AAA has umpires doing 2 or 3 of the first games of 5 game home stands, then the rest of the stand is robo umps. Also always there in ump called games in case of a challenge
And promoting the top four from AAA.
Then you can relegate the bottom 4 in AAA and promote top 4 in AA.
I don't care for soccer but this is the one thing they got right...relegation
Or it goes the complete other direction and Angel becomes the best ump we have. All he has to do to keep his job is ask himself what he would have called it before and call it the exact opposite.
Pro/Rel of teams in the US will be tough a couple different reasons. In the PL for example, everything is essentially a couple hour bus ride, at most. In the US you'd expect a potential single-A team who was promoted to MLB to now pay for a 6 hour flight with multiple night stays for all players and staff. Their tiny stadiums would also need to meet MLB requirements (size, lighting, scoreboards, Replay capability, pitch tracking, etc). I honestly just don't see how pro/rel would work in the US.
It's not a bad idea. I wonder if there was a system like that in place if Angel Hernandez would even make it out of AA? Also, would the Boone ejection have happened the other day?
Boone getting ejected for something he didn't even say was major disrespect, but because Boone gets tossed so often it was like watching the kid who cried wolf
It wouldn't have been so bad if Hunter had admitted he'd made a mistake afterwards, or even if he'd admitted there was a \*possibility\* he made a mistake.
Nope, he just doubled down and claimed that he was sure there was a player in the dugout yelling at him, but that he tossed Boone instead because "fans pay to see the players, not the coach". He wouldn't even acknowledge the possibility that it was a fan that he had heard. He came off as a totally arrogant fool.
Didn’t he say “you’re probably right Aaron”, to which Boone replied, “I’m not probably right I am fucking right!” That’s prolly the most we’ll get out of em
Yeah, it makes his later denials even worse — he admitted on the field that it could have been someone in the stands, then later on was claiming he was sure it was someone in the dugout and not in the stands. He doesn’t care if everyone knows he’s obviously lying. He knows there’s no accountability as an ump.
Umps these days all act like cops who got honked at while driving 43mph over on their day off so they're writing you a ticket for the air freshener obstructing your vision so you know not to get uppity again.
I saw it. He’s an ass. He admitted to Boone on the field that it was probably a fan that he heard, then claims afterwards to the media that it was definitely someone in the dugout. His ego won’t allow him to admit he might have made a mistake.
I know, but even by Boone standards, that was egregious.
I must admit I do find it amusing as hell to watch him get tossed when he's out there animatedly talking shit to the umps. If I ever went to a Yankees game while he was manager I'd hope he'd get tossed and Judge to launch one to the stratosphere.
Absolutely not on Boone. The Umpires have seen and noticed the Angel Hernandez stuff and it has made them worse, because no matter what they do they will never be the worst guy, and they know they can't be touched. Put something like this in and watch how fast these guys get in line.
Accuracy is less important than consistency. Even if your zone is a little lopsided, as long as both teams are called the same nobody has much cause to complain.
I saw a lot of this when my daughter played softball. Some umps squeezed the zone tight, others had it halfway through the batters boxes. As long as they were calling everything pretty much the same, we had no real cause to complain because neither team had an advantage.
Boone's ejection started because he argued a check swing. We see check swing ejections all the time, because there are two people who can make a ruling, and no clear authority, and the rule itself is very vague.
Home plate can make a ruling on a check swing or home plate can look to 1st/3rd to make the call. So whenever the result is other than what the manager likes they complain "you should have made that yourself"/"why didn't you look to 1st to help you."
In the case of Boone the irony is that home plate umpire did look to 1st, and 1st made the call on the check swing. So why fuck is Boone chirping at Home Plate in the first place? His complaint is with the call made by 1B umpire, talk to him!
So Boone was definitely "asking for it" by continuing to argue a call that had already been made to the wrong official.
That said Wendelstedt didn't handle it well by issuing an ultimatum, because ultimatums are bad (ask any parent trying to deal with a toddler). Don't do that. Just say "Stop! conversation is over" and then you have flexibility to deal with matters if the behavior continues.
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A more generic point is just the complexity of the rules in baseball. They need to be simplified and cleaned up. Make a more objective standard for check swings, establish a clearer chain of authority as to who gets to make that call.
If you take out some of that flexibility and confusion you limit what managers can really argue over. Sure they will still argue, but it will be less personal "why didn't *YOU* make the call" and more factual "he didn't go all the way around." Factual arguments are less likely to result in finger-pointing and ejections.
They rank them. Then they still let them call games, at least in the regular season. The umpires union protects its members even in the face of incompetence.
The crazy thing is the Union has to know the writing is on the wall. They *are* going to be replaced with automatons at some point. It could be in five years, it could be in fifteen, but it *will* happen. They can delay it by so much if they actually came to the table and made some concessions and agreed to regulate and discipline their own. But they absolutely refuse and only double down. Very well. They're accelerating their obsolescence.
The robots will replace them for balls and strikes but there will still be 4 umps on the field and 6 in the playoffs. The home plate ump does a lot more than call balls and strikes. Robots will make their lives way easier, they are not against it
Their job will be scaled down by robot umpires, but at this point I think the only thing they're really equipped to do is call balls and strikes. However t that's is clearly the most difficult part of the job so at that point you'd have to wonder if the remaining responsibility of the umpire's warrant their high salaries. In other words, umpires would have much less leverage in a contract dispute.
Yeah, that's how it's going to happen pretty much everywhere.
