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from MLB execs, although last year's test of an automated strike zone in a minor league game had excellent reviews, even from the umpires involved. But it can't go on like this, because nobody trusts the ump over the little tracer box, and people don't go to games to watch umpires. Every game on TV has a little box shadowing the ump, to see whether he's doing his job right, and the networks just leave it there for every single pitch. No way is anyone going to even argue that the human eye is superior to that little box. Sometimes you think it isn't adjusted right, but the immediate response is to fix it, not go back to human eyes calling the strikes and balls.

Like the astronauts from The Right Stuff, when the system is superior to human decsion making, the ump or astronaut is there mostly in case the system malfunctions. The human is not superior to the system.  The human contest here is not reliant on human subjectivity determining boundaries. Like the ballfield, the strike zone is a piece of real estate to be fought over in human contest, and not by persuading a judge who may be enamoured by a combatant's technique and thus offers a 9.5 for the pitcher, and a 7.4 for the hitter. This isn't a debate. The umpire is there because until now, there was no better system. Now there is, so the ump is an anachronism. You can't fix an umpire like you can fix a computer system. The computer will ALWAYS get the benefit of any doubt, unless it's clearly broken, and when that happens, you can tell the ump to step in.

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