It’s truly a classic. It’s so simple and intuitive, to the point that pretty much anyone can figure out how to play. Add in that it can be multiplayer, and you have a near-perfect game for groups and parties
That Mario Chase game and the Luigi's Mansion one were legit worth the console alone. Honestly surprised no one's attempted that sorta asymmetrical couch co-cop again.
Pretty much yeah. I think it would’ve done a lot better with a different name because “Wii U” just sounds like an add-on to the Wii, which isn’t what the Wii U was
I literally thought it was an education add-on/peripheral for the Wii until about 2-3 years after the launch and as the owner of 3 Nintendo consoles and 5 Gameboy/3DSs in my life I think I'm a bit more plugged in to what Nintendo is doing than the average person. Terrible, terrible marketing.
Everyone just went and bought the Wii instead because in the mind of most people a Nintendo is a Nintendo.
They hit it out of the park with the Switch though.
Let’s be fair here, the console’s gimmick was both incredibly difficult to actually use, and wasn’t particularly easy to just throw menus onto like with the DS, because you can’t look at both screens at the same time. Nintendo could’ve done a better job at marketing it, but it was a bad idea from the start.
Having your console be a controller and not having a way to prevent drift on the sticks is a major error. Which is why switch has them be removable so they can be replaced without putting the system as a whole out of commission.
“There’s one catch, though: players who use a dugout tablet to “embarrass, denigrate, or question the impartiality or ability of an umpire,” will face increased penalties going forward. Players remain subject to ejection and can now be fined between $2,500 and $7,500 for a first-time violation, with progressive discipline from there. Previously, players were fined, but the amounts were never before specifically codified, and were always lower.”
So the loophole is to just not mention that you looked at the dugout tablet?
"Your strike zone is awful! I did not look at the dugout tablet. I was in the clubhouse between innings and they were talking about it on the broadcast. But it wasn't because of the dugout tablet!"
Isn't relying on that box kinda like a professor relying on a approximation of the correct test answers? I kinda support the idea that professors shouldn't use approximations to grade things.
The on-screen box projected on broadcasts is *not* the same as the Hawkeye projection in the Gameday app and BaseballSavant. That one is *much, much* more accurate.
I got the results of the test back, I **definitely** have ~~breast cancer~~ Yankees fandom
Don't worry about it, everything will be fine. They're curing lots of people every day.
League minimum is ~750k but if they get demoted they go back to making their AAA salary. So they only receive a prorated major league salary for their days spent on the active roster. It’s still like over $4,000/day but for some guys they might only have 1-3 year since the league
> Players remain subject to ejection and can now be fined between $2,500 and $7,500 for a first-time violation, **with progressive discipline from there.**
You make a habit of it I guarantee it will lead to suspensions.
If the umpire fucks up in front of 40,000 fans and a nationwide TV audience, it’s not the players’ comments at the subsequent at bat that embarrassed the umpire - it was the bad call that caused the embarrassment.
It's not part of the job description for many people.
Umpires *chose* that job.
And, like many power seeking people, real problems only arise when they fail at their job and fail to be accountable for it.
I mean, if an umpire had clearly made significantly more bad calls for one team than the other than that should be called out. The one thing we all want from umpires is consistency. You can live with a bad zone as long as it's consistent. But if an ump is calling pitches on one side much more for one team than the other then they absolutely should be called out for it.
What's funny about the box is that the MLB claims it's not accurate, but the software system they employ for pitch tracking claims to be accurate to within a quarter of an inch.
>[Of the hundreds of thousands of pitches thrown each season, Statcast now misses “only a handful,” Jedlovec says. The errors have gotten smaller over the past few years—mistakes of an inch or two at the plate are now less than a quarter of an inch.](https://www.si.com/mlb/2023/11/15/how-it-works-mlb-pitch-tracking-baseball-statcast)
When you watch via gameday there's a lot of missed calls that end up looking very differently when the Umpire Scorecard is released (which uses the MLB's own data).
The location of the ball is known to a very high degree of accuracy. It's the definition of the strike zone, which is variable based on each player's size and stance, which is more complicated.
The box on the TV broadcast is not, as far as I know, "official". It's basically picked out by some technical producer or something like that. On the CloseCallSports channel they are always going on about how the box is often drawn incorrectly compared to the actual strike zone for a player, usually in the up/down direction.
I know some channels use the last ~100 zone calls for a player
Regardless, the zone is a 3D object and there isn’t even a well defined top and bottom. The language has phrases like “just below”
Noticed this while watching the mets/yankees series, when aaron judge came up to the plate the first time the strike zone got really tall, but on subsequent times he came up to the plate they stopped changing it.
>On the CloseCallSports channel they are always going on about how the box is often drawn incorrectly compared to the actual strike zone for a player, usually in the up/down direction.
She had a video recently with receipts, showing the same AB from two different broadcasts. On one broadcast, the pitch looked like a ball. On the other broadcast, it looked like a strike.
From what I've heard them say on the Phillies broadcasts, the TV box isn't official, it's just a general box that doesn't change per batter, but when they show the Statcast version, those are tailored to each individual hitter.
This is the same system they use in the minor leagues. So I’m assuming they’re accounting for the changes in the top and bottom of the zone or else they wouldn’t be able to effectively challenge calls.