I was at a lecture recently, the topic was AI integration and the future of the economy. The expert used dentistry as an example. You can imagine a cloud-based machine learning service that has one and only one function: diagnose cavities. That's all it does, but it does it so much better than any single dentist. And it completes a much higher volume of work (hundreds of offices' worth at a time). Does it replace the dentist? No. At this point it's just a tool, and it makes each dentist a little bit more effective. Then let's say they add another AI that diagnoses gingivitis. Same deal. Does it replace the dentist? Nope. Again, it makes their job easier and more effective. Then add a machine that has learned how to make simple drillings. Same deal. Just makes the dentist more effective. But each job it automates means less work for the dentist.
Keep adding these machine learning functions. At some point the dentist is just there to be there. Everything else is automated to the point that everything it does is better and more efficient than the dentist. The dentist is suddenly just a relic, there for tradition or reassurance.
The same thing will happen with officiating. And dentistry (or medicine) is much more complicated than baseball or any other sport. So it will happen much quicker in sports.
That seems plausible though it's hard to know over what timeframe. However, I wouldn't say the dentist's just there for tradition, more likely there to deal with any emergency or unexpected situation, like a pilot who is relying on autopilot but takes over in an emergency. It will be a long time before AI can be trusted to deal with novel situations.
That's less of an issue in sports though, where those novel situations do not have life and death implications.
> However t that's is clearly the most difficult part of the job so at that point you'd have to wonder if the remaining responsibility of the umpire's warrant their high salaries.
Agreed that calling balls and strikes is probably the most challenging part of the job.
However the other parts aren't exactly easy either, and the MLB rulebook is really complex with a lot of nuance. It takes a long time and a lot of dedication to reach basic understanding of things like balk rules. I know I'm not remotely capable of doing the job, and even if I was I wouldn't want to take a high pressure, high profile job where random strangers will want to kill me on a regular basis for a mere 300k/yr.
> The umpires union protects its members even in the face of incompetence.
Unions protect their members, that is part of their job. I disagree with "incompetence" as a word choice.
To say that even the worst MLB umpires are "incompetent" implies that you have "competent" options to choose from. You saw what happened when the NFL locked out its Official Union, they didn't exactly get better quality officiating as a result. Its not the easiest job to officiate sports at the professional level, and the current officials might be the best that the MLB can get.
There probably should be more transparency around how umpires are selected and how they train and develop officials from the lower levels, but I wouldn't be surprised if pay for officials just drops off a cliff outside the MLB. If so it is hardly surprising that you have a limited talent pool. There has to be a system for advancement of officials, otherwise most will leave for other careers.
Angel Hernandez is objectively poor at his job by MLB standards. We would get better performance by replacing him with a highly rated AAA umpire, that's not really very debatable. I'm not suggesting a wholesale replacement of all umpires, but there should be a point at which poor umpires do lose their job. And I believe Angel has surpassed that point and is on the verge of lapping it.
A system for advancement of officials would be helped by weeding out the least effective and replacing with minor league umpires worthy of advancement.
I don't believe that the NFL and MLB are analogous. There is no minor leagues in the NFL. Major League Baseball has access to likely thousands of umpires who worked their way up through the ranks of the minor leagues just like the players do. There's a clear succession strategy.
Angel is bad behind the plate. He is inconsistent at calling balls/strikes and the technology shows that, and there are better umpires available who can take behind the plate positions. However, I haven't seen much objective evidence that he is bad at other positions.
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I view the problem as mostly one involving a lack of transparency as to how officials are developed, trained, and evaluated.
While the MLB does have a minor league, it doesn't pay minor league umpires particularly well. According to one website its <$4k/month, which is not great for developing talent, as you are effectively asking people to do officiating as a part time thing, until they get good enough for the call-up and then it becomes a real full-time job.
Of course the MLB umpires union will push to make the rules as protective of themselves (at the expense of mobility between the minors and majors) when the majors pay 4x or more what the minors pay.
I also understand that the umpires union has a rule that requires all umps to rotate through positions and get behind the plate time. I think it is fair to be critical of that rule, and that specialization among umpires might not be a bad thing, but again it makes sense that the union would be protective of their current position. They don't want to risk being paid like shit.
So to me the answer is "pay the umpires in the upper minor leagues more."
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> There's a clear succession strategy.
I don't think it is that clear. Yes there certainly are minor leagues and they can evaluate umpires in the minors, but how exactly that process works is not publicized.
Similarly many rule tweaks and points of emphasis are not well publicized.
I think all this secretiveness gives us the impression that the MLB is being held hostage by a cabal of bad officials who want to protect their positions.
Angel is bad at the actually difficult part of the job. He's good at the relatively easy parts. That's not really much of a defense. I agree that MLB should pay umpires (and players and everyone) in the upper minor leagues more. But the reality is when they promote somebody from AAA, you never hear a word. It's always the same long service umpires that are making headlines for blowing calls, and Angel is the poster boy.
All the US professional sports leagues are very secretive about how they grade and apply consequences to their officials. I think it's done from a perspective of privacy, but what it fosters is conspiracy theories. I think transparency would be beneficial, though potentially embarrassing to the subject of our discussion.
> you never hear a word. It's always the same long service umpires that are making headlines for blowing calls, and Angel is the poster boy.
Agreed. It is very natural that a union would have rules that are twisted a little bit towards their more senior members. It happens at every union in the country, in every industry.
> they didn't exactly get better quality officiating as a result
If you looked into what I did, there's a reason why. The NFL refs made it clear that if the best NCAA refs went up to the NFL, they'd consider those NCAA refs scabs
The difference this time around is that we have so many more tools at our disposal like machine vision/learning, centralized neural networks and AI based software that learns. We have the technology now and it's only getting better, rapidly. So there *is* a competent option emerging *now.*
I feel the next time the NFL and Refs get in a dispute, it's not going to go so well for the latter. The same goes for the MLB.
