Robot Umpires 🤖

I was watching the Blue Jays vs Brewers game yesterday afternoon and made a mental note that the home plate umpiring was exceptionally bad. This morning, recalling my observation from yesterday, I checked the umpire scorecards from yesterday's games to see if I was correct.

Behold.

https://m.stacker.news/35192

Only 79% of strikes called correctly, or said differently 21% of strikes called incorrectly. 21% is a far too large a number in my opinion. This post is not meant as cope or umpire blaming for another pathetic Jays loss, they earned every bit of their loss, but instead to question why in 2024 it is considered acceptable for such an important element of the game to just be wrong 21% of the time.

Minor League Baseball is testing a ball and strike challenge system. I for one hope MLB expedites the process of at least integrating a challenge system if they aren't going to go full automated strike zone (Robot Umpires).

What's your stance on Robot Umpires? or more broadly the increased usage of technology and eventually AI to officiate sporting events?

Sats for all, GR

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151 sats \ 0 replies \ @Coinsreporter 13 Jun freebie

Don't know if they use any tech assisted umpiring in Baseball or not but in Cricket it's used a lot these days. And I can confirm that this has positively impacted decision making in games of Cricket.

The Decision Review System (DRS), formerly known as the Umpire Decision Review System (UDRS), is a technology-based system used in cricket to assist the match officials in their decision-making. On-field umpires may choose to consult with the third umpire (known as an Umpire Review), and players may request that the third umpire consider a decision of the on-field umpires (known as a Player Review).

But these decisions can often be wrong as well.

100 sats \ 3 replies \ @Undisciplined 13 Jun freebie

I've come around on the idea of keeping human refs, even after they're technologically obsolete.

Part of our identity as Raiders fans is that we play every game 1 vs 2. We have to beat the other team and the officials (and often ourselves). I also like that part of maturing as a player is learning a bunch of sneaky little tricks that officials aren't going to catch.

The main reason, though, is that football and basketball would grind to a halt if every infraction were called to the letter. How often do you hear "they could call holding every play"? How many casual travels and carries go uncalled or minor push-offs?

Human error is part of it and bitching about getting screwed by the refs is a major part of sports fandom.

69 sats \ 2 replies \ @grayruby OP 13 Jun

How do you square this with how much betting has become embedded with the leagues now? Do you think the sportsbooks pressure the leagues to ensure accuracy in game results?

I know the sportsbooks themselves don't particularly care but if their customers demand it, they will demand it.

50 sats \ 1 reply \ @Undisciplined 13 Jun

That's a really tricky topic. More than the fact of corruption, the appearance and possibility of corruption can really undermine both sports viewing and sports wagering.

People really don't want to bet on rigged matches, so the sportsbooks do have a vested interest in making sure things appear above board. It wouldn't surprise me if they're the ones tipping off the leagues about players gambling.

Do robotic refs help with this, though? Or, do they introduce another layer of opacity where people will speculate about meddling?

I doubt the leagues would make their code open source and there will still be bad calls. However, now we won't have useful intuition about what caused the bad calls like we do with human error, because it will be some weird software quirk.

Whatever happens, the appearance of impropriety needs to get fixed. We can't have outlandishly bad calls in consequential moments, anymore, because no ones going to have the benefit of the doubt going forward.

42 sats \ 0 replies \ @grayruby OP 13 Jun

We go from worrying about officials being biased or bribed to software being hacked.

50 sats \ 4 replies \ @BitcoinAbhi 13 Jun

I believe that this is a good idea. This will increase the accuracy of correct decisions in the game. I believe that 100 percent of the decisions will be correct

21 sats \ 3 replies \ @grayruby OP 13 Jun

Should be the goal to let the players decide the game not the umpires/referees/officials

50 sats \ 2 replies \ @BitcoinAbhi 13 Jun

Yes agree, but Players can even take wrong decisions to win. what you think about it?

21 sats \ 1 reply \ @grayruby OP 13 Jun

Absolutely but I would rather a game decided by a players wrong decision than an umpire's wrong decision.

92 sats \ 0 replies \ @BitcoinAbhi 13 Jun

Okay, but I do not think that will ever happen. Because there is hardly a game without a referee. Yes, technology can definitely play a big role in the game

50 sats \ 1 reply \ @siggy47 13 Jun

And that was after Angel Hernandez's "retirement".

54 sats \ 0 replies \ @grayruby OP 13 Jun

Just following in Angel's footsteps I guess.

50 sats \ 0 replies \ @MANI 18 Jun

Whatever sport, I am in favor of machine/technology to be a part of but It all comes down to how it is being used. Most of the time humans who supervise the technology are still making mistakes, the human error is still there, which needs to be eradicated.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @BTCFC 13 Jun

I'm not too sure about baseball, but for soccer most major professional leagues use video assistant referees (VAR) nowadays. Before the implementation of VAR, goal line technology was implemented as a way to immediately check whether or not a ball had crossed the goal line for a goal. I would say given goal line technology has been around a bit longer, it's been an overall plus for the game.

VAR initially was met with extreme skepticism across the world as I feel all technologies are not just limited within the sports world. Many would argue that the human element of officiating is what made the sport fun to watch, or that VAR would ruin the fluidity of the game and make it more a stop start game like American football. But now I think it's hard to argue against the fact that VAR and technology at large has made the game more fair.

The interesting part though is that each league has their own unique approach to using VAR. This has created criticism and confusion as a call that may be reviewed with VAR in one league might not be allowed in another. And sometimes a call that takes very fast to check in one league might take much longer in another, as was the case this year with the Premier League on average taking much longer for a call to be made compared to the Champions League.

Another issue with VAR is that ultimately the decision is reviewed and made by humans who are always prone to making errors regardless of how good the information they receive is. Nonetheless, I'm sure if the stats of officiating errors was being recorded and compared against the data prior to VAR and other technologies, we would notice a significant decrease in percentage of errors.

Ironically, VAR was developed and put in place in order to make the jobs of the referees easier and less stressful, but on the contrary has put more critical eyes on them as we now expect them to be near perfect every game. When I first started learning to referee games, my instructor told me to 'become part of the field' meaning that it is never my job to stand out or to make the game about me or my referee team and that I have successfully refereed if I end the game with minimal attention brought upon myself. But VAR all too often has put the spotlight on the referees instead of the game itself.

All in all, VAR is still in the process of improving. I think with more time and as things like AI become integrated into the technology it'll only serve to benefit the game further. I do feel though that everyone who plays or watches a sport should be obligated to officiate a few games of whatever sport they support in order to experience first hand the pressures and difficulties of refereeing. It honestly is a brutal job because you will almost never have a day in which you receive 100% customer satisfaction. And you often end up being the bad guy and receive all this blame over some game.

Anyways, I digress. My view of technology within sports has become more nuanced. I'm sure it's here to stay, and there will be more of it, and with time most of us will come to accept them as long as it doesn't completely ruin the games we love.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @grayruby OP 13 Jun

Yes, I like that they go to VAR and don't leave it in the referees hands. Very good addition to the game. Do you like it as a player?