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Throughout all my extensive research on the umpiring in the MLB I have figured out that the problem isn’t only because of the poor umpiring but the fact that no precautions are being taken and no consequences are being given out. MLB could make this problem so much less critical if they just ad consequences for bad, lousy, or biased umpires. This simple fix could change the viewership and game.

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Can MLB fix problems with umpires? | Nothing Personal with David Samson

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In this video a talk show host talks about umpires are bending rules and being biased on purpose. He prefaces both the fact that it is hard to be an umpire, but also that they do not want to look bad and or want their team to win.

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Can MLB fix problems with umpires? | Nothing Personal with David Samson

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The issue of bad umpiring in the MLB matters deeply, umpires could simply be the main contributor to the downfall of the sport. People who love the MLB could lose the game they love due to something that is such a simple fix. The umpiring is losing this game money.

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As an avid baseball player/fan I would hate to see the game I love so much to crumple up right in front of me, and something so simple to ruin it. If baseball becomes less popular then I have less to watch and less competition in my games of playing.

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Once again I hope they start giving out punishments to bad umpires; I do not hope for robotic umpires. Some people say robotic umpires would change the game, and they are right but this change wouldn’t be for the better. I hope to for MLB to squeeze this issue like a bug and dish out penalties for lousy or biased umpires.

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This graphic shows over the past 10 years MLB ratings and viewers are getting worse and worse. As you can see last year’s ratings/viewers rank 50/50 meaning it is the worst. Clearly viewership is getting lost and at root of the umpires.

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Analysis: World Series or not - viewership is baseball's big problem | CNN

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MLB is getting lower players and viewers over the years due to loss in viewership. In the article it also talks about how less kids are playing baseball and how even ESPORTS are getting more players!

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Analysis: World Series or not - viewership is baseball's big problem | CNN

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Major League Baseball's World Series is upon us, and I can't help thinking how little most of my friends care.

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This graphic shows youth baseball is losing lots of players and new people to join the sport, this would be in effect to the loss of viewership due to the umpires. The umpires create a ripple affect on the game and its players.

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In this video a youtuber talks about how the viewership and fans of baseball are on the decline. He uses statistics to back up his points.

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In this video a talk show host talks about how it’s not the problem that the umpires are bad. It’s the fact that there is no punishment for being lousy or sucking. He talks about how there should be a system.

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This image shows how over the years the umpires are getting worse over the years. Through my research I learned that this is because they don’t care as much, they are not going to get punished.

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Angel Hernandez, Robots, & How to Solve the MLB Umpiring Problem

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In this article the author talks about multiple different solutions to solve the umpiring issue. The main solution is to hold the umpires accountable, and that must happen!

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Angel Hernandez got 354 ball-strike calls wrong in his 31 games in 2021, more than 11 per game. Something has to give with regards to umpiring - and Boardroom has a plan to fix it.

Whenever refereeing, umpiring, replay reviews, and VAR are dragged back up to the service of our broader sports discussions, the inevitable focus turns to "getting the calls right."

And when it comes to umpiring in Major League Baseball, simply getting the calls right is clearly not the biggest priority. If it was, we'd be watching a very different game.

So, how did we get here? Point blank, MLB umpires face relatively little accountability and the consequences for the worst offenders are generally limited to, say, being denied a plum assignment in a postseason series.

Let's take Angel Hernandez as just one example of the broken system baseball has permitted to take hold.

The 60-year-old Angel Hernandez has been working MLB games since 1991 and has been widely ridiculed as one of baseball's worst arbiters for nearly as long. He hasn't called a World Series since 2005, which is basically the only punishment baseball can dole out - the Major League Baseball Umpires Association makes firing umps next to impossible, giving duly tenured members nearly Supreme Court Justice-level job security.

Hernandez unsuccessfully sued MLB in 2017, alleging racial discrimination was keeping him from calling World Series games despite significant evidence pointing to the fact that he's just not particularly good at his job.

His performance behind the plate in Sunday night's nationally televised Philadelphia Phillies-Milwaukee Brewers game highlighted baseball's umpire problem, missing 16 of the 129 called pitches. Ump Scorecards rated it the sixth-worst called game by any ump in 2022:

It all built up to a questionable called third strike against Phillies slugger Kyle Schwarber, whose "colorful" reaction and ejection went viral.

To be fair, that decisive strike wasn't actually a 100% indefensible call on its own, but few were ready to give Hernandez any benefit of the doubt following the several blunders that led up to that explosive moment.