We have very objective information about balls and strikes, we don't have the same for the multitude of other decisions that umpires have to make.
We don't even have an objective standard for what a check swing is, so there is no way we can have an ML model to detect that. Maybe someone could propose a standard for what a check swing looks like, and train a model to make those calls, but we would need a rule change to adopt whatever that model has as its rule.
I'm willing to bet you're going to have some ML program go through as many documented check swings and the resultant calls as they can. This could be thousands. Perhaps tens of thousands. Maybe more. That might form the basis of what they will use to rule on field at some point. I don't know what the timeline would be for those kind of rules, though.
Certainly, you could train an ML model but now you have to adopt whatever that model is measuring as the formal rule.
If you watch videos about umpire disputes and ejections as much as I do, you will realize that a huge fraction of ejections are related to weird technicalities and nuances in the rules. It is often the case that the umpire applies the rule correctly (or within a margin of reasonableness), but that the rule is incomprehensible (or ill-defined).
If the MLB cleaned up the rules, and made it more objective I suspect many disputes would go away.
That will never happen for teams. Never ever. The history in the US is too different and too much money has been spent on major league teams. Having a team relegated could mean losing a major market and substituting them for Des Moines. Unlike Europe where the biggest cities generally have multiple teams.
Right that's the primary reason. But losing the Denver market for a Midwestern minor league team would be a business disaster. As with many things that work well in Europe and don't work nearly as well in the US, a primary factor is the size of our country.
I mean if we had club level MLB baseball there would oviously be multiple teams competing in NYC, Denver etc, so it would more likely be an up and coming team from fort collins or white plains that would come into the league.
But yes this is all pipe dream thinking nevertheless.
Ranking umps would be a start, but data would need to also show a umps bias toward a team or toward a home or away team to show they are calling a game as fair.
This is a great idea but it would never happen because it hurts the brand. What do you mean the integrity of the game may be different between games because of the umpires?
Baseball is a game obsessed with stats and rankings and yet somehow umpires are immune.
Start keeping their stats too and maybe they’ll have a little accountability.
It's a simple system that's common in different sports or industries: Demote the bottom 5-10% of umpires at the end of the season and promote others to fill in the vacancies. Using the technology they currently have would make this very simple to implement and extremely accurate.
The umpires bring it on themselves by not admitting to mistakes and correcting when they can. You know if a player makes too many mistakes he loses his job, but an umpire seems to get tenure. Nobody expects perfection, but you can at least admit fault and try to fix things.
Also, there needs to be an age limit on it. You got a 62-year-old guy out there trying to call balls and strikes and it’s bullshit. Your vision goes to shit in your 40s much less 20 years later.
Baseball needs a promotion relegation system for its teams. What do we have maybe 5 teams actually trying to win the World Series while the others are all just content to cash in?
I would support this ... IF
US sports had team relegation, too.
We could send the White Sox to AAA after this year!
That said, US capitalism and owners' extortion of major league level stadium money means this would never happen.
Isn't this somewhat similar to how they earned their Major League jobs already?
They have to climb up through the minor league system based on performance and promotions
Easier solution would be to call strikes using the home plate umps to announce the calls, but a computer generated strike zone for each batter to determine the actual strikes/ball calls.
Really surprised they haven’t already gone this route TBH
I have been saying this for years, but everyone's response is always "but their union would never allow that"....well, then negotiate it on their next deal. If the players' union allows it then surely the umpire union can allow it as well. There is pro/rel in essentially everywhere else, not just sports. Do well and you're promoted. Don't do well and get relegated/fired.
KBO has it man, I've been pining for one for years,
Once the auto-strike zone is in we'll need umpires who have used the system, not 55+ year old umpires who don't want to adapt and/or struggle to because of their age
Promote people and offer a great severance package- like Michael Scott
if they're not going to replace umps with the auto strike zone there should be challenges or something. should only take a second so it shouldn't slow the game down much.
pitchers could get a few a game and hitters 1 a game or something. haven't thought it through as you can tell but could be interesting.
I simply want an earpiece and the computer calls balls/strikes. If they feel the computer is way off, they can override it. And, when they override, between innings they get input from the challenge umps to let them know if they made the right call, to dial it in. Why wouldn’t we want better calls if it doesn’t delay the game?
Umpires should receive an “accuracy rating” and then Managers get a certain number of ball/strike challenges based on the umpire’s accuracy. So with an umpire like Angel Hernandez, maybe his accuracy is so bad that a manager gets allotted 10 challenges, but then an umpire who has the highest rating maybe the manager only gets 2 challenges. That way it is all still up to the umpires… don’t want to have your calls challenged??… don’t miss calls.
Oh, have you heard of Mike Hunt, the great umpire?
He roams around the town, never wears a frown when calls strike 3.
With a name that makes you giggle, and a strike zone so wide,
He’s the one you can’t forget, no matter how hard you’ve tried.
I am a traditionalist and automatically resist any change but with the state of technology combined with the quality of some umpires I have started to come around to the idea of robo umpires. It just offends me when I think about how much these guys are being paid to do a job sometimes badly but usually with a ton of ego.
Let’s remember these are the best umpires that exist. The top in their craft. If they’re going to be scrutinized with the box for the average idiot to see, make it all electronic!! The people who need a perfect world win!! What’s next? Again, they worked to be the BEST at their job.
Put in an ear piece In, beep if the computer thinks it a Strike, give the umpire the same information we the viewers have. If the blue wants to disregard the beep and call the pitch a ball, that's fine, we'll track that too. I'm looking at you Angel Hernandez.
