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Posted on 02/26/2026 3:54:02 AM PST by Adder
Mitch Trzeciak, an umpire who worked Triple-A in 2025, took up position behind home plate for a Grapefruit League matchup between the Pirates and Red Sox, and let’s say it could have gone better.
The troubles for Trzeciak began early. With one out in the first inning, Pittsburgh’s Carmen Mlodzinski threw what looked like a first-pitch strike to Boston’s Trevor Story. Trzeciak saw it differently and called it a ball. Pirates catcher Endy Rodriguez challenged the call. The ABS review showed the pitch was clearly a strike.
That was also strike one against Trzeciak.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
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He's a MLB umpire...he should already know where the strike zone is.
I dunno...should help, overall.
AI could take a lot of guesswork out of umping. The speeds and tensions involved make that job a challenge for any human. As long as no one monkeys with calibration from start to end of game, the objectivity would be much better. Plus, no salary or pensions for umps, no danger from a bouncing harball to groin or goiter.
AI really is going to take a lot of jobs.
More and more, I would like AI to be used in court proceedings. Load in the relevant laws, load in the evidence and testimony. Let the AI decide if someone is innocent or guilty. Then, as a second step, have a human judge weigh in and (if necessary) state that the AI is badly programmed and is showing bias, and explain why the AI decision might be wrong.
It’s my opinion that neither judges nor juries these days can be reliably impartial.
A Major League Baseball umpire isn’t going to win an argument against ABS. And I don’t think Judge Boasberg would win an argument against a good AI system.
This all begs the question.
The purpose of all breaking ball pitches is to deceive the batter. So if a pitcher’s breaking ball is SO GOOD that it fools both the batter AND the umpire, ... how do you not give him credit for that?
Here I go about to contradict myself — On the one hand, I really love the Constitution. Best document ever. On the other hand, I don’t think it’s perfect.
One example: The Right to Keep and Bear Arms is crucial. Is the Second Amnendment perfectly worded? I would say that it is not, which allowed some people to push about a million infringements on us, in contravention to the intent of the Constitution.
A jury of our peers? It’s a really nice idea. But that’s why OJ was found innocent. Black people on the jury were just not going to convict OJ. Can Donald Trump or his associates get a fair trial in Washington DC? Not a chance. The juries in that location will find him guilty before the trial even starts.
I think an AI jury would be superior to what the Constitution requires. With the caveat (as I stated in my first post) that a human judge should provide a second layer of judgment and if the human wants to prove that the AI system was poorly programmed and thus improperly biased, they are welcome to try.
The hard part of pitching isn’t getting the ball over the plate. A major league pitcher can throw strikes down the middle of the plate all day. The hard parts of the job are hitting the edge of the strike zone and figuring out where that is today. Automated calls of balls and strikes will remove that second part of the game.
According to. our local College Baseball Coach there is a real shortage of Umpires at all levels - young guys are not going to Umpire School and the “old guys” are retiring
And that is the paradox we find ourselves in.
Tough day for the rookie MLB umpire—and for Boston, losing to the Pirates in a 16-7 laugher. You have my sympathy.
Automatic Breaking System?
Wait, no. Must be the initials of some federal appeals judge.
lol. One of my favorite movies
Kind of hard to cross examine a computer.
There was a post yesterday giving an AI “answer” to a complex question.
The AI acknowledged its sources—and one of those was the Anti-Defamation League (which is itself the master of defamation).
AIs have the same problems humans do—they are only as good as their sources.
If they are programmed to blindly accept things without doing detailed research then we just get garbage like we do now.
“More and more, I would like AI to be used in court proceedings. Load in the relevant laws, load in the evidence and testimony.”
Agree. I have this argument with my lawyer DIL all the time. My position is that if legal arguments and judicial rulings are to be based on decided case law then a computer can make the determination.
That’s true.
If AI were to be used in a justice system context, I would want it on a closed network. Don’t pull opinions from reddit and treat them as useful input. Just a closed network with access to US laws, legal decisions, evidence and testimony. Add good logic circuits, and within that narrow data field determine if a crime has been committed at all, and if it was, is the defendant a guilty party?
I think we will eventually get there. Our current experience with judges and juries makes me think that we really need to do better.
ABS should call all balls and strikes, and there should be just one umpire for all other calls—which still can be overridden.
I believe that consistency is as important as objectivity with calling balls and strikes.
AI does not think; it aggregates “information” from the Internet.
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