Strike Zone
 

Interesting article from The Hardball Times. Look for: That was a strike?
by Josh Kalk


http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/ar...-was-a-strike/

Would you welcome this technology at the college and high school level?

for training and development, I would love a shot to do a few games with this technology...but I'd like it to be blindly applied where I didn't know it was on...otherwise, I think I might tend to overthink my game...

For internal evaluation purposes, it would definitely be useful. I'm not so sure about it being available to coaches and fans though. ;)

I liked seeing the c*** shot strikes balled and visa versa. Makes a guy wonder if they were FYCs.

I would think the cost is simply too high for use in MiLB or College, let alone HS. Multiple cameras, video recoding and computers are not cheap, then you have trained operators and later supervisors to clean up the raw data.

MLB spends quite a bit of time cleaning up the data before using for evaluation / training, though I think umpires receive a CD/DVD right after the game (Or next day?).

I have done a couple of games in a stadium with the PITCHf/x system when it was first veing evaluated. The raw result depends very much on the operator getting the initial settings correct. Results from a game or two is eye opening to say the least!

Have you read the report on race/ethnicity? That's some crazy stuff in there... I'd like to think it isn't true but the academic side of me says believe it.

I did skim through the stuff on race/ethnicity...very tough to equal correlation and causation...if anything maybe it suggests that we all have subconscious bias and there's nothing you can do about it. I was surprised that they have seemingly accurate data to even suggest such a thing though...

It probably is wishful thinking, but it would be an excellent internal training tool...coaches and fans though, at anything below The Show would be dumb.

Three comments and a note
 

Don't put 100% faith in the system right now either. Video replay consistently shows the umpire made the right call and that the PitchF/X data is way off by considerably more than a "1/2" inch. Note a few of the pitches right down the middle of the strike zone have been marked as a called ball pitch. Likely, some of the balls outside the zone have been marked as a called strike pitch. Joel Zamaya was reportedly clocked at 103mph by Pitch FX data which was later shown to be incorrect. There are bugs creeping into the system that conflict with video replay and the standard radar gun.

1) Note Werth and Polanco's individual strike zones.
2) Note path of ball over plate in Sonnanstein to Posada
3) Note all those inside/outside strikes.
I saved a copy of some of those "confusing" comments I made and deleted in the gray strike zone thread which have now been validated by MLB Pitch FX data. :D

How can you make statements 1 and 2 and then expect anyone to believe statement 3?

The third statement reflects some of the difficulty in calling a black and white, rulebook strike zone.

No