Originally Posted by
Maxbialystock
They do make mistakes, but I have to say I am very pro-ump and anti-technology which is slowly but surely taking over the game at the expense, in my opinion, of significantly reducing the human element which is the essence of baseball.
The upside of the replays, I freely acknowledge, is avoidance of managerial tirades. This probably saves time, but I'm not so sure because overall games keep getting longer. Plus I am probably one of the very few who enjoys the adroitness of good umpires moving quickly to be in the right position to make a call. So, me, I don't mind a slight miscall on a very close play--it's part of the game. And I resent the sometimes lengthy time it takes NYC to finally decide a really close play was right or wrong.
I also think those superimposed strike zones to be pernicious even though I look at them often to see where a pitch went. Because of them, we assume that most umpires are just plain lousy on balls and strikes when they really are not. I myself use them to determine whether our pitchers are getting more or fewer calls than the opposition when in fact the differences between balls and strikes can be quite small. I am, on the other hand, fine with MLB allowing replays to improve umpire performance after the the game is over. That includes videos of all balls and strikes. Teams use videos endlessly to spot weaknesses.
Meanwhile umpires have virtually no authority to speed up games, mostly because MLB rules and accepted norms tolerate an enormous amount of dawdling by pitchers and batters, visits to the mound by catchers, coaches, managers and sometimes infielders.
Now here's the grabber. I disagree that somehow umpires should be invisible so the focus can be solely on the talents and skills of the players. In fact, they are more efficient, focused and professional than most players and their active presence is ubiquitous. They call maybe 300 pitches a game. 1st and 3D base umps call checked swings. They call fouls, hits, catches, tags (by fielders and base runners). They do not dawdle endlessly. They try to stop fights. They take a lot of abuse from fans, managers, hitters, and, less often, from pitchers. They all have to get behind the plate every fourth game and make a ton of calls, including important plays, and risk getting hit by a foul ball or errant pitch with less protective gear than catchers. The other night the home plate umpire conscientiously stood behind the plate for Kelly's warm up pitches and got hit in the mask by an errant 100 mph fastball. he almost had to be taken from the game, but stuck around as a base umpire. That is professionalism of a pretty high order.
Players, it has to be said, are terrific athletes. But their entertainment value is what makes MLB profitable despite their enormous salaries. We think of movies stars as enormously wealthy, but no one on talksox can name a single movie star being paid $31M a year for seven years regardless of their performance or even availability. You want to see professionalism on the baseball field? Watch the umpires. They make the game better and are an essential--including their human fallibility--part of it.
My bad, especially with curry30 doing so well. I'm happy if Youk moves this to the regular forum, which was obviously my intent, or even kills it.