Per Ump Scorecards, among the 15 umpires who called the most pitches behind the plate in 2021, Hernandez's 92.7% accuracy on 4,833 pitches was the third-worst ahead of Ted Barrett's 92.6 and Joe West's 92.2 (and West retired after the season). So, Hernandez missed 354 pitches in his 31 games last season, more than 11 per game.

And as baseball's system is currently constructed, there's not much of anything we can really do about it.

Let's propose a couple of quick and easy solutions to solve this mess once and for all.

Solution No. 1: Finally start holding umpires accountable

This should be far more simple than it is, but the Umpire Union will fight tooth and nail to protect its employees, as it should. But there are Major Leagues and Minor Leagues for players, there ought to be some system by which umpires could be brought up and sent down based on performance - and regardless of seniority.

More simply, who cannot maintain a certain threshold of accuracy shouldn't be umpires anymore.

Just like any other job.

Should umpires be forced to retire when they reach a certain age? That's a discriminatory workplace practice, so it's effectively dead on arrival. But should umpires who consistently finish toward the bottom of the league in terms of call accuracy continue to work behind the plate as normal? No, they shouldn't. And to believe otherwise is to believe that players and fans don't deserve better.

That brings us to another question: For purists who embrace this human element of the game despite its imperfections, how many mistakes should be tolerated as simply the cost of doing business or an immutable, historic aspect of the game?

Separately, there's another solution out there that could one day end the scourge of missed calls once and for all.

Solution No. 2: Unleash the robot umpires

It may only be a matter of time before we let robots call an automatic, consistent MLB strike zone that doesn't vary from umpire to umpire and gets calls right 100% of the time.

The independent Atlantic League, a partner for MLB as a testing ground for new rules and innovations of sorts, used a digital Automatic Ball-Strike (ABS) system from the second half of the 2019 season through 2021. Robot umps were used in eight of the nine Low-A Southeast League ballparks last season, have been used in some Florida Spring Training parks, and are now in place in 11 Triple-A ballparks for 2022.

The system isn't quite perfect, with complaints about bad calls on breaking balls lodged at the 2019 Arizona Fall League and the Atlantic League returning to human umpires for the 2022 season. But as the technology evolves, having a computerized system for calling balls and strikes should be the norm in Major League Baseball if it truly wants to evolve as a sport and prioritize getting calls correct.

Right now, MLB is choosing to continue to live in the past. And Schwarber's outburst against Angel Hernandez was just one more reminder of that unfortunate fact.

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Angel Hernandez, Robots, & How to Solve the MLB Umpiring Problem

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Another poor Angel Hernandez performance on April 24 highlighted baseball's umpiring problem yet again. Check out Boardroom's solutions for fixing it.

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MLB Has an Optics Problem with Umpires and Strike Zone Displays

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In this article the man who runs the Twins news page wrote about him going to the Twins game. He talked about how the umpires were lazy, biased, and didn’t seem to care about bad calls they made.

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I watched a majority of Saturday's game against the Guardians from one of my favorite vantage points at Target Field, standing at the rail behind the lower-bowl home plate sections. Provided you don't mind being on your feet, it's one of the best views you can get in the park without paying for expensive seats.

What's especially nice about watching from here is that you can keep an eye on the TVs mounted beneath the overhang for fans in the back rows and on the concourse - great for catching a quick zoomed-in replay of what you just witnessed live. This was helpful, for instance, when I was trying to parse out exactly what happened on this wild play at second base. This kind of stuff is what makes watching and dissecting baseball great.

Unfortunately, Saturday's game also provided a glaring glimpse of something that is increasingly hampering the quality of the baseball-viewing experience: a persistent, precision-based strike zone display in broadcasts, paired with home plate umpires who are too often far from precise in their calls.

As Brennan Miller bumbled his way through this game, repeatedly botching calls that overwhelmingly went against the Twins, all fans in my vicinity would glance to the screen, only to have these misses confirmed over and over again. For Major League Baseball, it's just a really odd way to present your product, placing shortcomings of officials and their pivotal impact front-and-center for viewers, to the point where it sort of overrides the rest of the action.

When it comes to the topic of electronic strike zones, I personally tend to lean a little more traditional. I actually don't mind the idea of a somewhat subjective (yet consistent) strike zone, and I enjoy the human element playing a role in guiding the game. I'm cool with rewarding pitchers for executing really well, or catchers for framing the ball, and with these skills bending the margins of the zone to some extent.

The thing is, there is no real subjectivity allowed for when you've got the strike zone overlay on the screen depicting balls and strikes as a matter of fact. When the circle is outside the box, it's clearly going to be perceived as a ball, and a missed call if the ump says otherwise. It's black and white.