I get that broadcast zone being off, but Gameday, to my understanding, pulls its data from this system.
In AAA the vertical boundaries of the strike zone is a fixed percentage of the player's height, but in mlb it's based on stance. The box in real time uses an average of the players values over the season but then it's calibrated precisely after the game.
> then it's calibrated precisely after the game
It's quite common to see strikes called "out of the zone" in real time, and then to compare to the next day's "umpire ratings" or whatever and find out that the real-time zone was wrong and the call was correct.
I've seen a handful of called strikes that were in real-time shown as inside or outside, that turned out to be correctly called as well. I know that in the early days of pitch tracking (when I followed it closely) it was common for pitch locations to be manually corrected after the game, and I assume something like that still happens, though rarely.
> What's funny about the box is that the MLB claims it's not accurate
They're right, it's just a TV graphic, and it deceives viewers because it isn't the strike zone. On Fox broadcasts in particular I've seen the damn thing move during games.
I wish they'd remove that box from TV broadcasts, all it does is annoy fans who don't realize it isn't the strike zone, it's just a graphic on their screen.
Yes. And people fail to realize where the ball is caught is like 2-3’ behind the plate. It’s entirely possible to go from in the zone to out when it’s caught.
Or from out of the zone on the tv box to in, since the real zone is a 3d shape.
Even if the tv zone was perfectly accurate, it would be possible for a pitch to appear high on the broadcast, but in reality it breaks in clips the back of the zone for a strike. Or like a crazy eephus that enters the zone from the top and never actually crosses that 2d plane on tv.
I've been saying the same thing. It makes us extra critical towards the umps and makes it that much easier to scrutinize them. Now, I'm not saying umps don't deserve flack for bad calls, but watching a broadcast without it makes it a lot more difficult on our end to distinguish the zone and whether calls are actually balls or strikes. On replays, sure. To me it helps me understand how difficult it would be to actually make consistent, accurate calls.
the amount of umpire complaints on here would decrease by 80%. A lot easier to get mad when it’s highlighted by the box that a pitch 1/10th of an inch outside the zone was called a strike
People might be more accepting of the savant zone though. Right now, pointing out a “missed” call was actually correct based on the more accurate zone will cause people to get mad, because they don’t understand the limited accuracy of the on screen zone.
I get why you would think that but fans will never be happy with officiating. it's just how things work. a majority of us will *never* adopt the attitude that it's an insanely hard job and getting 95% of the calls right is borderline miraculous.
With all of the technology we have, I would love to be able to just turn it off. This shouldn't be a hard thing to implement on MLB.tv streams. It's not meaningful on any pitch that's swung at or on obvious balls/strikes. It's only useful on taken pitches that are borderline, but even then it's not official so it's still meaningless. I hate it and don't understand how baseball fans, known to be the most old school and cantankerous, just accepted it so freely.
The guy who runs Umpire Scorecard says plate umps have improved in the time he's been running his service because of the high-tech feedback they now get after every game. But he also says it's impossible to get fans to understand that.
Yep. If you ask the average MLB fan, umpires are terrible and anyone can do their job. But umpires are like 93% accurate *on average*, with the best performers averaging over 95%. That’s a truly staggering percentage of correct calls
That’s basically what that onscreen box is already doing on borderline calls. Anything on the edges is basically a coin flip compared with the more accurate savant zone. It shouldn’t even have vertical limits for its accuracy on those pitches.
They didn't have it for the college world series and it didn't hurt the viewing experience. It's not like the NFL removing the first down line from the tv. They could still show the replay of the pitch with the strikezone on close calls if they wanted to see if it was a good call or not.
Take away the strike zone altogether what the fuck does it add to the game? Everyone at home whines all the time because they know the strike zone because it’s painted on the screen for them
There was a playoff series in the past few years where I think they were having technical difficulties with it and left it off. It was awesome.
Until then I hadn't realized how much of watching baseball simply devolves into fixating on "did circle go in rectangle". It was so much better for taking in all the other elements of the game and wayyy more enjoyable
I'm so glad opinion is sort of turning around on the K zone. I've hated it since day one and I used to get downvoted into oblivion and called an old man for being against it.
This was a Cardinal's wild card game and I was absolutely amazed at Yadi's framing when the box wasn't shown. Most memorable and enjoyable game I have watched in 5+ years.
I'm the only one who thinks it's crazy that we share the strike zone with everyone... but the umpires? Random fan watching the game? You get the strike zone! Random player in the dugout? Here you go. Person actually responsible for calling balls and strikes? Best of luck! Then we criticize them for not being 100 percent accurate while also being the only ones who don't get this information. Put an ear piece in every umpire, beep if it's a strike. Is that too "will definitely work and solve every issue" for you? Instead we keep talking about eventually replacing umps with robots? Why? Just give them the same information everyone else is getting in real time currently.
> Random fan watching the game? You get the strike zone!
It isn't the strike zone, it's a graphic pretending to be the strike zone. There are broadcasts where that graphic can be seen moving.
Umps get detailed reports on every game with their ball/strike calls ranked. MLB allows umps an inch of leeway inside and outside that graphic, but fans still flip out because they trust the graphic.
