It is fully within the ability of the MLB to make balls-and-strikes calls consistent and correct.
Baseball is taking a small step away from human umpiring with a robot challenge system for balls and strike next year.
This is welcome but insufficient. Human umpiring of balls and strikes is a travesty that is terrible for the game.
Check out this third-strike call in the Blue Jays vs. Red Sox game last night. George Springer was rung up on a ball in an absolutely key situation with a division on the line. (Jomboy has a breakdown of the at-bat, which included a dubious foul call, and the aftermath.)
What MLB was, in effect, saying to George Springer with that strike call was, “You’ve spent most of your life trying to train yourself as a batter to make the incredibly difficult, minuscule judgments necessary to distinguish between a ball and strike in that situation and you got it right, but we are punishing you for being correct.”
Why? Why does the MLB do this when it has the ready means to get it right? It was one thing to rely on human umpires behind the plate when it was the 1890s or 1990s, but it’s not anymore.
The other thing is that human umpiring has put a ridiculous emphasis on catchers mastering the art of moving their gloves into the strike zone, so-called “framing,” to get balls called strikes because umpires are so easily fooled. Catchers are winning Gold Gloves based on framing! This practice wouldn’t be so egregious if we all couldn’t see exactly what the catchers are doing on TV and didn’t know every time they gulled an umpire into an erroneous call. This is a little like golfers at the Masters getting to kick the ball a couple of feet in a more favorable direction as long as an official doesn’t notice it.
When we eventually get full-robot umpiring this charade will end.
It is fully within the ability of the MLB to make balls-and-strikes calls consistent and correct. Hopefully, this change is only a couple of years away now, and I’m grateful that Rob Manfred, an excellent commissioner who has markedly improved the game, is heading in this direction.