No umpire who values his safety is going to call a pitch that lands in the opposite batter's box a strike. "

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/ar...articleid=3326

Saump,

You certainly hit it on the nose by smiling at the failings of both umpires and technology. ;-)

I’ve read that article before, and at 1st reading thought, “WOW, What a piece of crap!”

But on close observation, it turns out that it is exactly the kind of rhetorical thing I was referring to.

Look at when it was written. That’s nearly 2 years ago! Do you or anyone else believe that none of the problems he described have been corrected and no improvements made since he was a QuesTec operator? If you do, just look at your new cell phone, automobile, TV, or anything else based on technology, and see how much they’ve changed in 2 years.

Did you notice that even though he points out many of the strange things goin’ on, he noted one of the “critical” things. The calibration involves setting the dots on certain parts of the field, with the back point of the plate being the most critical. This calibration gives the cameras a center point from which to track each pitch. Why not the front end of the plate or someplace else? It would appear that the “point” of the plate means something. ;-)

Another thing I noticed when I read it was that the “strike zone” he says he set, certainly isn’t the strike zone in the book.

Setting the lines at the top of the belt and at the hollow of the back knee only takes about 10 pitches for a beginner to master; as opposed to

horizontal line at the midpoint between the top of the shoulders and the top of the uniform pants, and the lower level is a line at the hallow beneath the knee cap.

The book says nothing about the “back” knee being the only one to be used, but on reflection, it’s the only one that makes sense. Also, since he says he set the top of the zone at the top of the pants, either he used a little poetic license and exaggerated a tad, was just flat out wrong, or was told to set it there by the people wanting the results of the system, MLB.

But if you read the article by Ivan Santucci you can read through the link, you can see that once the line is set at the top of the pants, the computer automatically moves it up 2.5 ball widths, or about 7-8”, or to whatever precision the computer figures the diameter to be.

If one reads the whole article by Santucci, one can also see that the zone doesn’t depend one whit where the batter stands, and he pretty well defines not only what it looks like, but answers a great many other questions about it.

Also, if you look at what he says eventually gets put on the CD, using phrases such as “travel through the strike zone”, “throughout the strike zone”, sure indicates to me there is more than just one point where the pitch is supposed to be measured.

I thought his pointing out the major strength of the UIS as being its “ensured objectivity” was pretty telling. The only argument anyone could possibly have is if the system calibration is correct, and that would be obvious in viewing the CD because the lines defining the zone would be seen.

What he points out as a “core weakness” is also interesting, and seems to be pretty much in line with most of what are the “traditional” responses we’ve seen here. However, he makes no mention of whether what he’s saying is his opinion, or that of MLB.

His pointing out that even an exceptional ump with a very high accuracy rate still misses around 15 pitches a game should say something. And, no, not that umps suck! But rather that there is lots of room for improvement, and that using the system will help umps to make that improvement if the want to.