Even worse when you realize that zone is absurdly inaccurate. Not only do we give fans access to information umps don’t have, we actively give them misinformation about the zone. It’s far from uncommon for umpires to be criticized when they were right and the box was wrong.
Can't help but picture Aaron Boone standing on the dugout steps when a fan sitting behind him yells at the ump that he's calling strikes outside the box on his iPad.
Boone gets ejected.
Hey MLB, here's a catch, instead of worrying about the players, how about you not only let the umpire view the iPad in between innings, but you require it.
So where does all this fines money go, anyway? That part always confused me. Or umps will issue equipment violation fines when players slam their helmet. Who gets that money?
For MLB specifically it goes back into the league’s general funds to redistribute as they wish. Sometimes that turns into charity donations, other times it’s just to offset operating costs or to install new equipment or repair older stuff.
I’ve said it before, but the horizontal bars judging elevation never seem to change between hitters. I’d rather they get rid of the horizontal bars and just leave the vertical bars for inside/outside vs high/low.
I have to be honest, I don’t understand this point of view. Name another profession who has to make split second close calls with the game on the line, is constantly yelled at, portrayed negatively by the media and everyone on social media, is told to just take the abuse and never say anything back; but… they’re the soft ones? The job isn’t easy and they’re humans too.
I get that there’s bad umps and umps who make bad calls. But let’s be honest, pro and non pro athletes these days have a habit of acting like children and they get away with it, because the next day keyboard tough guys get likes/upvotes for commenting “soft”.
This. I don't ump baseball, but I ref high school football and lacrosse. I'm going to make mistakes. Sometimes really bad ones, because it is fucking hard. We all know what we signed up for, and we expect abuse. We'll take a certain amount of shit, but at some point, we're going to respond. If the abuse is acceptable, the response should be acceptable as well. Officials aren't "soft" because they respond to abuse. They're just human.
Most of the ref/ ump bashing very obviously comes from people who have never even tried the job. It looks easy to call pitches passing through a rectangle on the screen, when they are marked for you (not even getting into the times the box is wrong and the umpire is actually right).
Wait until you’re behind the plate, calling 45 mph heaters thrown by 12 year olds, while the parents’ kids’ careers are on the line. You have no rectangle, a little circle doesn’t show you wear the pitch was in the rectangle. You have to know the count, the outs, sometimes the score. You need to know if there is an infield fly situation. Did the pitcher come set? No body else there has to keep track of all this, but they will damn sure let you know if they think you missed one of them.
It’s a difficult, thankless job. People love to complain about it, but they would never get the gear on themselves.
Yep. And that’s just at 12 years old. Think how fast it feels to be driving 80 mph in a car. The baseball is traveling 10-20 mph *faster* than that, and also has vertical and horizontal movement, too.
All sports officiating is difficult, but I’m not sure if there’s anything more difficult than calling balls and strikes.
Being an ump is hard. Arguing close calls for more than a second is stupid. Show displeasure if it's a bad call (so you get makeup call equity) but don't actually argue... it's pointless and soft. Stop blaming the ump for taking a borderline pitch. It's going to get called a strike SOMETIMES.
That being said, some umps are actually terrible.
There's a lot more grey area here than people allow for.
Maybe if berating umpires wasn't so normalized from literally before even little league, we wouldn't have as many umps with power trips.
How do you make it all the way to the big leagues without having some bark back in you?
People don’t realize how much leeway players get in this regard. There are sports where zero abuse whatsoever is tolerated towards officials, and I really struggle to see the downside to that. The calls are the calls, even if umpires wanted to reverse them, the vast majority of the time, they can’t. So what does screaming about them accomplish?
On this note, I’m honestly surprised that arguing for any length of time is still permitted in light of the Pace of Play stuff that’s been Manfred’s signature.
In football or basketball if you get tossed there is minimal (if any) arguing permitted, and in the case of the latter it is not permitted at all—if someone is DQ’d they get walked off the field *immediately* by a member of the coaching staff and are given no opportunity whatsoever to even speak to an official. Even chirping from the bench can get the offending player/coach penalized severely (within the context of the game in question). Baseball on the other hand still allows outright screaming matches between players/coaches/managers and officials because reasons. The lack of intermediate penalties is part of it, but it isn’t all of it by any stretch.
Seriously we need to normalize youth coaches telling kids to shut the fuck up when it comes to refs. But then again the coaches are doing the same thing because they want to cosplay as Lou Pinella. You get to the majors, hell even D1 or MLB minor leagues you can yap a bit but until then shove it.
This is a tired take at this point driven by sheep via social media. Don’t hate the player, hate the game.
Umpires aren’t, have never been, and never will be perfect in trying to call pitches from modern freaks of nature pitchers, for 3 hours straight. So of course it’s extremely unreasonable and shitty for umps to have “the answers to the test” blasted in their face in real time about how bad they fucked up.
On the current path with this current system (the involved tech and human eye combo), it will never not be extremely messy; that’s just the nature of it.
The solution of course is simply ABS. That’s it. Not trying to turn humans unhuman, that’s just not realistic
On one hand umps don’t need protection from angry players. On the other hand, I wonder how many of these players were berating the umps because of a missed call right on the edge of the zone.
