Texas Rangers pitcher Max Scherzer floated the idea of relegating umpires to the minor leagues in response to a recent wave of controversial calls.
Talk about “robot umps” has been reignited as a result of a series of poor officiating performances. In additional to infamous ump Angel Hernandez continuing to make headlines for the wrong reasons, this season has also seen botched game-ending calls and a manager getting ejected for not saying anything. As a result, many baseball fans have urged the league to automate the position.
While on a rehab assignment with Round Rock Express in Triple-A, Scherzer expressed his desire to keep the human element in the game. Instead of using some kind of digital system to detect balls and strikes, he suggested sending umpires to the minor leagues the same way players get sent down.
“I’m not really a fan [of robot umps],” Scherzer said at a press conference. “I want a human back there judging calls. It seems to weird to have a robot calling the game… We want the human element of the game. The human element of the game is good and we need to keep that in baseball.
“We need to rank the umpires. Let the electronic strike zone rank the umpires. We need to have a conversation about the bottom 10% — or whatever you want to declare the bottom is — and talk about relegating those umpires to the minor leagues and getting the best umpires in the game. That way, the umpires are going against themselves and it’s still a human element of how we rank the umpires, that it’s amongst themselves. Policing the bottom is the way to go.”
Here’s the video of Max Scherzer discussing the electronic strike zone and how he’d fix the future of umpiring in baseball. Really interesting response. Kind of dig his approach. https://t.co/ro0iJm514O pic.twitter.com/LuJhdVJ9fo
— Tyler Feldman (@TylerFeldmanTV) April 25, 2024
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