sk7326

Has not been difficult - Xander has not just been the MVP of the Sox, but he has probably been the MVP of the American League Last year he figured out how to spoil pitchers pitches by spraying singles - which is great, but it kept the power down He has figured out now how to not just handle the pitches they are trying to get him out with, but to force them to give him ones to drive and then not missing.

All of the top choices will sign - yes there might be one that doesn't, but guys walking away from 7 figure checks is generally not smart. For most guys, this is the largest check they will get from baseball.

The thing I think with #3 is not that it is a hot button issue, but that it could be quickly. Baseball has blessedly been very liberal in letting the Pitch/FX data be disseminated to the public - both via the gameday stuff as well as just for analytics. The league knows how important that stuff is to a lot of people (baseball is uniquely built for that - big part of its tradition). But you disseminate that and you are also sharing just how dreadfully, blatantly wrong the umpires are, every single night. I am not sure how long they can pretend the state of calling balls and strikes is okay when there is so much damning visual evidence. Now the task is impossible. Between issues of tracking the ball flight of an 80 mph pitch (to say nothing of a 95 mph one), watching the swing of the bat, and general depth perception ... the best umps in the world can only get to (collectively) about a 6/7 level. When one sees how important the count is to the success of an at-bat, mistakes change things, all the time. Now - I understand this sort of large error margin is there in other sports - offensive line infractions in football, off-ball fouls in basketball, almost every minute of a hockey game - but there is existing, mature technology that would bring the error rate down a lot, and it could be implemented within a week.

I wished Mo Vaughn a happy thanksgiving at a Celtics game. I also had a chance to talk to and meet Jay Williams (who went to Duke, drafted #2 and is a college basketball talking head on ESPN) after a game at the Boston Shootout when he was in high school. There are a lot of other athletes I saw at autograph sessions and stuff (Aramark Wear Guard in Rockland, MA had guys down regularly) - but I don't think that is what you had in mind.

If the system went down, you'd have human umps again. I'd actually advocate for human umpiring through other levels of baseball because you don't want the skill - such as it is - to completely atrophy.

I do understand the quirks - baseball fans are funny. An entire half of them want to watch pitchers hit after all. (a professional athlete doing something which is impossible for him to do well while working on his primary craft) I respect your view - I am all about the human element ... but I'm not there to watch the umpshows.

A lot are. A lot are also pitches right down the middle which the ump misses because the catcher was positioned outside and the pitcher missed over the plate. A lot are balls called above the belt which are statutorily strikes ... or strikes at the knees which are more or less made up at random.

There are enough judgment calls out there - and the strike zone is objective, not a blank canvas for Joe West's artistic sensibility.

What I find interesting about the debate is a level of willing flat-eartherism at work. It is rare that there is a clear, mature technology that beats the humans (without causing crippling mass unemployment or whatever) that is voluntarily set aside. Certainly in the longer run - having good pitch F/X technology in the hands of viewers and not the umpires provides a major, major credibility gap. The call which comes up most frequently is the one they have proven they simply cannot do.

To be fair, Bogaerts' power is arriving ...

The existence of the rule is ...

I've always noted the Red Sox lack of pitching talent has more to do with the team generally being good ... (there is a solid correlation between the true aces and high draft position). There has been some risk aversion taking high school pitching, especially outside of the top rounds, which does warrant some skepticism. The leaps the Red Sox have had to make are larger than other teams often. They got the top high school pitching prospect in the draft - and went with a lot of easy signs to help them. We'll see if it works. The nice thing is the Red Sox draft people have stuck around in a lot of cases. As has been noted the 2011 draft is looking ridiculously productive.

Law's writeup http://espn.go.com/blog/mlb-draft/insider/post?id=2947

When someone talks about the 140 years of baseball tradition ... it is fun to note that there were 71 years of national league baseball (a bit less than the 88 year Sox curse) before integration. It's okay to try to make things better. Obviously the level of social justice is not comparable.

There have been exactly 20 pitchers who have turned out more innings since Porcello has had a full time job. His stats line up roughly with guys like Gallardo, Buehrle, RA Dickey, Ervin Santana. Red Sox clearly are not paying discount for him - but the contract far more likely than not is going to turn out "okay".

And non-integration did for almost the length of the Red Sox curse ... evolution is okay. How would umpires get eliminated? Who calls check swings? Who calls plays at the plate? How do you hear foul tips? (you could put sensors in the bats - but that is probably prohibitively expensive given the rate of wood bats being destroyed)

This makes sense - the issue (I think) is whether those tolerances are attainable by humans who have to watch the flight of the ball and pay attention to what the hitter is doing simultaneously. The umps already make enough mistakes when they are judging it based on where the pitch is caught. What is not appreciated is that the strike zone is in reality a 3-dimensional problem. The catcher catching the pitch 2 inches off the plate theoretically not an issue if the ball actually tailed in such a way that it touched the "strike zone box". But for a human ump to be able to do that to even a 95% overall accuracy level is likely impossible. I am not trying to displace umpires - or to remove an umpire from home plate. My goal here is taking what the home plate umpire has to deal with, and giving him help with the part which is hardest to do - and leads to the most bellyaching. I am for an objective rule being called correctly (the strike zone is not mythical - the rule book covers it) and for reducing umpshows (which the ball and strikes thing causes more than any other).

In the South, it's stale hot dogs and boiled peanuts

Especially when you consider how much the pitch outcome changes the expectations of a given at-bat.

And they are needed for judgment where the judgment is the best tool that exists. Calling balls and strikes is not one of those places.

One is playing the game - the other is rules enforcement and basic fairness.

Steven Wright ... can't be anybody else. Shaw has receded into a "good but not crazy unexpected good" sort of level. Now, if you want to call Bogaerts a surprise - because the power is starting to show up, and that he has had a serious MVP-caliber start - that is fair game.

Best part was Lyons assuming Bogaerts had to put that bunt down on his own ... he might have, but it's not like Farrell has earned that benefit.

1. College is much worse, especially with the intentional foul game 2. Managers will still charge out on the field - because they don't do it because the call was wrong. They do it to keep a player from getting run.

It will never be CLOSE - because the ump has to pay attention to a pitch coming in at 90 mph plus with movement - and the hitter. The reason catchers are taught to B.S. the umpires is because umpires have no choice but to rely on them. I think they are probably doing as well as they can right now.