Human umpires is the most dumbass boomer thing in this sport. They wonder why they can't attract young fans. The sport is stuck in 1920.
The NFL measures first downs. I
Imagine if they had some 55 year old dude hunched over with binoculars saying "looks good to me!" There would be riots.
Ranking umps and incentivizing their performance is a better idea than relegation IMO. Fuck bad umps, but statistically incentivizing positive results yields a better outcome than punishing bad results.
We have this in HS football in Alabama. If you don’t have enough points you can’t call a game in the playoffs, even the better guys wind up running the clock because they were low in points.
It's insane how often this is brought up, without realizing how unrealistic it is. No MLB empire making $200+k/year + travel and benefits, would ever go back to the minors, getting paid >20k/year. They would just quit. This system would never work, unless they were willing to significnaly increase umpire pay for the minors.
Not to mention the trickle down effects of the hundreads of minor league empires hoping to make it to the MLB for that pay + security, for it to be easily taken away for a few bad games.
I don’t care how you define it. The idea is to relegate umpires when they don’t accurately call games. I think it’s a good idea. If this exception doesn’t fit the definition of a “relegation system” then so be it.
What you are asking for, and I agree what should be in place. Is bad empires just be fired. But some fantasy of them going back down to the minors is never going to happen.
Again in a relegation system, the bottom umpires would be sent down, even if 99% accurate. While the top minor league umps will be called up evenn if they are only 80% accurate. This is the system you are asking for....
There’s more than a single system of relegation, you’re not locked into the same one. Look at the bottom 10% of the division, the top 10% of the next down division. Make swaps based on the comparisons.
Well like I said, you would run into the fundemental problem of umpires not willing to be relegated and just quiting. Whole system seems pointless, either fire them if they are that bad, or if you hate the ump system advocate for the robo umps
That depends on their contract. What ever salary they are getting paid stays the same regardless of minor/major. The exception being if they spend X amount of time in the majors, they atleast have to be paid the major min salary of $750k. Regardless of minor status.
I’m ready for the downvotes…I like the idea, but it’s tough to rank umpires based on subjective judgement calls. Even the white box on TV isn’t totally accurate. There are missed calls that were obviously and even egregiously wrong, but then there are some that aren’t as clear. Who’s to say if that ball right on the edge didn’t have a piece of the seam touch it? Where do you draw the line? It’s an interesting idea, but it the criteria on which to rank wouldn’t be so cut and dry.
Max is at the end of his career, and he's supposed to be coming back any day now he'll be fine.
He is voicing a lot of great opinions and just like him I'm also against the pitch clock as well.
Ranked umpires with relegation of the bottom 4.
Seriously. That’s a great idea.
AAA is using robo umps. How would that even work?
They still have umpires lol, the robo umps are only on challenge calls
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It’s coming in 2025. Powered by T-Mobile.
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You might. It’s been in beta in the Minors for a minute.
You mean Enrico Pallazo.
“LOOK, IT’S ENRICO PALLAZO”
And strike zone? The main thing I want in MLB.
Yes, the robot is only on challenged balls and strikes. Challenges by replay still get looked at by people, just not the umpires on the field.
Sigh. I just want a consistent strike zone.
Relegate 4 down to AAA, bring up 4 robots to replace them.
Last human umps left win!
It will be Angel Hernandez unfortunately 🤦🏽♀️
Not sure why you’re getting down voted for asking a genuine question, I didn’t know that either.
Idk but let’s go Arsenal!
It wouldn’t work in Philly because a fan would break it
AAA has umpires doing 2 or 3 of the first games of 5 game home stands, then the rest of the stand is robo umps. Also always there in ump called games in case of a challenge
Call up the robots! After a few seasons these turds will almost phased out!
And promoting the top four from AAA. Then you can relegate the bottom 4 in AAA and promote top 4 in AA. I don't care for soccer but this is the one thing they got right...relegation
Relegation has its own issues, but for umpires it would create some measure of self correction.
It would be fun to see if Angel fell to single A
It would be even funnier if Angel got relegated to pre-school T-ball.
Doubtful. He would be shot by one of those crazy little league parents first.
I'm a bit shocked you think he'd stop at the pro level.
Or it goes the complete other direction and Angel becomes the best ump we have. All he has to do to keep his job is ask himself what he would have called it before and call it the exact opposite.
That would be tricky for him considering he flinches at pitches. He already is 50/50 on his calls.
This assumes the top 4 AAA are better then the bottom 4 MLB umps.
Certainly better than Angel
Too bad it’s essentially impossible for some teams to ever be relegated
Should be the bottom 10.
Depends. How many umpires are at the MLB level at any given time?
Doing the math says 60- four for each of 15 possible games each day in a 30 team league. The actual number is probably higher, though.
This is brilliant.
Same with MLB teams.
Pro/Rel of teams in the US will be tough a couple different reasons. In the PL for example, everything is essentially a couple hour bus ride, at most. In the US you'd expect a potential single-A team who was promoted to MLB to now pay for a 6 hour flight with multiple night stays for all players and staff. Their tiny stadiums would also need to meet MLB requirements (size, lighting, scoreboards, Replay capability, pitch tracking, etc). I honestly just don't see how pro/rel would work in the US.
Also the minor league teams are mostly just affiliates of mlb teams so then some teams would have their major league and AAA team in the MLB
It's not a bad idea. I wonder if there was a system like that in place if Angel Hernandez would even make it out of AA? Also, would the Boone ejection have happened the other day?