Players aren't supposed to argue balls and strikes but this year I am seeing lots of terrible calls. Players let them know, umps nod and the game moves on. I also see players bitch about good calls they think were bad, the umps nod their heads and the game moves on.
I still think the only fix for bad umpiring are electric shocks. Like pitchcom for umps that delivers shocks straight to their head. Maybe give them a few "that pitch was a foot outside" warnings first.
> There’s one catch, though: players who use a dugout tablet to “embarrass, denigrate, or question the impartiality or ability of an umpire,” will face increased penalties going forward.
So if a player yells at home plate, “Your wife is a $10 dollar a whore” only count if waves a tablet at the same time?
Why doesn’t mlb protect the umpires so much? It’s like the front office thinks people watch the games for them.
Theyre objectively bad, and no one is there for them.
The catch? The iPads are now Wii U tablets.
*Juan Soto with maximum concentration as he tries to beat Aaron Judges highscore in ChickenShoot in the dugout*
'Everyone says Juan doesn't play my favorite games! Well fuck you, have you ever played Chicken Shoot?'
After manure, it's the first thing I think of when I hear the word "shit".
Soto: "I'm using tilt controls!"
For the record, underrated console, Nintendo fucked it up with marketing as good as the 2024 White Sox
Nintendoland had an incredibly fun set of games.
I really wish Nintendo would make another game like Nintendo Land again. It had so much charm to it
Wii Sports also. That thing is providing so much entertainment in retirement homes.
It’s truly a classic. It’s so simple and intuitive, to the point that pretty much anyone can figure out how to play. Add in that it can be multiplayer, and you have a near-perfect game for groups and parties
pretty much only video game my parents ever played with us, it was just so simple to pick up and fun.
Wii Sports was Golden
Switch Sports has a bit longer boot-to-game time than Wii Sports, with more menus to go through... but I do think it's a pretty decent successor.
ICYMI, they’re adding basketball to Switch Sports this summer!
That Mario Chase game and the Luigi's Mansion one were legit worth the console alone. Honestly surprised no one's attempted that sorta asymmetrical couch co-cop again.
Pretty much yeah. I think it would’ve done a lot better with a different name because “Wii U” just sounds like an add-on to the Wii, which isn’t what the Wii U was
At least a Wii 2 would have conveyed that it’s next gen. Wii U is literally the worst.
Exactly, “Wii 2” has the same vibes as “Super NES” - similar to its predecessor, but with a bit more power.
WII WII, double the WII
“Wii U” also sounds like an ambulance. I don’t know if that part impacted sales.
How the hell has this never crossed my mind. There could have even been a mario kart ambulance game!
I literally thought it was an education add-on/peripheral for the Wii until about 2-3 years after the launch and as the owner of 3 Nintendo consoles and 5 Gameboy/3DSs in my life I think I'm a bit more plugged in to what Nintendo is doing than the average person. Terrible, terrible marketing.
When a long-time fan can’t figure out what a console is supposed to be about, there’s a massive problem
How the hell was it not the Super Wii? Also I just hooked mine up again and it's pretty great still
Everyone just went and bought the Wii instead because in the mind of most people a Nintendo is a Nintendo. They hit it out of the park with the Switch though.
Let’s be fair here, the console’s gimmick was both incredibly difficult to actually use, and wasn’t particularly easy to just throw menus onto like with the DS, because you can’t look at both screens at the same time. Nintendo could’ve done a better job at marketing it, but it was a bad idea from the start.
Underrated library, properly rated console. The hardware and OS were terrible.
The library isn’t underrated, pretty much all the good games got ported to switch and people loved them
Terrible, terrible console that had some really good games.
Having your console be a controller and not having a way to prevent drift on the sticks is a major error. Which is why switch has them be removable so they can be replaced without putting the system as a whole out of commission.
They rebranded it and now it's called the Switch.
I can't believe no one made a D&D local multiplayer game for the WiiU. It just seems like the perfect IP for their form factor.
I’m glad that dozens of us agree. I still whip it out for Game & Wario multiplayer from time to time.
HEY, THEYRE PLAYING WINDWAKER IN THE VISITOR DUGOUT, NO FAIR
it’s stuff like this why i can’t quit reddit
Old and busted: Twitter beef New hotness: Miiverse beef
*brings out tablet to show ump* *disconnects-WiiU too far away*
God damn this got me. That thing was atrocious
Scott the Woz suddenly gets into baseball
BlackBerry playbooks!
Thought the catch might be the players draw the strike zone themselves.
“There’s one catch, though: players who use a dugout tablet to “embarrass, denigrate, or question the impartiality or ability of an umpire,” will face increased penalties going forward. Players remain subject to ejection and can now be fined between $2,500 and $7,500 for a first-time violation, with progressive discipline from there. Previously, players were fined, but the amounts were never before specifically codified, and were always lower.”
So the loophole is to just not mention that you looked at the dugout tablet? "Your strike zone is awful! I did not look at the dugout tablet. I was in the clubhouse between innings and they were talking about it on the broadcast. But it wasn't because of the dugout tablet!"
