I’m glad that baseball is taking another step towards integrating and embracing technology into the game. If this brings us one step closer to video replays reversing in-game calls, I’ll be very happy.

In terms of recognizing player traits, I hope they don’t take too close a look at the Blue Jays closer B.J. Ryan. He has a weird delivery that could technically be called a balk every pitch he throws. In my memory, it’s only been called once, in the bottom of the ninth against the Yankees. Funny that.

I think technology like this becomes even more useful in sports like hockey, basketball, or soccer where a lot of things happen “behind the play”. If officials know to look for certain things from certain players, it could help eliminate a lot of this behaviour.

Komail, I have been following this blog for several months now and have read all of your posts. I, and I’m sure other readers, would appreciate it if you wrote more content instead of spending half your blog quoting directly from the article. Readers would get more out of your blog if you provided more commentary instead of directly quoting like it’s a newstory. Otherwise we would just read the news. You might also want to proofread as you often leave out words.

But about the MLB, I’m not sure how your hopes for transparency in relation to steroids has anything to do with this IBM software, at least as how you described it. You should check out Justin Wolfer and Hamermesh’s research about officials’ possible subconcious racism in making calls. You can find it here:
http://bpp.wharton.upenn.edu/jwolfers/Papers/NBARace.pdf
and here:
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1652338,00.html
I think you’d find it pretty interesting.

Thanks for the comment.

You raise an excellent point about transparency Chris - this initiative doesn’t appear that it will help much at all. It’s interesting how they throw “fans” into the group being connected to in the second paragraph, but in the third paragraph there is no real indication of how fans might be connected - but rather focused on security staffs and umpiring crews. By “connecting fans” I guess they mean only cutting down on counterfeit memorabilia, which is a bit of a stretch.

I find the officiating issue interesting from two perspectives:

1. Given the referee scandal that has emerged in the NBA, a need for the leagues to be more transparent is becoming abundantly clear (even if the commissioners continue to ignore). Opening up some of the data they are collecting for public viewing would go a long way in this direction, if the league chose to pursue it - but I’m not holding my breath.

2. Paragraph 5 talks about giving umpires more advanced insight into player tendencies (etc.). Given that umps are supposed to be totally neutral, what is the risk that this increased information could actually make them more biased? In theory, a player’s tendencies should not matter in terms of a given call. Given that much of the criticism directed towards umps and refs is that they do favor certain players/ stars, I could see the problem actually getting worse here, depending on how well the training is done.

You’re right - it’s hard to make the connection between this software and steroids. I referred to this issue in an earlier post talking about the infamous Buzz Bissinger panel - it appears that both the people employed by the league, and the reporters that were supposed to be scrutinizing them, willfully chose to turn a blind eye. As we see in many cases, I believe a cultural transformation will have to occur here, in terms of accepting transparency, before the technology proves to be beneficial in addressing such challenges. Again, I’m not holding my breath.

Cheers,
Denis