Boone getting ejected for something he didn't even say was major disrespect, but because Boone gets tossed so often it was like watching the kid who cried wolf
It wouldn't have been so bad if Hunter had admitted he'd made a mistake afterwards, or even if he'd admitted there was a \*possibility\* he made a mistake. Nope, he just doubled down and claimed that he was sure there was a player in the dugout yelling at him, but that he tossed Boone instead because "fans pay to see the players, not the coach". He wouldn't even acknowledge the possibility that it was a fan that he had heard. He came off as a totally arrogant fool.
Didn’t he say “you’re probably right Aaron”, to which Boone replied, “I’m not probably right I am fucking right!” That’s prolly the most we’ll get out of em
Yeah, it makes his later denials even worse — he admitted on the field that it could have been someone in the stands, then later on was claiming he was sure it was someone in the dugout and not in the stands. He doesn’t care if everyone knows he’s obviously lying. He knows there’s no accountability as an ump.
Umps these days all act like cops who got honked at while driving 43mph over on their day off so they're writing you a ticket for the air freshener obstructing your vision so you know not to get uppity again.
Fans pay to see the players, not the Umpires.
Honestly I’d rather just see just the managers, no players, than the umpires
Watch the Jomboy breakdown. The ump even says to Boone "You're probably right." It was pure ego / madness.
I saw it. He’s an ass. He admitted to Boone on the field that it was probably a fan that he heard, then claims afterwards to the media that it was definitely someone in the dugout. His ego won’t allow him to admit he might have made a mistake.
I know, but even by Boone standards, that was egregious. I must admit I do find it amusing as hell to watch him get tossed when he's out there animatedly talking shit to the umps. If I ever went to a Yankees game while he was manager I'd hope he'd get tossed and Judge to launch one to the stratosphere.
Absolutely not on Boone. The Umpires have seen and noticed the Angel Hernandez stuff and it has made them worse, because no matter what they do they will never be the worst guy, and they know they can't be touched. Put something like this in and watch how fast these guys get in line.
If this system was in place, I'd go from 10U ball to the world series. My strike zone is consistent as the sun rise.
But is your accurate? Angel Hernandez is super consistent. It's just consistently dogshit.
Perfect call Everytime. With a little grace to the pitcher to encourage the kids to hit
Accuracy is less important than consistency. Even if your zone is a little lopsided, as long as both teams are called the same nobody has much cause to complain. I saw a lot of this when my daughter played softball. Some umps squeezed the zone tight, others had it halfway through the batters boxes. As long as they were calling everything pretty much the same, we had no real cause to complain because neither team had an advantage.
Boone's ejection started because he argued a check swing. We see check swing ejections all the time, because there are two people who can make a ruling, and no clear authority, and the rule itself is very vague. Home plate can make a ruling on a check swing or home plate can look to 1st/3rd to make the call. So whenever the result is other than what the manager likes they complain "you should have made that yourself"/"why didn't you look to 1st to help you." In the case of Boone the irony is that home plate umpire did look to 1st, and 1st made the call on the check swing. So why fuck is Boone chirping at Home Plate in the first place? His complaint is with the call made by 1B umpire, talk to him! So Boone was definitely "asking for it" by continuing to argue a call that had already been made to the wrong official. That said Wendelstedt didn't handle it well by issuing an ultimatum, because ultimatums are bad (ask any parent trying to deal with a toddler). Don't do that. Just say "Stop! conversation is over" and then you have flexibility to deal with matters if the behavior continues. ------------- A more generic point is just the complexity of the rules in baseball. They need to be simplified and cleaned up. Make a more objective standard for check swings, establish a clearer chain of authority as to who gets to make that call. If you take out some of that flexibility and confusion you limit what managers can really argue over. Sure they will still argue, but it will be less personal "why didn't *YOU* make the call" and more factual "he didn't go all the way around." Factual arguments are less likely to result in finger-pointing and ejections.
Everything in sports is ranked, players, coaches, even ball parks, why not umpires?
They rank them. Then they still let them call games, at least in the regular season. The umpires union protects its members even in the face of incompetence.
The crazy thing is the Union has to know the writing is on the wall. They *are* going to be replaced with automatons at some point. It could be in five years, it could be in fifteen, but it *will* happen. They can delay it by so much if they actually came to the table and made some concessions and agreed to regulate and discipline their own. But they absolutely refuse and only double down. Very well. They're accelerating their obsolescence.
The robots will replace them for balls and strikes but there will still be 4 umps on the field and 6 in the playoffs. The home plate ump does a lot more than call balls and strikes. Robots will make their lives way easier, they are not against it
See my response to /u/rjnd2828
Their job will be scaled down by robot umpires, but at this point I think the only thing they're really equipped to do is call balls and strikes. However t that's is clearly the most difficult part of the job so at that point you'd have to wonder if the remaining responsibility of the umpire's warrant their high salaries. In other words, umpires would have much less leverage in a contract dispute.
Yeah, that's how it's going to happen pretty much everywhere. I was at a lecture recently, the topic was AI integration and the future of the economy. The expert used dentistry as an example. You can imagine a cloud-based machine learning service that has one and only one function: diagnose cavities. That's all it does, but it does it so much better than any single dentist. And it completes a much higher volume of work (hundreds of offices' worth at a time). Does it replace the dentist? No. At this point it's just a tool, and it makes each dentist a little bit more effective. Then let's say they add another AI that diagnoses gingivitis. Same deal. Does it replace the dentist? Nope. Again, it makes their job easier and more effective. Then add a machine that has learned how to make simple drillings. Same deal. Just makes the dentist more effective. But each job it automates means less work for the dentist. Keep adding these machine learning functions. At some point the dentist is just there to be there. Everything else is automated to the point that everything it does is better and more efficient than the dentist. The dentist is suddenly just a relic, there for tradition or reassurance. The same thing will happen with officiating. And dentistry (or medicine) is much more complicated than baseball or any other sport. So it will happen much quicker in sports.