What's worse: the strike zones superimposed on broadcasts are not always even accurate, and can actually undermine the umpires when they are NOT getting it wrong. I'm not one to defend Angel Hernandez (perhaps the single greatest walking argument for robot umps), but he was getting roasted by people on Sunday for calling a strike against Giancarlo Stanton that was ... definitely a strike? Ah, but it did not land within the static strike zone overlay that barely reaches the bottom of his belt.

Maybe I'm overly sensitive to this, because I watch a team that takes pitches and strikes out so very often, and seems to get bitten by these borderline calls with extreme frequency. For me, the annoying experience of watching Saturday's game and brooding over nonstop missed calls has come to feel somewhat routine. But at a broader level, I've long been bothered by this disconnect in the way MLB presents its product, at a time when the league is trying hard to win new fans. It's getting to be a little much to take.

If Major League Baseball wants to position the strike zone as this absolute and enforceable thing, then why not just implement the automated balls and strikes (ABS) system and do away with the disjointed viewing experience. If, conversely, the league wants us to believe the strike zone is dynamic, fluid and subjective - thus validating the ongoing existence of human umpires - then broadcasts should stop giving the opposite impression. At the very least, the superimposed zone could better reflect the way umps are actually taught to call balls and strikes (or the way the Hawk-Eye tracking system measures them), as opposed to the uniform rectangle shape we mostly get now.

One thing that seems uncontroversial: If we're gonna keep presenting the strike zone so prominently, it's past time to give managers the ability to challenge ball/strike calls in some capacity. Making the players, coaches and all the fans feel powerless while watching a disastrously butchered umpiring job like we saw from Miller on Saturday completely alter the course of the game is not good for anyone. It's certainly not the kind of thing that's going to attract more viewers to MLB.

What's your feeling on the way Major League Baseball is handling and presenting the strike zone? Do the disjointed optics of these broadcasts bother you as much as me? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

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MLB Has an Optics Problem with Umpires and Strike Zone Displays

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Either the strike zone is subjective or it's not. Pick a side!

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MLB Momentum Takes Hit From Playoff Ratings Dip, Format Debate

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In this article it talks about how MLB is plunging viewers in the most important part of the year. In  Major League Baseball they are struggling to get viewers in October, the MLB playoffs.

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MLB Momentum Takes Hit From Playoff Ratings Dip, Format Debate

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Major League Baseball’s hopes to ride its resurgent regular season into the postseason have hit an initial speed bump.

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Why Robot Umpires Are Bad for Baseball | SicEm365

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In this post the author talks about how robot umpires would negatively affect the game. He also states that all the MLB needs to do is hold them more accountable!

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So here we go again. People are demanding robots be used to call the strike zone in Major League Baseball.
https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/mlb-commissioner-rob-manfred-addresses-growing-support-for-automated-strike-zone/
I'm not surprised by fans who never understood the rules, nor the players whose egos assume they are right and trained professional officials are wrong, but there are a lot of people involved in this issue, who really should have a better grasp of why this is a bad idea.

Let's start by looking at who is complaining about the strike zone. Players and managers and media, though not all of them. It's the batters who strike out, and pitchers who can't find the plate, and managers whose teams lose. Basically, it's an excuse to get away from having a bad day. Media, of course, loves to pile on officials, it's an easy to way to get fans excited without offending a fan base, even if it is a cheap shot against trained professional officials. But before I get too far down the road, let's also consider how umpires are treated, because that is relevant to the question.

Hating umpires is a long tradition, going back to its beginnings. In early days, even the best umpires faced physical danger from just doing their job. In 1908, for example, umpire Hank O'Day received death threats and actual physical attacks just because he correctly called a close game against the Giants.
https://books.google.com/books?id=YGa_DAAAQBAJ&pg=PA56&lpg=PA56&dq=baseball+umpire+killed+by+mob&source=bl&ots=iQv2Ro308Y&sig=O6JKXxPt3SQin9PJ-hDjCNi6J2A&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjwypqmoOHVAhWDZVAKHVBJCz8Q6AEITDAH#v=onepage&q=baseball%20umpire%20killed%20by%20mob&f=false

Babe Ruth once punched an umpire for throwing him out of a game
http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2012/06/this-day-in-history-after-facing-one-batter-babe-ruth-punches-an-umpire-for-throwing-him-out-of-the-game-ruths-replacement-then-throws-a-no-hitter/

