Strike Three

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by Evan Howard3 views·Updated Oct 12, 2022
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  1. Hello and welcome to my research topic titled Strike Three.
  2. A research topic looking at M. L. B. A. B. S. System for english 402.
  3. Most fans,
  4. when watching baseball love to argue balls and strikes
  5. either further team or against them yet what if
  6. there was a more accurate way to call balls
  7. and strikes that would get rid of judgments?
  8. In recent years. The talk of utilizing an A. B. S.
  9. System or automated ball strike system, also known as a robot umpire,
  10. has gained traction.
  11. This system has the expressed duty of improving the accuracy
  12. of called balls and strikes by the home plate umpire.
  13. Other sports such as tennis have adopted new technology
  14. to help with the accuracy of in game calls.
  15. So why shouldn't the MLB?
  16. Some fans think that taking the human element due to the empire
  17. out of baseball will detract from the sanctity of the sport.
  18. However, with advances and interest in sports analytics,
  19. it's now easier for fans of baseball to quantitatively see
  20. how good or bad the home plate umpire might be.
  21. The MLB glossary defines the strike zone as the area over home plate from
  22. the midpoint between the batter's shoulders and the top of the uniform pants.
  23. When the batter is in his stance and prepared to swing at a pitch ball
  24. and a point just below the kneecap.
  25. The width of the strike zone
  26. stretches
  27. the width of home plate, which is 17 inches.
  28. This width goes from the outer edges of home plate, which is often
  29. referred to as black to black because of the black edges of the plate.
  30. While these dimensions are standard across the M. O. B. The strike zone height is not
  31. the strike zone delineates between players based
  32. off their height and their stance,
  33. either lengthening or contracting.
  34. This coupled with the extreme speeds the pictures are thrown.
  35. Make it difficult for umpires to be accurate all the time.
  36. Umpires have an average age of 50 years old,
  37. with the oldest active umpire being 66 and the youngest being 36.
  38. As we age, our eyesight begins to deteriorate,
  39. so it's no surprise that an older aged umpire correlates
  40. with a higher air rate when calling balls and strikes.
  41. In fact,
  42. a 2014 study published in the journal Management Science entitled Seeing stars.
  43. Matthew effects and status bias in Major League baseball. By J.
  44. Kim and Brandon King found that umpires mistakenly called a ball
  45. a strike and vice versa about 14.7% of the time.
  46. Various studies have found that on average, an MLB game has anywhere between
  47. Roughly 150 - 300 pitches.
  48. This equates to about 19 to 38 missed ball and strike calls per game.
  49. The system is put in place by Trackman,
  50. which specializes specializes in using radars to track everything from a pitch
  51. of speed to where the ball is hit on the field.
  52. Track man sets up cameras and radars around the field
  53. that triangulate on the strike zone above home plate.
  54. The cameras and radar capture where the ball crosses the front edge of home plate.
  55. If the hitter doesn't swing,
  56. the data is captured, determine whether the pitch was a ball or strike.
  57. The verdict of striker ball is then passed to the
  58. umpire via an iphone that is connected to an ear.
  59. But
  60. ultimately the umpire has the final decision on whether to agree with a robot or not.
  61. Now, according to Joe West who was the longest tenured M. O. B. Empire,
  62. the robotic robotic umpires they're using.
  63. They've proven it misses 7% of the pitches.
  64. However,
  65. if this is true it's still a remarkable improvement
  66. because it cuts the empire air rate in half.
  67. My qualifications for expertise on this subject are I
  68. have about 25 plus years of baseball experience.
  69. I pitched in college
  70. coached high school
  71. baseball and summer select baseball as well.
  72. What I'm looking for from you is
  73. some baseball knowledge experience in researching various
  74. topics for college exposure to data analytics is a plus but not needed.
  75. I hope at the end of this project that we can collaborate together
  76. to produce work that will convince robot umpire naysayers to change their views.
  77. I hope that you consider my topic proposal for further research.
  78. Go mm