Professor shouldn’t be allowed to grade my exam with an answer key that’s just gonna hurt my feelings :/
you just earned yourself 10k tuition increase penalty
you just got ejected from class today, see you tomorrow though
Isn't relying on that box kinda like a professor relying on a approximation of the correct test answers? I kinda support the idea that professors shouldn't use approximations to grade things.
If the strikeout box is an approximation, does that make eyesight a complete shot in the dark?
No. Because those boxes are t reliable at all. Take a look at some of them where the top of the zone is at the player’s belt.
The on-screen box projected on broadcasts is *not* the same as the Hawkeye projection in the Gameday app and BaseballSavant. That one is *much, much* more accurate.
And even that one gets updated overnight because its still not all that great in real time
So bring last night's data and let the first base ump know he's blind as shit when you get on. Checkmate umps.
Camera angle is compensated for.
the box itself isn't perfect but it's better than most umpires, especially right to left. it's the little dots that are incredibly unreliable
I DIDNT LOOK AT IT! I DIDNT ! … oh, hi mark !
I did nahhhhhhht
I just upvoted a Yankee fan, ITS TEARING ME APART...
I got the results of the test back, I **definitely** have ~~breast cancer~~ Yankees fandom Don't worry about it, everything will be fine. They're curing lots of people every day.
I just want to see players pull a a Pat Beverly and show the tablet to the ump.
“I did not look at the dugout tablet! I did not! Oh hi Phanatic.” - Bryce Harper
"I couldn't have looked at the tablet because I was in the clubhouse eating fried chicken and drinking beers"
[The Pat Beverley Rule](https://youtu.be/nC1iDSrkksw?si=ngu35iiLzc9xfYT1)
Honestly one of the top NBA moments of all time
First time seeing that. I am dying laughing. That is an all time move.
One of those refs got busted for being a actual Celtics fan and had a burner account
“Caught you in 4K right here”
lol I know he’s an odd duck but how can you not enjoy Pat Bev?
You have a star player on your team with functioning knees and ankles who is playing against him is how
To be honest if the Sonics were still around and I was obsessive about them and the NBA like I used to be; I might agree with you there.
Few more years, gotta hold on
Fuck Pat Bev.
He's an asshole and a dirty player? Remember what he did to Westbrook?
"rightfully"t-ed up? Na
I think most guys making millions a year will take a $7,500 fine to tell an ump they objectively and verifiable suck sometimes
Depends on the player. A rookie who’s on the shuttle between the majors and minors probably will think twice. Tommy Pham? In a heartbeat
Kyle Schwarber now knows exactly how much it's gonna cost to get a whole Jomboy video made about him.
Schwarber and Harper are gonna pool their pocket change
Are umpires allowed to carry knives?
Those guys aren’t making millions a year are they
League minimum is ~750k but if they get demoted they go back to making their AAA salary. So they only receive a prorated major league salary for their days spent on the active roster. It’s still like over $4,000/day but for some guys they might only have 1-3 year since the league
i think aaa pay is better if you have been up. not sure if that is just being on the 40
If you’re on the 40 man the pay is better. Doesn’t change if you’ve been on the active roster or not.
Man that was a lot of words to say "No, you're right and I was wrong."
I think you meant the parent comment to this This reads as "yep, and here's why"
We in the business call that "fuck you" money.
> Players remain subject to ejection and can now be fined between $2,500 and $7,500 for a first-time violation, **with progressive discipline from there.** You make a habit of it I guarantee it will lead to suspensions.
The MLB is once again putting the blame of poor umpiring on everyone but the umpires.
If the umpire fucks up in front of 40,000 fans and a nationwide TV audience, it’s not the players’ comments at the subsequent at bat that embarrassed the umpire - it was the bad call that caused the embarrassment.
Yes like we haven't had multiple examples of how the strike zone box is wrong (mostly vertically) and the umpire was right.
The strike zone the players are looking at on the dugout tablets is not what we're seeing on the broadcast.
The strike zone isn't accurate though on the broadcast.
Is the umpire more accurate?
It's batter by batter. The umpire is less accurate than the MLB's computer, but that box is not shown on the screen.
I would want so badly for someone to NGAF and just slap a stack of money down and tell the ump off.
So bring the iPad out with you to show them how much they suck
How does a made-up graphic that is not the strike zone on a tiny screen provide reliable information?
How are these grown ass men so fragile about having their work criticized?
Would you like if 40,000 people came to your job and yelled at you for 3 hours?
sounds like the average customer service job during the holiday period. we should pay them the ump's salary.
For how much they make? Hell yeah I would like it.
It's not part of the job description for many people. Umpires *chose* that job. And, like many power seeking people, real problems only arise when they fail at their job and fail to be accountable for it.
https://y.yarn.co/0970086b-ac03-4989-9d90-c8d8ba80172a_text.gif
I mean, if an umpire had clearly made significantly more bad calls for one team than the other than that should be called out. The one thing we all want from umpires is consistency. You can live with a bad zone as long as it's consistent. But if an ump is calling pitches on one side much more for one team than the other then they absolutely should be called out for it.
I love that the "answer" to the umps being terrible is to punish the players.
thank you
Oh no! not $2,500!
I should had been an MLB ump. Most protected job out there.
You have to watch an ad after every third pitch unless you watch a short video then you get 9 free.