If you think that's just old history, not relevant to the game, consider that umpires were physically assaulted during a game in recent years, as well
http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=90697
https://www.upi.com/Archives/1981/10/10/A-baseball-fan-with-a-blackjack-ran-onto-the/7251371534400/

Umpires have been physically assaulted by coaches and players, and I don't mean just the yelling
http://www.mercurynews.com/2010/07/20/youth-baseball-umpire-attacked-knocked-unconscious-by-coach/
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1019290-ugliest-mlb-umpire-playermanager-incidents-ever
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umpire_abuse

and this even happens in Little League
http://www.foxnews.com/story/2007/07/16/little-league-baseball-umpires-attacked-by-fans-with-pizza.html

Why is this relevant? Two reasons. First, people who hate umpires really don't have a clue about what the job requires, not only in game knowledge and rules, but also patience with the ridiculous egos of athletes and coaches. The second reason is an acknowledgement that some umpires have better zone control than others, but are MLB umpires for skills in other areas. While it would be great to select the best umpires from thousands of applicants, the way player selection goes, the plain fact is that the harassment and abuse of officials means that a lot of players who finish playing and would be great additions as officials, chose not to become umpires because they don't want to go through the abuse they know gets heaped on officials. That means you get the best available officials to work the games, from a much smaller pool. And the deliberate disrespect from media is not going to help encourage better officiating in the future. The simple fact is, most people who have strong opinions really don't know the rules, and even eth ones who do, usually don't have the guts to pass the test, get the equipment, and start working games to rise through the ranks themselves. It's easy to be a screaming jerk, and they are everywhere. People with the metal in their backbone to become umpires, are a lot more rare.

How much do we need MLB umpires? Peer into the Wayback machine here, and take a look at what happened when the umps went on strike in 1999.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_Major_League_Umpires_Association_mass_resignation
https://www.sbnation.com/2012/10/2/3444436/the-history-of-replacement-umpires http://theclassical.org/articles/called-out-the-forgotten-baseball-umpires-strike-of-1999
The short version? Dictating strike zones to umpires is stupid, and trying to replace a bunch of Major League officials with replacements is incredibly stupid.

Here's the thing aside from the officials' egos, and since they are human, that's definitely a factor, umpires keep the game safe, enforce the rules evenly, and promote good sportsmanship. If you have ever watched the consequences of one of those 'beer leagues' that try to have a season without paying for real umpires, you can get an idea of what I mean.

But the idea that robot strike zones is going to be the answer is stupid on its face as well. It sounds easy enough, just program a machine to watch where the ball goes, and let it ding the strikes and balls. But in reality, it doesn't play out that well.

First problem: This is most people's idea of a strike zone:

Nice neat box, with clear lines, right?

Sorry, no.
The actual strike zone is three dimensional, not two. It looks more like this:

Second complication: The batter sets the low and high end when he steps into the box, right? But he stands up and crouches at different times before the pitch comes in, and the zone is supposed to lock in, so at what point do you program the robot to set the zone?

Or here?

Or somewhere else? People have different stances, move in different ways, so whatever you program the machine, you will put some at an advantage and others at a disadvantage.

Keep in mind that, technically, any pitch that catches any part of the plate is a strike, so even wild pitches could conceivably be called strikes. Have fun explaining that to a coach, especially if first base is occupied.

Next, keep in mind as well that your robot will depend on clean optics and baseball is filled with dirt, mud, spit and gunk. What happens when the camera lens gets blurred?

Let's also keep in mind that players long ago learned how to make it hard for umpires to tell things like whether they were standing in or out of the batter's box,

And sometimes kick a little dirt onto the plate if there is a runner at third and there may be a safe/out call at home

Catchers sometimes move up during a pitch to keep umpires from seeing if a pitch is too low:

Don't be naive enough to think players and coaches won't figure out tricks to spoof a camera.

Taking away ball/strike calls from umpires won't make the game faster or more accurate, really. It will just offend the men who have been doing the job really well for more than a century, allow advantages for some kinds of batters and pitchers and disadvantages for others, and it will introduce baseball to a new set of tricks and cheats.

Let's not forget, as well, that this will also make it harder for new rookies coming up from minor league clubs, and new talent coming in from high schools and colleges. This will throw a spanner straight into every MLB club's farm system.

All because a few egos got bent again.

It's a really bad idea.

That which does not kill me, will try again and get nastier

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Why Robot Umpires Are Bad for Baseball | SicEm365

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Why Robot Umpires Are Bad for Baseball discussion on the SicEm365 Baseball forum.

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The MLB talks about how youth participation in baseball is significantly down. This would mean that the sport is slowly losing popularity as time goes on.

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