Teams that once screamed at umpires now politely tap a helmet and wait for a computer to explain, in decimals, how wrong they were.
CINCINNATI, United States (The On Deck News) – Major League Baseball’s robot umpires overturned 54 percent of challenged calls in their debut season, and the Cincinnati Reds were the best in the league at it, winning 62 percent of their appeals. Team officials confirmed Thursday that the achievement has not made anyone at Great American Ball Park feel any better, because nobody has ever felt better after being told they were right by a machine that was not asked how it felt about it.
The Numbers Behind the Tapping
The league logged 10,557 challenges across the season, roughly 4.35 per game, which works out to a baseball game now containing a small courtroom. Catchers won 59 percent of their challenges, batters 49 percent, and pitchers 40 percent, a ranking that analysts say confirms what dugouts have long suspected: the person closest to the umpire’s armpit is the person who knows the least about where the ball went.
Cincinnati also led the majors in net run gain at plus 16.8, while Cleveland finished last at minus 13.4 and Pittsburgh had the lowest success rate at 47 percent. Dr. Marguerite Oyelaran-Finch, who runs the Queen City Institute for Appeals Research out of a converted ticket booth, says the gap is simple to explain.
“Cincinnati challenges like a city that has been told for decades its chili is not technically chili,” Oyelaran-Finch said. “You develop a sense for when you are right and when you are merely loud. The Reds learned the difference. Pittsburgh appears to challenge on vibes.”
Two Strikes and You Are Out of Feelings
Under the rules, a team loses its challenge privilege after two incorrect appeals, a policy that front offices describe as the first time in history a baseball team has been legally required to be wrong in moderation. The hitter or catcher must tap a cap or helmet immediately, with no help from the dugout, leaving roughly two seconds to decide whether a pitch caught the corner or merely caught the mood.
The clock has produced a new kind of athlete. Early analysis of the system found that some front offices reportedly tell hitters never to challenge on a first pitch, which Dale Wozniewski, a longtime hitting instructor at a Cincinnati batting cage, calls “advice that was clearly written by someone who has never been wronged on a first pitch.”
Comedian Lenny Ketterhagen, who performs Thursday nights at a comedy club above a bowling alley in Over-the-Rhine, has built a ten-minute set around the topic. “Used to be you could scream at an umpire for forty-five seconds and get thrown out of the game,” Ketterhagen told a crowd of 31. “Now you tap your helmet, a computer says ‘no,’ and the umpire has to stand there with the same look my dad had at my college graduation.”
The Ninth Inning Problem
The data reveals a cruel pattern. The ninth inning produced the most challenges of any frame, 1,366 of them, but only 40 percent succeeded, while challenges in innings one through three averaged 1,005 and succeeded 61 percent of the time. Analysts attribute the drop to a well-documented phenomenon in which players who are about to lose become certain, at the cellular level, that they were robbed.
Reds officials, who spent the season studying this, circulated an internal document to the dugout staff. A copy reviewed by The On Deck News reads as follows.
NOTICE TO ALL PLAYERS, CATCHERS AND PERSONS WHO LOOK LIKE THEY MIGHT TAP SOMETHING. Effective immediately: (1) A challenge is not a protest. (2) The word “robbed” is not an acceptable reason. (3) If you must challenge in the ninth inning, please do so with the quiet confidence of a person whose odds are 40 percent. (4) Do not look at the dugout. The dugout is also confused. (5) Yandy Diaz went an entire season without challenging once, 686 plate appearances, and he is fine. Be like Yandy. – Department of Appeals and Reflection, Cincinnati
Diaz, in fact, made 686 plate appearances without a single challenge, the most in the majors, a feat that experts say demonstrates either remarkable discipline or a man who simply refuses to participate in the legal system.
Catchers, Umpires and the Gap in Between
J.T. Realmuto posted an 81 percent success rate among catchers with at least 75 challenges, which the Reds tried to treat as a competitive threat until they realized he was on another team. In the postseason, batters won 59 percent of their challenges, and Realmuto delivered the first game-ending ABS challenge in postseason history, a moment one Philadelphia fan described as “the first time a robot has ended a game and left everyone cheering.”
Umpires, for their part, are coping. Andy Fletcher had the highest overturn rate among umpires at 66.1 percent, 80 of 121, while Jansen Visconti had the lowest among umpires with triple-digit challenges at 42.2 percent. The umpires’ union has asked that the figures stop being described as “a report card” and be reframed as “a collaborative dialogue with a ruler.”
Retired umpire and part-time tour guide Gerald Szymanowski, 71, says he has mixed feelings. “In my day the strike zone was whatever I decided it was, and I decided it with total confidence and no evidence,” Szymanowski said. “Honestly I miss the freedom. Now there is a laser and a spreadsheet and a man in a booth. Where is the poetry?”
Where Robots and Roots Meet
If the Reds’ farm system teaches anything, it is that precision is overrated until it is delivered by an algorithm. Players in Louisville and Chattanooga have already trained under automated zones, and some report their arguing skills have atrophied to the point where they now look at an umpire and say “good call” out of habit, a development that has alarmed lifelong fans. The robot is only as reliable as its calibration, which is why many locals compare it to a weather app that tells a field of corn to enjoy the sunshine: technically measurable, cheerfully confident, and unaware of the hailstorm coming.
Not everyone is satisfied. A survey of 400 season-ticket holders conducted by the Over-the-Rhine Fan Assembly found that 71 percent want the system expanded to include “a challenge for bad vibes,” while 12 percent want the umpire’s mask replaced with a tablet. Another 17 percent said they were there for the bratwurst and had not been listening.
The mood has reached the humor desks as well. Editors at Bohiney report a flood of reader mail requesting a ranked list of every challenge ever lost by a visibly furious man in a batting helmet. The Reds, asked whether such a list exists, said only that they would like to consult the ruler.
Oyelaran-Finch said she plans to spend the winter studying whether a tapped helmet can be appealed. “Ideally we would have a robot to rule on the robot,” she said. “At that point we can all go home.”
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/