BDD: Progressive Tweaks
by Bill Baer on July 8th, 2009Posted in Baseball Daily Digest, MLB | Print | No Comments »
At Baseball Daily Digest, I defend umpires from some recent criticism and also suggest some small but progressive tweaks that can be made to enhance the system.
[...] we remember all of the bad calls umpires make, particularly against teams we root for. As an example, I still remember a Braves-Phillies game many years ago in which Rafael Furcal hit a home run down the left field line that was wrongfully ruled fair. I can’t tell you who won the game, who pitched, who hit home runs (besides Furcal), or the final score, but I know that Furcal hit that pseudo-home run.
Umpires generally do a fantastic job and replacing them with a computerized system likely won’t improve the accuracy of the calls by any significant measure. Instead, it will likely end up costing a whole lot more money and causing too many headaches for the venture to be worthwhile. That’s not to say that I don’t take issue with umpires at all, but any changes that should be made are small in nature.
