Effectively Wild Episode 1170: Are the Robots Ready?
Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about Nori Aoki’s return to Japan, Vladimir Guerrero’s swing rate, Franchy Cordero’s power/speed skills, spring training for free agents (again), and Melky Cabrera, then bring on Baseball Prospectus Director of Technology Harry Pavlidis to explain BP’s latest pitching-themed analysis, featuring robot umpires’ feasibility, desirability, and potential effects on offense; classifying pitchers and measuring stamina and command; and tunneling and deception.
Audio intro: Unlikely Friends, "All the Cameras in Japan"
Audio interstitial: Andrew Bird, "Not a Robot, But a Ghost"
Audio interstitial 2: Damon Albarn, "Everyday Robots"
Audio outro: Super Furry Animals, "Sex, War, and Robots"
Link to Jeff’s Vladimir Guerrero Post
Link to Jeff’s Franchy Cordero post
Link to BP’s robot umps article
Link to BP’s pitcher-classification article
Link to BP’s pitch-tunneling article
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It’s robits, Ben
They are ready if they have Bot Understanding
Why not have sensors sewn into the knees and the letters of hitter’s uniforms as well as in the ball? Therefore, you can triangulate w/ the sensors instead of using cameras.
What Pavlidis misses is that having objective results would make Baseball a pure sport. Unlike Basketball and Football, no one would ever accuse the refereeing affecting the results. That has immense appeal to someone like myself who hates subjective referees ruining a game.
I watched a clip of a pitching machine where it was throwing Carrasco’s changeup. It got me to thinking that we can have robot pitchers, too.
I’m not saying we should completely replace human pitchers (at least not right away).
Let every team have a pitching machine programmed to throw like its best pitcher. Then, in very long extra innings games, where a team has run out of pitchers, let them use their pitching machine.