"When positioning himself properly, the umpire can see the entire plate.............and sometimes a MILF or two."

I needed a good laugh. Thanks Garth!!

Just another dumb statement
 

"Sandy Alderson, MLB's executive VP for baseball operations, tells Rumblings he's no longer in the QuesTec debate club. But after Schilling's remarks, he did have the Elias Sports Bureau do some research. And Elias found that there was actually a slightly higher percentage of strikes called in parks that have QuesTec (31.6 percent) than in parks without it (31.0)."

Found this on ESPN. How dumb really is Alderson?

The pitchers know which parks have the QuesTec system, they know they have to throw it over the plate so they do.

The pitchers is would hurt would still be Shilling, Maddox, Glavine, who are just stubborn and refuse to give into the hitters no matter which park and what the count is.

This percentage in my mind makes so sense at all.

thanks
David

Last week I was in Oakland calling a HS section state championship game. I inspected the QuesTec system and the MLB Umpire manual that was in the locker room. A couple of observations:

The QuesTec cameras do what we umpire's do: use fixed reference points to determine where the ball is in reference to the "zone." The problem is that the QuesTec cameras don't have the big fat catcher moving his rear back and forth, left or right, which can change our (umpire's) perspective.

The MLB umpire manual clearly points out how the system is to be used for evaluation. (Each umpire being evaluated gets a DVD of the game.) Included in the manual are sample evaluation forms and criteria. A 90% is listed as acceptable. There is language to account for "missed calls" or other "errors." You may agree or disagree with the how or why, the motivation for using it(QuesTec)or how its effected the game, but you can't say that Y'ALL HAVEN'T BEEN WARNED!!

So what do you think of "missing" 10% of your calls and still be an "acceptable" umpire?

Whatever happened to playing a game? As I grew up playing civic & Little League baseball and watching (& coaching + umpiring) my kids go through Little League; umpiring, good or bad was part of the game.

If MLB really wants to improve the umpiring. Take the system out of actual game. Let the ump call the game the way he thinks it should be called. Then after the game let him look at the analysis.

The Questec system is not mature enough to be the umpire during a game. It will improve over time. But until then keep out of game.

Play ball!