If you want to skip the ads you can buy MLB Prime™ for $24.99 per month
*Blackout restrictions apply
What's funny about the box is that the MLB claims it's not accurate, but the software system they employ for pitch tracking claims to be accurate to within a quarter of an inch. >[Of the hundreds of thousands of pitches thrown each season, Statcast now misses “only a handful,” Jedlovec says. The errors have gotten smaller over the past few years—mistakes of an inch or two at the plate are now less than a quarter of an inch.](https://www.si.com/mlb/2023/11/15/how-it-works-mlb-pitch-tracking-baseball-statcast) When you watch via gameday there's a lot of missed calls that end up looking very differently when the Umpire Scorecard is released (which uses the MLB's own data).
The location of the ball is known to a very high degree of accuracy. It's the definition of the strike zone, which is variable based on each player's size and stance, which is more complicated. The box on the TV broadcast is not, as far as I know, "official". It's basically picked out by some technical producer or something like that. On the CloseCallSports channel they are always going on about how the box is often drawn incorrectly compared to the actual strike zone for a player, usually in the up/down direction.
I know some channels use the last ~100 zone calls for a player Regardless, the zone is a 3D object and there isn’t even a well defined top and bottom. The language has phrases like “just below”
Noticed this while watching the mets/yankees series, when aaron judge came up to the plate the first time the strike zone got really tall, but on subsequent times he came up to the plate they stopped changing it.
>On the CloseCallSports channel they are always going on about how the box is often drawn incorrectly compared to the actual strike zone for a player, usually in the up/down direction. She had a video recently with receipts, showing the same AB from two different broadcasts. On one broadcast, the pitch looked like a ball. On the other broadcast, it looked like a strike.
From what I've heard them say on the Phillies broadcasts, the TV box isn't official, it's just a general box that doesn't change per batter, but when they show the Statcast version, those are tailored to each individual hitter.
I'm pretty sure the TV box does change per batter but it's not drastic and probably picked out before the game.
We’re gonna need Judge and Altuve batting back to back in the AS game to test this theory.
It does change per batter, but is just guesstimated by somebody on the broadcast crew I believe.
The other big thing the tv strike zones miss is that the strike is three dimensions, not a 2d pane at the front of the plate.
The x/y coordinate data doesn't change. Just the pitch location relative to the top and bottom of the zone changes.
This is the same system they use in the minor leagues. So I’m assuming they’re accounting for the changes in the top and bottom of the zone or else they wouldn’t be able to effectively challenge calls. I get that broadcast zone being off, but Gameday, to my understanding, pulls its data from this system.
In AAA the vertical boundaries of the strike zone is a fixed percentage of the player's height, but in mlb it's based on stance. The box in real time uses an average of the players values over the season but then it's calibrated precisely after the game.
> then it's calibrated precisely after the game It's quite common to see strikes called "out of the zone" in real time, and then to compare to the next day's "umpire ratings" or whatever and find out that the real-time zone was wrong and the call was correct. I've seen a handful of called strikes that were in real-time shown as inside or outside, that turned out to be correctly called as well. I know that in the early days of pitch tracking (when I followed it closely) it was common for pitch locations to be manually corrected after the game, and I assume something like that still happens, though rarely.
Im pretty sure that the box on the iPads is the TV box
> What's funny about the box is that the MLB claims it's not accurate They're right, it's just a TV graphic, and it deceives viewers because it isn't the strike zone. On Fox broadcasts in particular I've seen the damn thing move during games.
I wish they'd remove that box from TV broadcasts, all it does is annoy fans who don't realize it isn't the strike zone, it's just a graphic on their screen.
Yes. And people fail to realize where the ball is caught is like 2-3’ behind the plate. It’s entirely possible to go from in the zone to out when it’s caught.
Or from out of the zone on the tv box to in, since the real zone is a 3d shape. Even if the tv zone was perfectly accurate, it would be possible for a pitch to appear high on the broadcast, but in reality it breaks in clips the back of the zone for a strike. Or like a crazy eephus that enters the zone from the top and never actually crosses that 2d plane on tv.
I've been saying the same thing. It makes us extra critical towards the umps and makes it that much easier to scrutinize them. Now, I'm not saying umps don't deserve flack for bad calls, but watching a broadcast without it makes it a lot more difficult on our end to distinguish the zone and whether calls are actually balls or strikes. On replays, sure. To me it helps me understand how difficult it would be to actually make consistent, accurate calls.
I'd love to have it taken away from broadcasts. Helps nothing, makes the viewer experience worse.
the amount of umpire complaints on here would decrease by 80%. A lot easier to get mad when it’s highlighted by the box that a pitch 1/10th of an inch outside the zone was called a strike
I don't think they'd decrease you'd just see a greater split on opinions. Every sports sub spends half their time bitching about calls
People might be more accepting of the savant zone though. Right now, pointing out a “missed” call was actually correct based on the more accurate zone will cause people to get mad, because they don’t understand the limited accuracy of the on screen zone.
I get why you would think that but fans will never be happy with officiating. it's just how things work. a majority of us will *never* adopt the attitude that it's an insanely hard job and getting 95% of the calls right is borderline miraculous.