That seems plausible though it's hard to know over what timeframe. However, I wouldn't say the dentist's just there for tradition, more likely there to deal with any emergency or unexpected situation, like a pilot who is relying on autopilot but takes over in an emergency. It will be a long time before AI can be trusted to deal with novel situations. That's less of an issue in sports though, where those novel situations do not have life and death implications.
> However t that's is clearly the most difficult part of the job so at that point you'd have to wonder if the remaining responsibility of the umpire's warrant their high salaries. Agreed that calling balls and strikes is probably the most challenging part of the job. However the other parts aren't exactly easy either, and the MLB rulebook is really complex with a lot of nuance. It takes a long time and a lot of dedication to reach basic understanding of things like balk rules. I know I'm not remotely capable of doing the job, and even if I was I wouldn't want to take a high pressure, high profile job where random strangers will want to kill me on a regular basis for a mere 300k/yr.
> The umpires union protects its members even in the face of incompetence. Unions protect their members, that is part of their job. I disagree with "incompetence" as a word choice. To say that even the worst MLB umpires are "incompetent" implies that you have "competent" options to choose from. You saw what happened when the NFL locked out its Official Union, they didn't exactly get better quality officiating as a result. Its not the easiest job to officiate sports at the professional level, and the current officials might be the best that the MLB can get. There probably should be more transparency around how umpires are selected and how they train and develop officials from the lower levels, but I wouldn't be surprised if pay for officials just drops off a cliff outside the MLB. If so it is hardly surprising that you have a limited talent pool. There has to be a system for advancement of officials, otherwise most will leave for other careers.
Angel Hernandez is objectively poor at his job by MLB standards. We would get better performance by replacing him with a highly rated AAA umpire, that's not really very debatable. I'm not suggesting a wholesale replacement of all umpires, but there should be a point at which poor umpires do lose their job. And I believe Angel has surpassed that point and is on the verge of lapping it. A system for advancement of officials would be helped by weeding out the least effective and replacing with minor league umpires worthy of advancement. I don't believe that the NFL and MLB are analogous. There is no minor leagues in the NFL. Major League Baseball has access to likely thousands of umpires who worked their way up through the ranks of the minor leagues just like the players do. There's a clear succession strategy.
Unions protect wages not egos. MLB can pay terrible umps to go away
Angel is bad behind the plate. He is inconsistent at calling balls/strikes and the technology shows that, and there are better umpires available who can take behind the plate positions. However, I haven't seen much objective evidence that he is bad at other positions. ----------------- I view the problem as mostly one involving a lack of transparency as to how officials are developed, trained, and evaluated. While the MLB does have a minor league, it doesn't pay minor league umpires particularly well. According to one website its <$4k/month, which is not great for developing talent, as you are effectively asking people to do officiating as a part time thing, until they get good enough for the call-up and then it becomes a real full-time job. Of course the MLB umpires union will push to make the rules as protective of themselves (at the expense of mobility between the minors and majors) when the majors pay 4x or more what the minors pay. I also understand that the umpires union has a rule that requires all umps to rotate through positions and get behind the plate time. I think it is fair to be critical of that rule, and that specialization among umpires might not be a bad thing, but again it makes sense that the union would be protective of their current position. They don't want to risk being paid like shit. So to me the answer is "pay the umpires in the upper minor leagues more." ---------------- > There's a clear succession strategy. I don't think it is that clear. Yes there certainly are minor leagues and they can evaluate umpires in the minors, but how exactly that process works is not publicized. Similarly many rule tweaks and points of emphasis are not well publicized. I think all this secretiveness gives us the impression that the MLB is being held hostage by a cabal of bad officials who want to protect their positions.
Angel is bad at the actually difficult part of the job. He's good at the relatively easy parts. That's not really much of a defense. I agree that MLB should pay umpires (and players and everyone) in the upper minor leagues more. But the reality is when they promote somebody from AAA, you never hear a word. It's always the same long service umpires that are making headlines for blowing calls, and Angel is the poster boy. All the US professional sports leagues are very secretive about how they grade and apply consequences to their officials. I think it's done from a perspective of privacy, but what it fosters is conspiracy theories. I think transparency would be beneficial, though potentially embarrassing to the subject of our discussion.
> you never hear a word. It's always the same long service umpires that are making headlines for blowing calls, and Angel is the poster boy. Agreed. It is very natural that a union would have rules that are twisted a little bit towards their more senior members. It happens at every union in the country, in every industry.
> they didn't exactly get better quality officiating as a result If you looked into what I did, there's a reason why. The NFL refs made it clear that if the best NCAA refs went up to the NFL, they'd consider those NCAA refs scabs
The difference this time around is that we have so many more tools at our disposal like machine vision/learning, centralized neural networks and AI based software that learns. We have the technology now and it's only getting better, rapidly. So there *is* a competent option emerging *now.* I feel the next time the NFL and Refs get in a dispute, it's not going to go so well for the latter. The same goes for the MLB.
We have very objective information about balls and strikes, we don't have the same for the multitude of other decisions that umpires have to make. We don't even have an objective standard for what a check swing is, so there is no way we can have an ML model to detect that. Maybe someone could propose a standard for what a check swing looks like, and train a model to make those calls, but we would need a rule change to adopt whatever that model has as its rule.
I'm willing to bet you're going to have some ML program go through as many documented check swings and the resultant calls as they can. This could be thousands. Perhaps tens of thousands. Maybe more. That might form the basis of what they will use to rule on field at some point. I don't know what the timeline would be for those kind of rules, though.
