We have a potential be-careful-what-you-ask-for situation in a couple of weeks when the SEC baseball tournament convenes in Hoover, Ala.
It has been announced that the ABS System (Automated Ball-Strike) system will be used for the week-long event, theoretically on a trial basis. (Get back to us on that one.)
All year long, college baseball fans love to complain – you know who you are — about how the home plate umpires are screwing their team. And pretty much on every pitch.
The ABS implementation, which has been used by the Major League Baseball this year with a great deal of success, will seemingly take care of that.
Or maybe it won’t.
Oh, a strike will still be a strike, and a ball will still be a ball. But fans just might not like the way it’s used.
MLB umpires, with only a couple of exceptions, are very, very good and have never been given enough credit for doing their jobs so well. They are professionals in every sense of the word because the ability to decide whether a 98 mile-per-hour four-seam fastball is 0.1 inches off the plate – and do it in an instant – is pretty amazing.
The analytics prove that.
Watch a game sometime and you’ll see that if they do miss one, more often than not it’s by a fraction of an inch. I don’t know about you, but when that cute flying graphic comes across the TV screen, my first thought is usually that’s close enough.
Anybody who gets a heartburn over a pitch that close needs to seek professional help.
And by the way, one of the flaws in the ABS system is that it is not three-dimensional, even though home plate is. Meaning that the ball can literally cross the plate but not break the plane of the ABS strike zone. (It would have to be a wicked curve, but it can happen.)
Depending on your place in the standings, the SEC Tournament may or may not be a great place to float this trial balloon. But they’ll be doing it with umpires, unlike those in MLB, who are selling term life insurance during the week and then are expected to show up in Hoover and be spot on every time.
The SEC will give each team three challenges (MLB uses two) and you get to keep them with a successful challenge, plus one more for extra innings. According to Joe SEC Fan, teams won’t even make it through the first batter without using all of the challenges.
It might also shut up those who think every called strike against their players was a foot outside.
Is it a good idea? That remains to be seen, but it probably is the best place to try it because it’s not as though a College World Series berth is riding on it.
But I am still a little hacked about the previous “let’s try it” experiment the SEC had at its baseball tournament that unfortunately hasn’t gone away – the double first base. That’s a great idea for middle school girls softball games, but not at this level.
Sorry … still can’t get used to the green base. It’s not just in the SEC either. Did I miss where there was some never-ending series of collisions at first base that necessitated this? Or was it for the “health and safety of the student-athletes?” If that’s the case, there are plenty of other potential health and safety issues in baseball that would be much higher in the batting order than a green first base.
Is it really worth it? Then again, is it worth it to stop and talk about a 1-1 pitch in the fourth inning of an Auburn-Ole Miss game on a Wednesday morning?
Contact JJ at johnjamesmarshall@yahoo.com