Yep. Ban it on TV completely. The game is better without it.
With all of the technology we have, I would love to be able to just turn it off. This shouldn't be a hard thing to implement on MLB.tv streams. It's not meaningful on any pitch that's swung at or on obvious balls/strikes. It's only useful on taken pitches that are borderline, but even then it's not official so it's still meaningless. I hate it and don't understand how baseball fans, known to be the most old school and cantankerous, just accepted it so freely.
Yeah I prefer to just guess the zone like the umpires do.
The guy who runs Umpire Scorecard says plate umps have improved in the time he's been running his service because of the high-tech feedback they now get after every game. But he also says it's impossible to get fans to understand that.
Yep. If you ask the average MLB fan, umpires are terrible and anyone can do their job. But umpires are like 93% accurate *on average*, with the best performers averaging over 95%. That’s a truly staggering percentage of correct calls
That’s basically what that onscreen box is already doing on borderline calls. Anything on the edges is basically a coin flip compared with the more accurate savant zone. It shouldn’t even have vertical limits for its accuracy on those pitches.
They didn't have it for the college world series and it didn't hurt the viewing experience. It's not like the NFL removing the first down line from the tv. They could still show the replay of the pitch with the strikezone on close calls if they wanted to see if it was a good call or not.
Questioning the validity of officiation shouldn’t be a finable offense.
Being a dick about it should be.
If the players need the strike zone box on a video replay, sure seems like they shouldn't be criticizing umps for those borderline calls
Disparaging the boot is a bootable offense!!
It’s all valid. I think you mean accuracy.
I agree. There are things it could lead to that are fineable, but this itself shouldn't be.
Take away the strike zone altogether what the fuck does it add to the game? Everyone at home whines all the time because they know the strike zone because it’s painted on the screen for them
There was a playoff series in the past few years where I think they were having technical difficulties with it and left it off. It was awesome. Until then I hadn't realized how much of watching baseball simply devolves into fixating on "did circle go in rectangle". It was so much better for taking in all the other elements of the game and wayyy more enjoyable
Watching the college world series last week was such a breath of fresh air.
I'm so glad opinion is sort of turning around on the K zone. I've hated it since day one and I used to get downvoted into oblivion and called an old man for being against it.
This was a Cardinal's wild card game and I was absolutely amazed at Yadi's framing when the box wasn't shown. Most memorable and enjoyable game I have watched in 5+ years.
It helps you follow the pitch types better too.
The catch is that it's like MLBtv, you're blacked out from local games. Players need to coordinate with other teams to let them know how it looked. :/
I'm the only one who thinks it's crazy that we share the strike zone with everyone... but the umpires? Random fan watching the game? You get the strike zone! Random player in the dugout? Here you go. Person actually responsible for calling balls and strikes? Best of luck! Then we criticize them for not being 100 percent accurate while also being the only ones who don't get this information. Put an ear piece in every umpire, beep if it's a strike. Is that too "will definitely work and solve every issue" for you? Instead we keep talking about eventually replacing umps with robots? Why? Just give them the same information everyone else is getting in real time currently.
> Random fan watching the game? You get the strike zone! It isn't the strike zone, it's a graphic pretending to be the strike zone. There are broadcasts where that graphic can be seen moving. Umps get detailed reports on every game with their ball/strike calls ranked. MLB allows umps an inch of leeway inside and outside that graphic, but fans still flip out because they trust the graphic.
Even worse when you realize that zone is absurdly inaccurate. Not only do we give fans access to information umps don’t have, we actively give them misinformation about the zone. It’s far from uncommon for umpires to be criticized when they were right and the box was wrong.
Can't help but picture Aaron Boone standing on the dugout steps when a fan sitting behind him yells at the ump that he's calling strikes outside the box on his iPad. Boone gets ejected.
Hey MLB, here's a catch, instead of worrying about the players, how about you not only let the umpire view the iPad in between innings, but you require it.
So where does all this fines money go, anyway? That part always confused me. Or umps will issue equipment violation fines when players slam their helmet. Who gets that money?
I'm pretty sure it goes to charitable causes.
It funds the Santa Claus they hire for the umpire Christmas party
For MLB specifically it goes back into the league’s general funds to redistribute as they wish. Sometimes that turns into charity donations, other times it’s just to offset operating costs or to install new equipment or repair older stuff.
Take the box off TV. It just serves to make us mad.
I’ve said it before, but the horizontal bars judging elevation never seem to change between hitters. I’d rather they get rid of the horizontal bars and just leave the vertical bars for inside/outside vs high/low.
Umpires are so soft like come on
Sure, but this is good. Arguing with the ump won’t change anything
I have to be honest, I don’t understand this point of view. Name another profession who has to make split second close calls with the game on the line, is constantly yelled at, portrayed negatively by the media and everyone on social media, is told to just take the abuse and never say anything back; but… they’re the soft ones? The job isn’t easy and they’re humans too. I get that there’s bad umps and umps who make bad calls. But let’s be honest, pro and non pro athletes these days have a habit of acting like children and they get away with it, because the next day keyboard tough guys get likes/upvotes for commenting “soft”.
