A striking problem: a computer system that second-guesses plate umpires has players, managers and umps on the verge of short-circuiting

Sporting News, The, June 16, 2003 by Ken Rosenthal, John Rawlings

Umpire John Hirschbeck is in a groove at Yankee Stadium, confident he's doing a good job calling balls and strikes. A total of 382 pitches are thrown in the Yankees' messy 10-9 victory over the Blue Jays. But in a game that lasts 4 hours, 8 minutes, no one from either team complains that Hirschbeck misses a pitch.

The next day, Hirschbeck receives a CD that offers a different view of his performance. According to the QuesTec Umpire Information System, he was wrong on 37 ball-strike calls. Hirschbeck is aghast, even though his number of correct rulings exceeds 90 percent, the standard mandated by Major League Baseball.

"I don't miss 37 pitches in a month," says Hirschbeck, who is president of the World Umpires Association--the umpires union. "You're going to have faith in a system like that?"

The answer from MLB officials is yes.

The answer from umpires and many managers and players is no.

A classic conflict between man and machine is raging in major league baseball, particularly at the 10 parks equipped with UIS, a system that uses advanced technology to assess umpires' ball-strike calls. The QuesTec system is changing the way umpires call games, exacerbating their distrust of management and infuriating players and managers while satisfying Big Brother's--er, MLB's--desire to return to the rule-book strike zone.

A crackdown was inevitable after the umpires spent years interpreting the zone without consistency or accountability. But this season, for the first time, MLB is evaluating umps by UIS scores and using those ratings to help determine postseason assignments. An umpires' union grievance against MLB, charging that the system is unreliable, inaccurate and subject to fluctuation, depending on the UIS operator, is scheduled to be heard in late July.

Sandy Alderson, MLB's executive vice president for baseball operations, concedes the system is not without flaws. But he says that, because of the UIS, umpires are calling a strike zone closer to the rulebook definition than they have in "many, many years," especially on outside pitches that no longer are called strikes.

The dispute, however, is raising new questions about the shape of the zone, which UIS interprets differently than the rulebook. Diamondbacks ace Curt Schilling smashed a QuesTec camera in late May, frustrated by what he perceived to be a shrinking zone. Braves closer John Smoltz says, "There's no way anyone can convince me that a computer can tell what a strike is." Others detect a crisis of confidence among umpires, who also are under orders to speed up games.

"The situation with the umpires is worse than at any time I've seen in my career," one veteran National League manager says. "(MLB is) on them about everything: 'Call the high strike,' 'call the low strike,' 'move the game along,' 'keep things under control.' I think we're seeing the stress of it affect games."

Adds Pirates catcher Jason Kendall: "These guys are being watched, and they know it, so we know it. They are trying to call the game for a computer and worrying about what the computer is going to say instead of watching the pitch and calling what it should be. They are calling the game scared."

To Alderson, such fears are unfounded. The primary purpose of UIS, he says, is to serve as a training tool, giving umpires objective feedback. MLB, he adds, does not intend to fire umpires because of low UIS scores or eventually replace them with computerized, Star Wars-style robots. Alderson, who assumed responsibility for the umpires in 2000, points out that he has not dismissed any umps for performance-based reasons.

Umpires, however, remain suspicious, recalling that MLB tried to evaluate them by pitch counts in 2001 and abandoned that controversial plan only after the WUA filed a grievance. The tamps say they are not opposed to evaluation or technological innovation. They just want the advances to be sensible and fair.

"I feel like I'm in a video arcade," one crew chief says. "It's a video game and I can't beat it, no matter how hard I try."

Virtually every umpire has UIS horror stories. One says he recalls a hitter swinging at and missing a pitch out of the strike zone. UIS marked it a ball. Another talks about calling a strike on a hitter who crouched trying to bunt. The umpire based his ruling on the hitter's normal stance. UIS called it a ball.

"I've seen the (QuesTec) research. It's fairly impressive," says Dr. Robert K. Adair, a retired Yale physicist, author of The Physics of Baseball and a witness for the union. "But to get a system like that to work 99 percent of the time instead of 95 percent is expensive and a lot of work."

It's that difference that causes umpires to question the validity of the UIS.

The system derives from military aerospace technology. Cameras in the stands off the first base and third base lines track each pitch, providing information that determines its speed, break and location. Cameras at the field level snap a photograph of the batter when the ball is appropriately halfway to home plate, enabling a QuesTec operator to establish the vertical strike zone for each pitch. The system is calibrated to account for different camera locations in each park.