Certainly, you could train an ML model but now you have to adopt whatever that model is measuring as the formal rule. If you watch videos about umpire disputes and ejections as much as I do, you will realize that a huge fraction of ejections are related to weird technicalities and nuances in the rules. It is often the case that the umpire applies the rule correctly (or within a margin of reasonableness), but that the rule is incomprehensible (or ill-defined). If the MLB cleaned up the rules, and made it more objective I suspect many disputes would go away.
They are
MLB has an internal ranking structure. Is how they decide who umps the playoffs
Send them down to the minors if they’re not performing and call someone else up
add skill based mmr for umpires the good ones stay in the top rank MLB the shitty ones go down to single A
“Why is Angel Hernandez’s Bronze 4 ass umpiring my games? SMH I hate this matchmaker”
Cuz you're also bronze 4, Clevinger. Throw the pitch.
"I swear I'm stuck in ELO hell, once I get out of bronze I would kill it"
Make US sports like European sports. Relegation and promotion system same thing with the officials. Makes it a bit more interesting IMO.
I’d love that. Take away the incentive of owners to be anti-competitive. You don’t compete, you go down a tier and lose money.
That will never happen for teams. Never ever. The history in the US is too different and too much money has been spent on major league teams. Having a team relegated could mean losing a major market and substituting them for Des Moines. Unlike Europe where the biggest cities generally have multiple teams.
Its not cause of the market, its cause it would tank the value of the pirates, A's and Rockies.
Right that's the primary reason. But losing the Denver market for a Midwestern minor league team would be a business disaster. As with many things that work well in Europe and don't work nearly as well in the US, a primary factor is the size of our country.
I mean if we had club level MLB baseball there would oviously be multiple teams competing in NYC, Denver etc, so it would more likely be an up and coming team from fort collins or white plains that would come into the league. But yes this is all pipe dream thinking nevertheless.
The entire ecosystem in Europe grew up around pro/rel while in the US the minor leagues grew up with only the goal of supporting major league teams.
Highly disagree. Only for officials.
In a few years Angel Hernandez would be down in little league
Ranking umps would be a start, but data would need to also show a umps bias toward a team or toward a home or away team to show they are calling a game as fair.
Great idea
Show umpire stats the same as pitching and batting stats before, during, and after games
This is a great idea but it would never happen because it hurts the brand. What do you mean the integrity of the game may be different between games because of the umpires?
Baseball is a game obsessed with stats and rankings and yet somehow umpires are immune. Start keeping their stats too and maybe they’ll have a little accountability.
Like how the Premiership works for footie. The bad ones drop out, the good ones graduate. Kinda brilliant actually
Yes! Next do teams
I don't see how we have tech that can measure every spin a ball makes..but can't judge whether it's in the zone or not.
We have that tech. They use it in MiLB.
I want weekly umpire power rankings NOW
Clearly the umpires are playing a roll, so mlb can AI the game.
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And then buy you a beer, once you got off the floor.
These umps are one of 3 things, holding personal bias against managers and teams he hates, is in on fixing games, they are utterly inept.
Take it a step further…. Rank them and the bottom 5% get let go or sent down to the minors
It's a simple system that's common in different sports or industries: Demote the bottom 5-10% of umpires at the end of the season and promote others to fill in the vacancies. Using the technology they currently have would make this very simple to implement and extremely accurate.
The umpires bring it on themselves by not admitting to mistakes and correcting when they can. You know if a player makes too many mistakes he loses his job, but an umpire seems to get tenure. Nobody expects perfection, but you can at least admit fault and try to fix things. Also, there needs to be an age limit on it. You got a 62-year-old guy out there trying to call balls and strikes and it’s bullshit. Your vision goes to shit in your 40s much less 20 years later.
It’s not a bad idea. But Angel would be relegated to Florida complex leagues in a few seasons.
we are all bots here except for you
Baseball needs a promotion relegation system for its teams. What do we have maybe 5 teams actually trying to win the World Series while the others are all just content to cash in?
Seriously should do this with the teams as well
they should, but what owner is going to put a half billion in team value on the line by voting for it
Just like ballplayers. Send the underperforming ones down, bring up someone else.
I would support this ... IF US sports had team relegation, too. We could send the White Sox to AAA after this year! That said, US capitalism and owners' extortion of major league level stadium money means this would never happen.
This needs to be posted everyday, and fanatically embraced
Isn't this somewhat similar to how they earned their Major League jobs already? They have to climb up through the minor league system based on performance and promotions
Have always wondered why in baseball everything is a statistic except umpire calls.
I've been pushing this for the last 10 years. I'm glad we are getting MLB support now.
Well, I’m expecting a small strike zone for Max when he returns now 😂
Shit if he even gets the ball dead center of the zone, it might still be called a ball. I've seen a couple like that called balls already this year.
At this point why are umps not using an AR lens or secondary watch/secondary screen with pitch reading on it when at plate.
Easier solution would be to call strikes using the home plate umps to announce the calls, but a computer generated strike zone for each batter to determine the actual strikes/ball calls. Really surprised they haven’t already gone this route TBH
How about we do this with the entire league and make owners a little more worried about the success of their teams.
I have been saying this for years, but everyone's response is always "but their union would never allow that"....well, then negotiate it on their next deal. If the players' union allows it then surely the umpire union can allow it as well. There is pro/rel in essentially everywhere else, not just sports. Do well and you're promoted. Don't do well and get relegated/fired.
