re: MLB has the most absurd and awful officials in all sports

quote:

---

While I agree there are some terrible calls, I can't imagine how difficult it is to call a game behind the plate.

---

No doubt. Especially when everybody throws 95+ with high spin rates, 2-seamers with late run, and sliders that move a foot and a half horizontally. However, you'd think that with the box being shown on every tv production for the last (10 years?), where their mistakes are shown in real-time, they'd want to have the robo ump technology calling balls and strikes. Especially since the technology seems to have been close to perfected, and the kinks of the process seem to have been worked out in the minors.

I get that their union is against it, but the MLBPA is the strongest union in professional sports, and the owners are billionaires. How does the umpire's union have the power to fight anything if the MLBPA and the owners are both against them? And I would think MLB is against them as well since they implemented the robo ump trial balloon in the minors. I haven't watched a full AAA game, but surely it doesn't add too much time to the games. Especially in the games where they just call all the pitches, it's not the umpires calling them with a challenge system like we saw in that Skenes video from last week.

So again, how does the umpires union have even close to the amount of juice to fight anything if the 3 bigger and much more powerful entities of the MLBPA, the owners, and MLB are against them. And so are the fans now. But the bigger question may be, why would they want to? Why not take that pressure off of themselves? Keep pitchers, hitters, catchers, pitching coaches, fans, and managers from cussing them out for 3 hours every night on something that shows their frickups in real time?

I get their argument is probably the "slippery slope" one. "If they take balls/strikes away from us, then it will be 'out/safe' at 1st base, then the next thing, then the next, until we're finally out of jobs." But I don't think that holds water, because the technology isn't such to where that's feasible if it's even possible at all. And you'd still need the umpires to run the game anyway. But even if the tech did get to a point where it made some of their jobs obsolete (like maybe cutting 1 ump per crew), so what? MLB should do what's in the best interest of baseball.

And since they do a horrible job of marketing their players, I'd think taking as much focus off the umpires and onto the players would be a no-brainer. It took me watching that Angel Hernandez clip 5 or 6 times before I realized it was Wyatt Langford that he hosed. A young, exciting, up and coming star, who was in the opening day lineup for the defending World Series champs just 9 months after playing in the College World Series Finals for Florida, and the only name anybody knows from that whole deal is fricking Angel Hernandez?

And when the sport is struggling to find a national audience and growing it (I know they do very well locally), and has embraced sports gambling which has really helped just about every other sport in America, and you willingly concede that much power of the outcome (an umpire's strike zone might have the biggest effect on a game than any other referee in any other sport) to a human being when, at this point, you really have no good reason to? I don't get it.