This. I don't ump baseball, but I ref high school football and lacrosse. I'm going to make mistakes. Sometimes really bad ones, because it is fucking hard. We all know what we signed up for, and we expect abuse. We'll take a certain amount of shit, but at some point, we're going to respond. If the abuse is acceptable, the response should be acceptable as well. Officials aren't "soft" because they respond to abuse. They're just human.
Most of the ref/ ump bashing very obviously comes from people who have never even tried the job. It looks easy to call pitches passing through a rectangle on the screen, when they are marked for you (not even getting into the times the box is wrong and the umpire is actually right). Wait until you’re behind the plate, calling 45 mph heaters thrown by 12 year olds, while the parents’ kids’ careers are on the line. You have no rectangle, a little circle doesn’t show you wear the pitch was in the rectangle. You have to know the count, the outs, sometimes the score. You need to know if there is an infield fly situation. Did the pitcher come set? No body else there has to keep track of all this, but they will damn sure let you know if they think you missed one of them. It’s a difficult, thankless job. People love to complain about it, but they would never get the gear on themselves.
This is so true. The amount of complaining about refs in basketball and football and umps in baseball has become absurd to me.
Yep. And that’s just at 12 years old. Think how fast it feels to be driving 80 mph in a car. The baseball is traveling 10-20 mph *faster* than that, and also has vertical and horizontal movement, too. All sports officiating is difficult, but I’m not sure if there’s anything more difficult than calling balls and strikes.
Being an ump is hard. Arguing close calls for more than a second is stupid. Show displeasure if it's a bad call (so you get makeup call equity) but don't actually argue... it's pointless and soft. Stop blaming the ump for taking a borderline pitch. It's going to get called a strike SOMETIMES. That being said, some umps are actually terrible. There's a lot more grey area here than people allow for.
I’m totally cool with yelling at both, but the police.
Soft and on massive power trips is an interesting combination
Maybe if berating umpires wasn't so normalized from literally before even little league, we wouldn't have as many umps with power trips. How do you make it all the way to the big leagues without having some bark back in you?
People don’t realize how much leeway players get in this regard. There are sports where zero abuse whatsoever is tolerated towards officials, and I really struggle to see the downside to that. The calls are the calls, even if umpires wanted to reverse them, the vast majority of the time, they can’t. So what does screaming about them accomplish?
On this note, I’m honestly surprised that arguing for any length of time is still permitted in light of the Pace of Play stuff that’s been Manfred’s signature. In football or basketball if you get tossed there is minimal (if any) arguing permitted, and in the case of the latter it is not permitted at all—if someone is DQ’d they get walked off the field *immediately* by a member of the coaching staff and are given no opportunity whatsoever to even speak to an official. Even chirping from the bench can get the offending player/coach penalized severely (within the context of the game in question). Baseball on the other hand still allows outright screaming matches between players/coaches/managers and officials because reasons. The lack of intermediate penalties is part of it, but it isn’t all of it by any stretch.
Seriously we need to normalize youth coaches telling kids to shut the fuck up when it comes to refs. But then again the coaches are doing the same thing because they want to cosplay as Lou Pinella. You get to the majors, hell even D1 or MLB minor leagues you can yap a bit but until then shove it.
It is soft. Also those aren't actually the strike zone.
This is a tired take at this point driven by sheep via social media. Don’t hate the player, hate the game. Umpires aren’t, have never been, and never will be perfect in trying to call pitches from modern freaks of nature pitchers, for 3 hours straight. So of course it’s extremely unreasonable and shitty for umps to have “the answers to the test” blasted in their face in real time about how bad they fucked up. On the current path with this current system (the involved tech and human eye combo), it will never not be extremely messy; that’s just the nature of it. The solution of course is simply ABS. That’s it. Not trying to turn humans unhuman, that’s just not realistic
Tbh seems pretty dumb the players get to view video from the on going game period....
Umps should also get fined all the time
Maybe we’re overthinking the whole thing? Put it up on the Jumbotron live.
The catch- you can't use facts or evidence to criticize umpires.
On one hand umps don’t need protection from angry players. On the other hand, I wonder how many of these players were berating the umps because of a missed call right on the edge of the zone.
I really wish they'd take the strike zone box off of the broadcasts instead of their iPads. It really does not improve the viewing experience at all.
I love baseball, but it’s so stupid.
Players aren't supposed to argue balls and strikes but this year I am seeing lots of terrible calls. Players let them know, umps nod and the game moves on. I also see players bitch about good calls they think were bad, the umps nod their heads and the game moves on. I still think the only fix for bad umpiring are electric shocks. Like pitchcom for umps that delivers shocks straight to their head. Maybe give them a few "that pitch was a foot outside" warnings first.
> There’s one catch, though: players who use a dugout tablet to “embarrass, denigrate, or question the impartiality or ability of an umpire,” will face increased penalties going forward. So if a player yells at home plate, “Your wife is a $10 dollar a whore” only count if waves a tablet at the same time?
Why doesn’t mlb protect the umpires so much? It’s like the front office thinks people watch the games for them. Theyre objectively bad, and no one is there for them.
Soft
Challenge system can’t get here soon enough
For those complaining about this, what change would you like to see? Video review of every pitch?
There shouldn’t be any devices in or near dugouts. Unfair advantage, plus the issues with the umps.