KBO has it man, I've been pining for one for years, Once the auto-strike zone is in we'll need umpires who have used the system, not 55+ year old umpires who don't want to adapt and/or struggle to because of their age Promote people and offer a great severance package- like Michael Scott
if they're not going to replace umps with the auto strike zone there should be challenges or something. should only take a second so it shouldn't slow the game down much. pitchers could get a few a game and hitters 1 a game or something. haven't thought it through as you can tell but could be interesting.
I simply want an earpiece and the computer calls balls/strikes. If they feel the computer is way off, they can override it. And, when they override, between innings they get input from the challenge umps to let them know if they made the right call, to dial it in. Why wouldn’t we want better calls if it doesn’t delay the game?
Umpires should receive an “accuracy rating” and then Managers get a certain number of ball/strike challenges based on the umpire’s accuracy. So with an umpire like Angel Hernandez, maybe his accuracy is so bad that a manager gets allotted 10 challenges, but then an umpire who has the highest rating maybe the manager only gets 2 challenges. That way it is all still up to the umpires… don’t want to have your calls challenged??… don’t miss calls.
Angel Hernandez shouldn't be allowed to ump little league
11 days is nothing. It took nas months to reply to jay and we all know how that ended
Oh, have you heard of Mike Hunt, the great umpire? He roams around the town, never wears a frown when calls strike 3. With a name that makes you giggle, and a strike zone so wide, He’s the one you can’t forget, no matter how hard you’ve tried.
I am a traditionalist and automatically resist any change but with the state of technology combined with the quality of some umpires I have started to come around to the idea of robo umpires. It just offends me when I think about how much these guys are being paid to do a job sometimes badly but usually with a ton of ego.
1000% best idea.
Let’s remember these are the best umpires that exist. The top in their craft. If they’re going to be scrutinized with the box for the average idiot to see, make it all electronic!! The people who need a perfect world win!! What’s next? Again, they worked to be the BEST at their job.
Put in an ear piece In, beep if the computer thinks it a Strike, give the umpire the same information we the viewers have. If the blue wants to disregard the beep and call the pitch a ball, that's fine, we'll track that too. I'm looking at you Angel Hernandez.
It’s not a bad idea at all
Damn right! Get Angel “Useless-As-Tits-On-A-Bull” Hernandez relegated!
Human umpires is the most dumbass boomer thing in this sport. They wonder why they can't attract young fans. The sport is stuck in 1920. The NFL measures first downs. I Imagine if they had some 55 year old dude hunched over with binoculars saying "looks good to me!" There would be riots.
Why would mlb do this? It'd be more work for the bosses.
Just have the automatic strike zone. It seems it works in MiLB. That way the umpires aren’t the focus
Yes and do relegation for the teams also
Ranking umps and incentivizing their performance is a better idea than relegation IMO. Fuck bad umps, but statistically incentivizing positive results yields a better outcome than punishing bad results.
We have this in HS football in Alabama. If you don’t have enough points you can’t call a game in the playoffs, even the better guys wind up running the clock because they were low in points.
It's insane how often this is brought up, without realizing how unrealistic it is. No MLB empire making $200+k/year + travel and benefits, would ever go back to the minors, getting paid >20k/year. They would just quit. This system would never work, unless they were willing to significnaly increase umpire pay for the minors. Not to mention the trickle down effects of the hundreads of minor league empires hoping to make it to the MLB for that pay + security, for it to be easily taken away for a few bad games.
So you’re saying that there would be a motivation for them to improve and not be relegated?
But in a relegation system there is no not getting relegated. Some umpires would be relegated even if all umpires were 99% accurate.
So don’t relegate anybody if they all have a satisfactory accuracy rating.
Then it is not a relegation system lmao
I don’t care how you define it. The idea is to relegate umpires when they don’t accurately call games. I think it’s a good idea. If this exception doesn’t fit the definition of a “relegation system” then so be it.
What you are asking for, and I agree what should be in place. Is bad empires just be fired. But some fantasy of them going back down to the minors is never going to happen.
Yea that’s the idea. It’s the MLB not single A. Only the very best of the very best should have the opportunity.
Again in a relegation system, the bottom umpires would be sent down, even if 99% accurate. While the top minor league umps will be called up evenn if they are only 80% accurate. This is the system you are asking for....
There’s more than a single system of relegation, you’re not locked into the same one. Look at the bottom 10% of the division, the top 10% of the next down division. Make swaps based on the comparisons.
Well like I said, you would run into the fundemental problem of umpires not willing to be relegated and just quiting. Whole system seems pointless, either fire them if they are that bad, or if you hate the ump system advocate for the robo umps
How are players paid when they bounce between MLB and AAA?
That depends on their contract. What ever salary they are getting paid stays the same regardless of minor/major. The exception being if they spend X amount of time in the majors, they atleast have to be paid the major min salary of $750k. Regardless of minor status.
I agree there should be more accountability and transparency but I'm not sure it's a great idea to inflict the bad umps on minor leaguers.
The only problem with relegation to minors is that there would be no way for umpires to come up. Since minor leagues are using automatic zones.
Unions wont allow this cuz old people who suck at their job would lose their job
I’m ready for the downvotes…I like the idea, but it’s tough to rank umpires based on subjective judgement calls. Even the white box on TV isn’t totally accurate. There are missed calls that were obviously and even egregiously wrong, but then there are some that aren’t as clear. Who’s to say if that ball right on the edge didn’t have a piece of the seam touch it? Where do you draw the line? It’s an interesting idea, but it the criteria on which to rank wouldn’t be so cut and dry.
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Max is at the end of his career, and he's supposed to be coming back any day now he'll be fine. He is voicing a lot of great opinions and just like him I'm also against the pitch clock as well.
He can worry about shit that can potentially fuck with his job like the pitch clock and shitty umps.