Baseball fans that tuned the spring training games this season could notice a novelty in a sport that has experienced multiple changes in recent years.
The batters, pitchers and receptors can now question the decision of the Home referee about the ball or the Strike. Thanks to Hawk-Eye ball tracking technology, the automated ball-strike system reproduces the launch trajectory to determine if the referee’s decision was correct.
To minimize interruptions, the major baseball leagues (MLB) allow each team a maximum of two failed challenges per game, but offer unlimited challenges whenever they are successful. For now, technology has been limited to spring exhibition matches; However, it could be implemented in the regular season from 2026.
The impact on the duration of the game was minimal (a challenge lasted, on average, 13.8 seconds) and most players and coaches took the opportunity to question a ball or a strike. Little more than half of the challenges were in the cancellation of decisions.
However, the future member of the Hall of Fame, Max Scherzer, was among the skeptics.
“We are human,” said Toronto Blue Jays launcher after a preseason game in which he questioned two decisions and lost both to the Robot referees. “Can we be judged simply by humans?”
Technological advances that allow fairer and more precise decisions are usually considered triumphs.
However, the professor of the School for the Future of Innovation in Society, Arthur Daemmrich, and the historian and interim director of the Lemelson Center, Eric Hintz, affirm that new technologies do not imply perfect precision, nor necessarily lead to better competition from the perspective of the fans.
The reaction to ‘Hawk-Eye’
While playing a Criquet game in the 1990s, British computer scientist Paul Hawkins enraged for a bad decision and decided to ensure that the same error was not repeated.
Based on his doctoral training in artificial intelligence, he designed a series of high -speed cameras to capture the path and flight speed of the ball, as well as a software algorithm that used the data to predict its probable future trajectory.
He founded Hawk-Eye Innovations Ltd. in 2001, and his first clients were Critastic Locutors who used the trajectory graphs to improve their transmissions.
In 2006, professional tennis leagues began to implement Hawk-Eye to help referees to make line decisions. The Craket Leagues followed their example in 2009, incorporating technology for decisions such as the “leg before the Wickt”, among others. The professional football leagues began to use it in 2012 to determine if the balls crossed the goal line.
The reaction to Hawk-Eye has been diverse. In tennis, players, fans and announcers they enthusiastically welcomed technology. During a challenge, spectators usually applaud rhythmically while the referee indicates the repeated trajectory.
“As a player, and now as a television commentator,” said the legend of tennis Pam Shriver in 2006, “I dreamed of the day the technology would take the precision of the lines to the next level. That day has already arrived.”
The ‘Hawk-Eye’ failures
In 2020 and 2022, the company apologized publicly with professional football club fans after their goal technology made mistakes when players congregated in the area, obstructing the lines of vision of the cameras.
Critics also raised more fundamental concerns.
In his 2016 Bad Call book, researchers Harry Collins, Robert Evans and Christopher Higgins recalled that Hawk-Eye does not reflect the real position of the ball; Rather, it produces a prediction of its trajectory based on speed, rotation and position.
The authors warn that Hawk-Eye and what they call “decision-making aids” undermined the authority of referees and judges, something they consider harmful to sports.
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There are no purely objectives of impartiality and precision in technological arbitration: they are always negotiated. Even the most precise innovations require human consensus to define and validate their function. Technologies such as photofinish cameras, instant repetition and ball monitoring systems have improved precision, but its implementation is conditioned – often limited – by human criteria and institutional decisions.
For example, the best timing systems in current races have an accuracy of 0.001 seconds, but Olympic sports such as swimming, athletics and alpine skiing report results in increases of 0.01 seconds.
This can generate situations such as the tie for the gold medal between Dominique Gisin and Tina Maze in the female descent of ski in Sochi 2014, where the timing team admitted that he could have revealed to the true winner, but was forced to report a technical tie according to the rules of the Federation.
With instant repetitions in slow chamber, the determination of a capture or intention of a player for a personal lack can be distorted, since humans do not always adapt to variable repetition speeds.
The ‘Strike’ area and the challenge of automation
One of the great problems of the automated Strike system and baseball ball is the Strike area itself.
The MLB regulation defines the Strike area as the depth and width of the home and the vertical distance between the center of the player’s torso and the point just below its knees. The interpretation is notoriously subjective and varies according to the referee. For example, human referees usually mark Strike if the ball crosses the rear corner of the Home, while the automated system uses an imaginary plane that divides the center of the home.
In addition, each player has a unique height, and therefore, his own Strike area. At the beginning of spring training, the height of each player standing was measured, without tacos, and was then confirmed by biomechanical analysis. But what happens if a player changes his batting posture or wears a different footwear that raises his Strike area for a few millimeters?
As happened in tennis, football and other sports, Hawk-Eye can correct really wrong decisions. By allowing teams to challenge controversial decisions without eliminating the human factor, the MLB seeks a balance between tradition and change.
Fans have the last word
Finding a balance between the precision of the machines and the human element is crucial.
For decades, players and managers press the referees to expand or reduce the Strike area, and fans cheer or boo these interventions. When there are expulsions, cries and teasing increase.
Fans enthusiasm is a key factor in deciding whether new technology must be adopted. For example, entire body swimsuits generated records between 2000 and 2009, but unequal access led to what some called “technological doping”, which worried the swimming federation. The MLB faces a similar dilemma: algorithmic arbitration improves precision, but can affect the experience of fans, and the league must carefully manage change.
Evaluating the impact of new technologies is complex. Large government agencies have limited resources, and sports leagues even more. Even so, the MLB advances gradually.
While the logic of the automated ball-strike system could eventually lead to totally electronic arbitration, fans and players will probably resist so far. For now, the challenge system serves as proof, but true referees will still be, ultimately, fans.
*Arthur Daemmrich He is a professor of practice at school for the future of innovation in society, Arizona State University; Eric S. Hintz He is an interim historian and director, Centro Lemelson for the study of invention and innovation, Smithsonian Institute
This article was originally published in The Conversation
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