Oy, Robot?
The ABS spring training experiment has begun.
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Leading Off
Oy, Robot?
On the early appearances of Robby the Umpbot.
By Jeff Kallman
It’s been said elsewhere—by me, specifically—that certain things didn’t happen when Robby the Umpbot finally came out to play in a major league baseball game. The fact that the game was a spring training exhibition is beside the point entirely.
But when Cubs pitcher Cody (R-r-r-r-r-r-r-reet) Poteet challenged a ball call pitching to the Dodgers’ Max Muncy last Thursday, the world didn’t stop revolving, spinning slowly down to die. Nor did Tyrannosaurus Rex—the feared dinosaur or the two-man folk-rock outfit that evolved into something called T.Rex—arise from extinction.
What Robby the Umpbot did when Poteet issued the challenge was show the truth on the Camelback Ranch video board. The truth was that Poteet’s pitch might not have been Bugs Bunny’s powerful paralysing perfect pachydermis persussion pitch, but three quarters of the ball crossed the plate in the lower strike zone.
Since his premiere in that game, Robby has come out to play in several exhibitions. Some are distinctly unamused, as Reds manager Terry Francona was going in (he and his team declined to join in the springtime Robby experiment) and as newly-minted Blue Jays pitcher Max Scherzer was after an outing against the Cardinals.
Scherzer’s eleventh pitch of the outing, to Cardinals center fielder Lars (Sometimes You Feel Like a) Nootbaar, arrived off the outside corner. Or did it? Nootbaar gave the signal indicating he challenged the strike call by plate umpire Roberto Ortiz, a tap on his cap. Oops. Robby proclaimed the pitch missed the corner.
The future Hall of Fame righthander was not amused. In the next inning, though, he dropped a curve ball on JJ (Stormy) Wetherholt that appeared to drop under the strike zone floor. This time, Max the Knife tapped his cap for the challenge. Ruh-roh. Robby agreed with Roberto again.
Two lost challenges kind of took a little of the shine off Scherzer’s splendid maiden flight of four punchouts in two innings on the mound. But only a little.
Known officially as the automated ball/strike system (ABS), Robby the Umpbot—operated by HawkEye technology—works thus: Each team is allowed two appeals to Robby per game. If they win the challenge, they can keep it. If they lose the challenge, they lose one challenge. And only three people have the option to make the challenge: the pitcher, the batter, or the catcher.
“I’m a little skeptical on this,” said Scherzer to The Athletic’s Jayson Stark after the game.
I get what we’re trying to do here, but I think major-league umpires are really good. They’re really good. So what are we actually changing here? We know there are going to be strikes that are changed to balls, and balls that are changed to strikes.. So we’re going to basically be even. So are we actually going to improve the game? Are the umpires really that bad? I don’t think so.
Are you as surprised as I am to hear Scherzer hand the umpires that blanket an endorsement? It’s not that he’s necessarily wrong, understand. And even the single most cynical of cynics among us must admit that the umpires as a class look better automatically since Ángel (of Doom) Hernández’s retirement.
But last year Max the Knife had a splendid idea about a job Robby the Umpbot could and should do, even as he suggested roughly ten percent of today’s major league umpires at least should be subject to it without, ahem, argument.
Hark back to last year’s boneheaded Hunter Wendelstedt ejection of Aaron Boone . . . because some brain-damaged fan behind the Yankee dugout was hollering at the ump and not Boone. (Remember Wendelstedt’s mealymouthed doubling down, too: I heard something come from the far end of the dugout, had nothing to do with his area, but he’s the manager of the Yankees. So he’s the one who had to go.)
At the time that happened, Scherzer was on a rehab assignment at the Rangers’s Round Rock farm. He had an idea about umpire accountability, too: Let Robby the Umpbot rank the arbiters: Let the electronic strike zone rank the umpires. We need to have a conversation about the bottom—let’s call it ten percent, whatever you want to declare the bottom is—and talk about relegating those umpires to the minor leagues.
Sound as a foghorn. Remember, too, that many of today’s Show umps haven’t exactly looked trepidatiously upon Robby, the way they might look upon someone buying them castor oil cocktails at the tavern. Scherzer’s thought from last year, I wrote at the time, “would be a far better look than leaving the Wendelstedts excused to double down on their most grievous errors and verbal diarrhea to follow, or leaving baseball’s government excuses to continue letting them get away with it.”
Relax, ladies, gentlemen, and miscellaneous. This is just a spring training trial. At minimum, Robby the Umpbot isn’t going to have full-time major league employment until 2026. That should be time enough to wring out any kinks (mostly involving coordinated calibrations) and finalise who can make the challenges.
(Hmmmmmm. We probably had a 90 percent miss rate with all the pitchers last year.—Hunter Feduccia, Dodgers Triple-A catcher. Pitchers are horrible at it.—Landon [Knuke the] Knack, Dodgers pitcher. Don’t get mad, Max.)
But for anyone who’d like to cling to the canard that Robby’s going to cause delays of games, be advised that his full-time employment in the minors has resulted in a four-year average challenge and verdict time of (wait for it!) seventeen seconds. That’s a huge game delay?
Jeff Kallman edits the Wednesday and Thursday editions of Here’s the Pitch. He can be reached at easyace1955@outlook.com.
Extra Innings
There was drama. There was rage. There was the traditional avoidance of blame on the part of the umpire. It’s a classic example of the manager vs. umpire dynamic, in which the umpire exercises his infallible and unquestionable power whenever and wherever he wants with absolutely zero accountability or consequences of any kind, and the manager has no choice but to take it.—Liz Roscher, Yahoo! Sports, on last year’s Hunter Wendelstedt-Aaron Boone kerfuffle.
Even if a Yankee had yelled at an umpire—and there is no evidence to suggest that one did—the ejection of Boone would still have been considered a poor one. It was early in the game, and the argument wasn’t intense enough to merit tossing a manager at that point.—Andy Martino, SNY, on the same, after MLB itself ruled the ejection a bad ejection.
Know Your Editors
Here’s the Pitch is published daily except Sundays and holidays. Benjamin Chase [gopherben@gmail.com] handles the Monday issue with Dan Freedman [dfreedman@lionsgate.com] editing Tuesday and Jeff Kallman [easyace1955@outlook.com] at the helm Wednesday and Thursday. Original editor Dan Schlossberg [ballauthor@gmail.com], does the weekend editions on Friday and Saturday. Former editor Elizabeth Muratore [nymfan97@gmail.com] is now co-director [with Benjamin Chase and Jonathan Becker] of the Internet Baseball Writers Association of America, which publishes this newsletter and the annual ACTA book of the same name. Readers are encouraged to contribute comments, articles, and letters to the editor. HtP reserves the right to edit for brevity, clarity, and good taste.
Well done Jeff. Max Scherzer is always quotable even when he's contradictory!