There is a story in the Wall Street Journal called ‘In Defense of Umpires’ in which the author complains about the ABS Challenge System, which kind of surprised me. Of course, there are people who will complain about anything, but I’ve liked the challenge system. I’ve been surprised at how quick it is, I was worried that it would be a long break in the action, but it fits in an at bat fairly seamlessly. It is a lot quicker than having the manager and pitching coach yelling at the umpire.
And, I think, it has made life better for umpires. As much as we think they should get every pitch right, that’s not possible. But they seem somewhat better at making calls this year and when they get one wrong it can be corrected. No one is going to be perfect, but this allows baseball to fix the very imperfect calls.
But the story in the WSJ starts with “There is nothing good that can’t be ruined by technology.” I don’t know, my baseball fandom has improved with the ability to watch every game, not just one game a week. And that I can share my fandom with others around the country/planet, not just the few friends I have that also are baseball fans (or will pretend to be because I’m going to talk about baseball all the time anyway).
I know I’m supposed to be old and hate everything new and I do have some of that in me. But I’m a fan of the ABS system.
But Jonathan Shapiro says:
ABS, however, stops the game in its tracks and destroys the pace of play. And it does so for the spectacularly uninteresting purpose of conducting a spot audit of the umpire’s competence. This shifts the crowd’s focus away from where it should be, on the contest between hitter and pitcher, and redirects it to an artificial and irrelevant contest between umpire and robot.
I was thinking maybe it might just be me, so I thought I’d put up a poll.
